How to Engage Your Child in the Early Years

June 2020

Experiences that occur during the earliest years of life strongly impact the abilities of infants and toddlers to learn, move, and interact with others.

This is especially true for children with combined vision and hearing loss, for whom physical, communicative, cognitive, social, and emotional developmental domains are deeply intertwined. In recognition of the importance of appropriate early learning experiences for children who are deaf-blind, we’ve compiled the following resources to help families understand the critical role they play in fostering the early development of their child.

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Resources

WonderBaby
This website is packed with wonderful information targeted to parents of babies and young children with visual impairments/multiple disabilities.
Hold Everything! Twenty “Stay-Put” Play Spaces for Infants and Preschoolers with Sensory Impairments and Other Special Needs
The goal of this booklet, from the Ohio Center for Deafblind Education, is to provide parents and early childhood educators with ideas for creating spaces and materials that encourage exploration. Also available in Spanish.
Birth to Three Information on Movement and Exploration
The Washington Sensory Disabilities Services website has some great videos and other information on encouraging movement and exploration in infants and toddlers with visual impairments. From the left-hand menu, hover over “Videos > Birth to Three” to see the three topics: Security and Discovery, Circles of Exploration, Building Concepts for Orientation and Mobility.