How Visual Impairments Can Affect Child Development
Content Courtesy Of: Sofia Avery Consulting
Visual impairment can severely impact the quality of life for people of all ages, but for children it can have a significant impact on their development. When children experience a severe vision impairment at a young age, they're likely to face delays in their motor, cognitive, language, emotional and social development. This can lead them towards lower rates of academic achievement than children without visual impairment. Here are three ways in which visual impairment can affect child development and why it's so important to provide additional support to kids with vision problems.
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1. Visually impaired children can be more hesitant to explore
It's common for visually impaired children to be more fearful of unknown environments, situations and people. This can make them more hesitant to explore the world around them. Plus, parents and caregivers of visually impaired kids can be overprotective because they're understandably concerned about their child's ability to stay safe when they can't look for visual signs of danger. There is therefore a risk that visually impaired children won't have as many experiences from which to learn. In particular, they may struggle to develop the language and social skills that remain pivotal as we grow up, and are largely developed by engaging with new experiences.
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2. Visual impairment inhibits learning by imitation
Social learning is the process of learning from those around us by watching and imitating behaviour. Children with visual impairment have difficulty learning through imitation. Instead, they require planned and systematic instruction which is not usually given as readily as lessons learned through mere observation and imitation.
It's also important to note that children with visual impairments may lose out on visual communication cues such as hand gestures and facial expressions. Visual clues are important for helping children to understand the meaning of the sounds that make up language. Children often imitate visual communication cues when trying to express their needs as they get to grips with language. This is why visually impaired children tend to be delayed in combining words and asking questions of others.
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3. Visual impairment can pose additional challenges to children with disabilities
Children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, brain injury, and learning disabilities, are at an increased risk of visual impairment. IDDs already affect child development, and the additional challenge of visual impairment can hamper development even further.
Plus, visual impairments are often difficult to diagnose in children with IDDs because communication barriers and behavioural issues can make it hard to identify and assess the severity of sight problems. This makes it tough to determine how much of development delay is caused by the IDD and how much is caused by the visual impairment. In turn, it's tough to establish how the child can be best supported to prevent them falling behind developmentally.
Give extra support to children with visual impairments
Visual impairment can inhibit development in children in a wide range of different ways. It's important to give visually impaired children additional support both at home and in the classroom to ensure they don't fall significantly behind their peers.