Reading The Cards

My daughter likes to play cards.   Nana taught her how to play War and since that time my daughter has modified and changed and invented new ways to play that game.   She wants you to play with yer, but if you’re busy, say making lunches for the next day, she’ll gladly say she’ll wait for you.   What this means is she’ll be busy cheating by stacking the deck before you get there.

Initially she was able to do this by discerning face cards as they had more color in the middle of the cards.   She could get aces as well because they had the least amount of information on the card face. Beyond that she wasn’t able to do a lot of fine-grained cheating but it was enough to win the game as a landslide.

As she played more she learned the card suits.   She can’t always tell what suit a card is, but she can get the number on the card.   And this part is what’s improved we think.   A while back she was having to count the pips on the card to determine the number.   Now she’s able to read the number in the top corner and check by counting pips if needed.  

She can’t see what my cards are as that’s way far out of focal range but that’s not a problem, she’ll just ask you to tell her what cards you have.   This part isn’t cheating, it’s skill, because we play a face-up version of War.   There is strategy involved in seeing what cards your player has left, knowing they know what cards you have and that the lead follows the trick winner.   As someone with sight, we can take in the opponents hand quickly.  My daughter has to ask and then remember all the cards I have as well as what she has.  

My mother-in-law is in for the Thanksgiving holiday and she played cards with my daughter on the first day and she came out of the room and whispered to me in an excited voice, “she can see the cards!”   I told her we were pretty excited about it.

So good news there.   But I always have to temper it with where we really are.   I do this probably more for myself than anyone.   I have to always keep in mind that she isn’t ever going to have anything remotely close to normal vision.   There isn’t much we can do to help her regain her vision but we’re doing what we can to help keep her from losing more vision.

Here are some things from today on how my daughter sees (or doesn’t see) the world.   She can see curbs fairly well and only misses one in ten.   Steps are hit and miss depending on the light angle.  Going down is hard, going up is almost always easy to see.  In a store she didn’t run into anything hard, although she found some of the clothes racks  quite comfortable when she walked into them.   At our friend’s house she found the six metal food bowls in different locations half from memory and half from sight.   She wanted to play with the cats but she couldn’t see them even when they were right in front of her unless the light was very bright like in the bathroom.   And at Five Below, she can pick out items on the shelves without knocking them down, which is a good improvement in vision.

So things have gotten better, but she’s still quite blind.   She can navigate more safely in the world but she’s accommodating more and learning more secondary skills as well.    But there is this one niche where she can see.   Maybe that will keep improving little by little.

The Big Boy Update:  My children were in bed the other night and I was finishing story time.   The lights were out and the children were quiet.   I said, “are you awake?”   My son replied, “we’re holograms, so we can’t talk”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s wanting dessert but she wasn’t eating her meal.   She said, “Daddy, I’m more really eating because my heart hurts”.  Dad let her know that heartache or not, dessert wasn’t available unless dinner was finished.