The Jones Family: Cane

What a week! When we got back from Florida and moved back into our rental I noticed immediately Capri bonking into the couch, counter, table, and tumbling off the back step. Capri adjusts so quickly and well that within a day she was find and remembered our house but it was a huge eye opener for me. We had been in Florida in the same house for 3.5 months and she knew the house almost perfectly. But coming home and seeing her run into stuff reminded me how poor her vision really is. I think I've kind of confused people saying Capri is blind. She is. At a legal level she is blind. But we always knew she had some vision. She walks, talks, identifies objects, and has a lot of useful vision. She is a very normal little girl and so many people, if she wasn't wearing her glasses, don't even know something is "wrong" with her. She adapts well which just confuses people even more. But her eyes are googly and she has a hard time focusing and what I rediscovered as we moved home was that her peripheral vision is extremely poor. She has difficulty noticing things up or down or side to side. She has to actually move her head in the direction an object is to see it. You'll hear us constantly say "Capri look down!" because she's running right over a bag of wipes because she just doesn't have that lower vision to get a full picture of the entire room. Truthfully, we don't know how much she can see or exactly how much her glasses help but as time goes on and we have experiences in new places we learn more.

Anyway, when we got home we met with her vision therapist and her orientation and mobility therapist to do her IEP I told them what I was noticing. They agreed that she needs some support in her movement. O&M decided to introduce the cane! You guys, a year ago that would have had me in tears but that day I was so peaceful and excited about it. She needs it so badly. So we waited a month to get a cane and her therapists prepped me for just 30 seconds a day of cane work. Don't stress over it, make it enjoyable and have low expectations. They told us to get a command strip and hang it on our wall in an open area and just ease into it. We were all so excited to introduce it to her! I couldn't wait to see how she would do with it.

She took off!

Update: She now takes it to church, to the store, to the park and loves it! We talk about everything when we walk around with it. We're constantly narrating our outings. "Cane in front!" "Cane found the rocks!" "Cane helps you find the street!" "Can cane find Mom's leg?!" That totally help her pick up how useful her cane is. She loves finding the different textures around her. She loves the bumpies (truncated domes)! Thats the bumps on the pavement where the street meets a side walk. She always bends down to touch them and says "oh bumpies!!" You learn fun new words for things you never noticed when you have a baby who is blind! We've learned to be quiet while crossing the street so she understands it's a very special time to be aware. Even when we take walks in the stroller Winnie always makes us be quiet when we are in the street now haha.