My daughter picks up things very quickly if you can show her what to do. For instance, she knows the dog's leash is in a spot by the front door. She gets the leash, puts it on the dog, walks the dog outside and looks around until she finds the runner line and then hooks up the dog in the morning.
She can do lots of things that might seem difficult to do blind, but to her, they're not intimidating or challenging. My sighted son doesn't put the dog out nearly as well or quickly as my daughter does.
My daughter can also do a thing if she can feel enough information to be able to do so. I had bought two different types of fruit cups for my daughter. I was telling her where they would be in the refrigerator (she likes them cold). The containers were the same even though they were different products from separate companies. I was about to go get the tactile stickers when my daughter said, "Wait, Mom, I can tell the difference, there is writing on this kind." And sure enough, Delmonte was stamped into the side of one.
We want to enable my daughter so she can do things without asking for help as much. Empowering a child to do something all by themselves is powerful. Somethings have been easy with her while others we've put off until later when she's older.
One thing she's never done is to work the microwave. For starters, it's up high. She has to get a step stool to reach into it. Another reason is there are no buttons for her to feel. The design of this particular model is a flat black shiny plastic with a keypad and other functions listed in white. There is only a single smooth surface. It also doesn't talk and give you feedback on what you touched, All of this combined makes it nigh impossible for my daughter to successfully use our microwave.
Until today. My husband said to me if we could put braille numbers over the printed ones, she could easily work the microwave. It was one of those lightbulb ideas. We had large sticker sheets we could add braille to and then affix it over the keypad.
We only needed to map thirteen things: numbers 0-9, Start, Pause/Cancel, and Quick Minute. I made a copy of the keypad using some tracing paper and then set to work making a braille sticker overlay.
When my daughter came to the kitchen for a snack I told her about it. She already knew how the numbers were set up in a three-by-three grid—she'd been playing tic tac toe with the same number layout for at least a year now. I told her where the other buttons were in relation to the numbers and gave her a lesson in the process of microwaving something as well as a lot of safety considerations she should be aware of.
She wants to warm up pancakes all by herself in the morning tomorrow, so we practiced on a few so she could get the hang of things. She didn't have a learning curve here, she just knew. She had mapped the thirteen keys in her mind before ever stepping on the stool to try it out. This is really going to open doors for her food-wise.
What a great idea my husband had. I wish we'd thought of it some time back, maybe I could have fifteen more minutes of sleep on school days!
The Big Boy Update: My som likes the volume very loud when he's watching something on the television in the living room. It mostly continues to rise because he wants to hear over the ruckus. Today, I walked into the living room and almost didn't notice my son sitting on the sofa in a very quiet room. He and his father decided to try out the headphones plug on the Roku remote. It was easy and no volume battles. Win/win.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: After warming pancakes all by herself today, my daughter wanted to see how long it took to get a cup of water warm. It was a good test to get an idea about other things, like soup. I left the room a few minutes later and as I walked away I heard the door to the microwave open and my daughter say, "Nope, still just warm."
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