On Being a Worrywart

On Being a Worrywart

Future Reflections Spring/ Summer1989, Vol. 8 No. 2
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ON BEING A WORRYWART
by Pauletta Feldman
Editor's note: The following article is reprinted
from the June I July, 1988, Visually Impaired Preschool
Services Parents Newsletter, Louisville,
Kentucky.
My blind son, Jamie, just turned four in March
and is completing his first full year of preschool.
This past year has been one of great strides in skill
development for Jamie and has laid to rest many
of my worries and frustrations. There have been
so many times that I've anguished about his
seeming delays, what I've done wrong if they still
exist, what I should do right to get him moving
along. But it's always turned out that Jamie, in
his own time, has solved my. problems. When he
was ready for a skill, he developed it. I'm certainly
not trying to minimize the impact of early intervention
and providing opportunities for
stimulation and learning; it's just that I'm beginning
to realize that sometimes I have to wait for
Jamie to respond to them and have faith that he
will.
As with most of you and your children, Jamie is
our miracle baby. In fact, he's our double
miracle baby. He was born three months premature,
weighing in at one pound, 14 ounces. He
was on 100 percent oxygen for 11 days and suffered
severe retinal detachment and scarring.
After surgery on both eyes, he has some light perception.
I say Jamie is our double-miracle baby
because not only is he alive, he is the baby we
thought we could never have. He's adopted, and
adopting a baby isn't easy these days.
Jamie came to us at 13 months of age. He had
one tooth and was still on baby food. He could
sit with a pillow propped behind him and scooted
on his back to get around. My little niece, who is
two weeks older than Jamie, was walking, eating everything in sight, and talking up a storm. Jamie
was goo and babble, but had little means yet to
communicate his wants. My only experience
with babies and what they did at what ages was
through the babies of family and friends, and in
comparison, of course, Jamie was way behind. I
didn't know much about what to expect of babies
in general, and certainly not what to expect of a
blind baby.
Getting involved in YIPS was certainly a great
help in this matter. And through YIPS, I even-
tually met some other mothers who had little
boys who were visually impaired and about
Jamie's age. Conversations with them helped so
much, because what their kids were doing gave
me a valid benchmark for viewing Jamie's
development.
I guess that's why I'm writing this--to give those
of you who may have younger blind children
some of Jamie's benchmarks so that maybe you'll
go easier on yourselves and maybe be able to
worry a little less about your children than I did.
Jamie was about 16 months old before he started
crawling. Stairs were a great motivator, and he'd
crawl up steps before he'd crawl on the floor. At
about 20 months, Jamie started walking without
assistance. He was a slow walker. (He still is.)
He was very tolerant of bumps and scrapes but
had amazingly few accidents, probably because
of the caution he used while walking slowly and
because his light perception helped substantially
in travelling between rooms. I can't take any
credit for his orientation and mobility (O&M)
techniques; the means he uses to travel about
safely are uniquely his own. Initially, he walked
with his arms extended straight out, like a sleep-
walker, and didn't trail walls. Now he does trail
and walks with one arm slightly bent and held
chest-high (maybe not by the O&M books, but
pretty effective at this point nevertheless). It is
only recently that he felt comfortable to walk
down a single step without holding onto me or a
rail, and now he's jumping down the three steps
from our front porch all by himself. He's not yet
very comfortable with running. He has become
a real climber, (a stage I thought I might get to
miss).
It was also at about 16 months that Jamie started
saying recognizable words. By the age of two, he
had a vocabulary of 273 words and 13 phrases. I
know these statistics because it was at this time
he was approaching an assessment that had been
recommended by a doctor we had seen once and
who felt that he was very delayed. I was feeling
very defensive about having anyone underes-
timate how great Jamie really was, and so for
about a week, I walked around the house with a
notebook documenting his every utterance. He
may have been delayed in some areas, but I don't
think language is one of them, something which
came as a surprise to me because I thought it
would be hard to learn to speak clearly without
being able to watch how others speak. In fact, I
think Jamie's strongest skills are verbal; he loves
words and the richness of language.
While Jamie has always liked talking, it is only
during the past year that he has really taken an
interest in talking to people outside his im-
mediate family. He'd be very conversant with us,
but tended to sit back and listen and not get in-
volved in conversations when other grownups or
children were around. When he did talk to other
people, it would often be with his back turned to
them and in an almost inaudible voice. He's get-
ting a lot more social. He's wanting to play with,
rather than just alongside, other children and is
starting to verbally take up for himself. And not
just verbally. I've seen him engaged in a tug- of-
war over a toy and use a defensive pinch here and
there when wronged--a sight to behold when
your child has passively sat by while other kids
have taken toys from him. He has started initiat-
ing conversations with others, asking, "Who are you?" or "What's your name?" and what a thrill I
felt when just a few days ago I noticed him for the
first time consciously turn to face someone who
had spoken to him.
Self-help skills have seemed especially slow in
coming for Jamie (or maybe I should say for me).
Not having those skills has seemed to prolong his
babyhood and to impact the way other adults and
children have related to him. That has bothered
me--having others treat my toddler like a baby.
But Jamie just needed a little extra time.
Jamie didn't totally feed himself independently
until about 3- 1/2. It wasn't until three weeks
before his fourth birthday that he started dressing
independently, while I gave assistance in
handing his clothes to him. Now, I'm just laying
his things out, and he puts them on and surprises
me.
Something happened recently that truly made
me realize that I have been the source of a lot of
my worry and frustration over Jamie. I had come
to the decision that I would leave potty- training
to Jamie's future wife. Five days after his fourth
birthday, Jamie decided to be potty-trained--and
he was in less than a week, and night trained in
two weeks. Yesterday I found him in the
bathroom twice getting on the toilet himself
without telling me he had to go and having me
run into the bathroom with him. My baby has become
a real big boy. I have a potty chair, no
longer needed, that plays "how dry I am" if
anyone's interested.
Lately I'm feeling like the sky's the limit. Oh, I
know we'll hit those plateaus again when it
doesn't seem that we're getting anywhere or getting
there too slowly. But the point is, that although
it may have taken a while for Jamie to acquire
his skills, he has mastered them quickly.
Every day, he's seeming more like the average
kid. I think we're beginning to catch up.
POSTSCRIPT: Pauletta informs me that
Jamie, now five years old, has just started cane
travel lessons. Needless to say, Jamie, his parents,
and his cane travel teacher are delighted that Jamie
is taking this next big step toward independence and
maturity.
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