Monday, May 2, 2011

Blindisms: What about the Rocking, Spinning, Jumping? and Sports?

Rocking, spinning and jumping are all very active blindisms, and can make your child appear autistic.  Children who are blind or have very limited vision will sometimes rock so hard it makes me dizzy to watch them, or spin in place for 10 - 15 - even 20 minutes,  or jump in place for even longer periods of time. While some of our kids actually do have autism, it can be difficult to separate what is due to blindness and what is truly due to autism.  In any case, behavior modification used by therapist who work with autistic kids can work for children who are blind or visually impaired. 


I am by no means an expert in this subject - what I have learned is almost entirely anecdotal.  Still, there may be something that I have learned that matches with your experience with your own child, or may help you understand what your child's therapists or teachers are trying to say to you, or give you an idea for them to think about and to try.


I suspect these particular forms of blindism have a lot to do with our proprioceptive sense - where our body parts are in space.  This can be very difficult for a blind child, and finding ways to give kids the feedback they need from their bodies may reduce the need for these large body movements.  It may also, in some unforeseen way, help academically when your child is learning subjects with complex spatial relationships - like math, geometry, physics and chemistry - which are all difficult subjects for children who are blind or visually impaired. 


This comes under the subject of sensory integration, and there has been a lot of research done and lots written about it - you will want to speak with someone in your child's school system about sensory integration techniques, since a missing sense -vision- can drastically impact a child's learning style and needs.


Something we did, even though Greg wasn't really a rocker, was, with his physical therapists direction, some joint compression, and played a lot of physical games.  A favorite was that he would get down on all fours as if he was the house of the little pigs, and we would try to knock him down, by pressing on different parts of his body, as if we were the big bad wolf.  This was tons of fun, and got the job done, too.  Lot of physical contact - wrestling, large body movement - is all good for all kids.


Another kind of therapy which might help is called "astronaut training".  It helps develop the vestibular system, which can be confused because of the lack of visual input.  I saw a video demonstration of this recently at a conference in Wisconsin.  I don't know if it is available in Michigan.


Some kids can stop eyepressing or rocking simply by pushing really hard on their leg to give them the stimulation they need, or sitting on their ankles and compressing their joints in this way. This kind of redirecting is finding a more socially acceptable - and perhaps invisible - way for your child to get what they need.


Another kind of redirecting - I would think about getting my rocker/spinner/jumper into an organized sport.  Most little kids are into soccer or T-ball or other ball sports which are difficult to adapt for blind children (it CAN be done, and lots of kids who are blind or visually impaired do play with beeper balls and such, but it's hard to play on your local kids' team).  Sports that ARE adaptable easily are those that are more individual - like gymnastics, wrestling and swimming.  Swimming is absolutely an essential skill - start early! and it's a very difficult skill for a child with poor understanding of how his body works.  


Teach them to ride a bike - use a Tag-a-Long ("make your own tandem") or get them to ride their own bike. A pedal go-cart can be great fun - so what if they crash?  By the way, scraped knees and bleeding elbows are a rite of passage of childhood - don't deny your child the opportunity to get bumps and bruises and learn to deal with it and tell the tale later!


Set up a "running track" with a rope so that your child can practice running - a challenging skill if you've never seen anyone run before!


At Greg's IEP when he was 4 I asked the physical therapist to work on Greg learning to run properly with his arms swinging against his gait.  She looked right at me and asked "why would you want him to learn to run?"  I answered, "Because every other 4 year old knows how to run!".  She clearly thought I was nuts, but I had a vision of the future and I wanted it to happen!


By the way, some years ago I saw a video about a young man who was totally blind and competed at the Division I level for the University of Georgia in Cross Country.  He was consistently in their top five runners, too.


Other strategies you can use are allowing the unwanted behavior only in certain places.  You will probably have to ween your child gradually from rocking all the time, to rocking only when there is free time at school (not when the teacher is talking, not when they are to be working on school work) to only at recess, to only on the bus, to only at home, to only in his or her room.  Just like eyepressing, your child has to understand the need to stop the behavior and it needs to be his or her choice.  Our job as parents is to give them sufficient motivation - and sometimes that means unpleasant consequences - to see that it is in their best interest to stop these behaviors.

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