What A Difference Seeing Makes!

Claire has had a terrible time with coloring, cutting, or tracing.  Following a line seemed impossible,  She was also stumbling whenever the ground was uneven, and was terrified to go anywhere without bright light. It took us a bit of  time to get an appointment with  the pediatric vision specialist, but we are so glad we did.  He promised us a "new child" once she had her glasses.  I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but  I do know that she is pretty happy about her glasses, and does not want to take them off.

Clearer vision has made Claire more willing to participate in activities that she used to avoid.   

 

So many new things to see between the doctor's office and the parking lot.  Wow!  It is fun to see.

Paying the bills is quite a chore.   First you must cut up pieces of construction paper to put inside the envelope.  Then you have to put on a "stamp" and a return address label.  Writing the address is very time consuming.  Especially when you have 25 bills to pay!

You must put them in the mailbox one at a time to make sure they are just right. Claire recognizes that her writing does not look the same as other writing. When asked what the mailman would think about all her bills, she says that he will shake his head and say, "I don't know...I don't know."  Then she giggles as she envisions the puzzled mailman.

Please don't tell Claire that Daddy went outside after Claire was in bed and removed all that confusing mail.  The garbage pick-up men surely won't say a word.  ;-)  Claire can hardly wait until our next bill paying day.  I guess I should start buying envelopes in bulk.

Coloring is much more fun when you can see what you are doing.  When Daddy colors with you, it is even better. Real men color princess pictures. Yes, they do.

 Jenny-jie jie  joined us at the park one warm sunny day.  New glasses made it so much easier to judge where all the steps were.  Claire climbed on all sorts of things she had avoided before.  Of course, seeing down from the top also made it a little bit scarier.  As long as Jenny was there to set an example, though, nothing was too scary to try.

Glasses are a wonderful blessing.  Of course, Claire is not used to being able to see clearly. We know that it will take her brain time to catch up to the new things  her eyes can do.  She still operates in her mode of avoiding things where she might fail.  She would prefer to misbehave or distract rather than try something she might not do well.

Glasses haven't changed her stubbornness.  When asked to cut a curved line, she pretends not to know how to hold the scissors.  When asked to trace over an "x" with her marker, she refuses to touch the pen to the page.  Bribes don't work.  Punishment doesn't work.  The only way we have found to get Claire to do something she doesn't want to is to wait her out. All options for any other activity are removed until she decides to make a reasonable effort at the task we are asking her to do.  It can be really stressful to wait, and wait.  Earlier this week she refused for 10 hours.

Yup.  Very, very  stubborn. 

Just when doubt was about to make me tell her she didn't have to write it, she decided to cooperate. She traced a perfect "x" on her dry erase book. It took her all of 3 seconds to complete the task with excellence.  Then we celebrated!  Guess what the first thing she wanted to do the next morning was?  Now that she knows she can trace those lines, she is all about showing off her skill. 

How I pray that each time I ask her do something and she succeeds, we will build trust.  We will need lots of that to continue to help her grow and learn.