FINALLY! Some Light Box Video!!!

Thanks to my dad sending me the proper software, I've finally been able to edit some of my early light box video so I can share some of this fascinating world with you all. I didn't want to post any of the current stuff without also providing some earlier stuff as a context.

As you can see in this early light box video, taken just about a year ago, Noa shows no interest in the blue blocks on the light box. This is probably about two weeks into starting this therapy... and we have ten or fifteen minutes of video that is really just more of the same. Noa sitting in front of the blocks, and us trying to figure out if she is taking any notice of them. The most difficult thing at this point was to keep doing this every day, when she didn't seem to be responding to any of it.

The next clip is more recent, from earlier this month actually. As you can see, her entire attitude toward the objects has changed. She is very engaged. And notice the way she delicately reaches out for a block with her fingers - very precise (although smashing through them like any toddler and making a big noise is also popular). We're working now on the concept of "give to mommy" and I'm trying to distinguish between colors for her so that we can evenutally get to sorting colors. We're also taking blocks out and putting them into baskets. Doing this on the light box helps her to just get the general concept of giving, putting and taking - which she now uses with other toys outside the light box. We're also working with new objects: balls, glow sticks, pom-poms, basically anything that is blue, red or yellow.

Yeah, it's a big change from clip 1 to clip 2... but this is over the course of about a year, so while it's very exciting it's also very challenging and requires a lot of patience.

So, what are the practical applications of all this? Well, first of all, Noa is getting the idea that the information coming through her eyes might be useful in some way. Like most CVI kids, she still tends to look away when she reaches for something (the visual information is a distraction), but sometimes now she does look and reach at the same time. So that is a major goal that we're working towards.

We've also found that she has become more aware of space since working with the light box. Space awareness has been a real challenge for Noa. She has really had to learn about it inch by inch - it used to be that if she put her hand out and something wasn't there then is might as well be on the moon: it was unreachable, and there was no possibility of getting it (without mommy or daddy). Hearing something didn't help because she had no idea that there was a place it could be coming from. There were two places in the world: here and not here.

And for so long it was impossible for her to understand that there was any use in crawling, scooting for walking. The implications of her growing sense of space cannot be over-stated.

So, there's lightbox 101.