ABC's with Noa and Daddy

Okay, so here it is! Noa doing the ASL alphabet with Ben. She doesn't make a big deal of "showing" the signs - in fact sometimes she does them into her own hand - so you really have to keep an eye on what she is doing. Also, check out how delicately and fully she feels Ben's hand to decipher the sign. It's actually kind of amazing how she puts all the that information together and makes the sign herself, especially because understanding body image (how your body looks at all) for blind kids can be really challenging. You'll see she gets the finger positions quite well, but the orientation of the whole hand isn't as clear to her (as in the letters P and Q). You'll also see her rocking her head back and forth. My best guess is that she is doing this to try to get some visual cues - CVI kids tend to move their heads to get some vision, partly because the most basic vision we have is really about movement (seeing something move... like a lion that wants to eat you for example). She she moves her head to create ultilize that. Also, most CVI kids have some vision on the side rather than the center, and she seems to notice things more on the sides so she could also be just trying to use that area of vision, though I actually hesitate to really call it vision. We have no idea what she might be getting from her eyes. I tend to think of it as information. It gives her some information.

In any case, we're very exciting about her interest in the alphabet... and it's awfully cute!