Every Day Learning: How Can Vision Impairment Affect Your Child?

Being able to see perfectly is something that most people take for granted. Unfortunately some children do not have this luxury. Being vision impaired can severely affect a child’s development in numerous different ways. It can severely hinder their friendships and other types of relationships. While there are a large number of ways that vision impairment affects development, not all of them in the ways that you might think.

Motor Skills

Visual impairment impedes a child from developing their motor skills completely. There are a number of reasons for this, the first one being that they are afraid of what they might not be able to see. The fear of falling over unseen objects or hitting them with their hands stops children from developing their motor skills to the same level of their peers. This severely hinders the development of the child far beyond just not having a full field of vision.

Social Skills

Having a visual impairment makes it difficult to develop social skills to the same level as a child without a visual impairment. There are a lot of nonverbal cues that a child with a visual impairment would never manage to pick up on during their early years. The nonverbal cues are not the only thing that children with visual impairments would struggle with, a lot of talking involves making eye contact. This is obviously difficult for a child with a visual impairment and can make it difficult to form relationships with other children.

Language Skills

Linked in with the development of social skills is the development of language skills. Most early years language is developed by mimicking what the child has seen. If their vision is impaired what they see is limited. This leads to their language skills being limited also. Linking from their social skills children with visual impairments struggle with the nonverbal cues associated with language. They cannot tell from someone’s body language what kind of mood they are in, this hinders them when making conversation as they cannot tell how the other person is feeling as effectively. Visual impairment also leads to a child struggling to learn the context with which language is used. Most early years language is learning the words for specific objects. If a child cannot see an object very clearly, then the word has very little meaning to them when they use it. This transfers across when they begin to make more complex sentences as they get older and still don’t know the context of the words they are using. While the children can learn to mimic the words they have heard, the meaning behind them is often lost on visually impaired children.
There are many ways that you can help visually impaired children, one of the simplest and most effective ways is to sponsor a child. You will have a positive effect on a child’s life, helping them to achieve far greater things with their life than they ever thought possible. Another way that won’t cost you money, just time is volunteering at children’s centres. No matter what you choose to do, your help will be gratefully received.