Exercises for strengthening visual and auditory skills can be combined into a game of hide-and-seek, for example, in which the child uses both sound and verbal cues: "Beep, beep! I'm over here, behind the desk!" You can also play games in which the child looks at a group of objects, and then has to identify them blindfolded, using touch - and the sound as they touch other objects, and smell and taste if appropriate - and describe what each object looks like. In this way, the child learns to construct a visual image from the evidence of the other senses.
With children who have visual impairments, we try to construct a visual-spatial world from sound and touch and the child's own movements. So the verbal child can describe what something would look like by touch and smell and taste and motion. She can figure out where things are in a room based on where the sounds are coming from, as well as by being helped to walk over and touch those objects. This gives her a visual-spatial map of an area. Similarly, a child who has a hearing impairment may be able to use visual signals as directions in a game and associate the sight of objects with tastes and smells. The idea is to create as much of a multisensory picture of the world as possible. How To Know If You Are ADD
Functional Understanding of the World
During this problem-solving stage, children also develop a sense of what different things are used for. They begin to understand the functions of physical objects in terms of repeated actions, a pattern of behavior. So it's important to have many functional objects in a child's world - a comb, a hairbrush, a bell, a toy telephone, a music box, a truck, a car, a doll. The child begins to see that each object is used in a certain way. This pattern of use is eventually labeled a "doll" or a "telephone," but the child sees the pattern and understands the function of the object long before she can label it. Even a sixteen-month-old child will imitate adults on the phone, putting it to her ear and making noises; she understands that its function is to communicate.
In our games at this stage, we want to introduce imitation and use objects functionally. For instance, grooming is very interesting to kids. Daddy may be combing his hair, and the child has to find her own comb, so she can imitate Daddy. In other words, now we want the child to relate to objects according to their function as well as their colors or shapes or textures. Kids gravitate toward this naturally.
Words and Ideas
Once the child is looking and listening, touching and smelling, recognizing patterns and exploring the world with all her senses, she is ready to use words and ideas and combine them in different ways to solve problems. These abilities build on the foundations we've been describing.
From the beginning parents help children label and describe with words what they're already seeing and understanding. While experiencing themselves in relationship to other people, animals, and physical objects, they're associating words and word patterns, and distinguishing between one and another. These abilities depend on having a lot of interaction with the physical world and the interpersonal world, playing with others in a moving, dynamic dance. How To Know If You Are ADD
When a child is playing tag, for instance, she is using both sides of her body; noticing distance, getting a sense of how long it takes to get somewhere, combining her experiences with her senses, and associating words and ideas with these experiences. On the other hand, if the child is overwhelmed because she's in a noisy or visually chaotic environment, or she's underwhelmed because she is not getting much stimulation, then this whole area of verbal development is not occurring properly. So interacting in a calm, regulated way is crucial.
Strengthening Activities.
To strengthen visual-spatial and auditory processing abilities together, use labels and words for what the child sees and hears. On a walk, it's natural to identify what we see and hear - plants and animals, birds and wind sounds, and lights and sirens. An easily distracted child could be asked to describe buses and trains and cars and the sounds they make. The supermarket, which can be a huge challenge for a hyperactive or distractible child, is a good place to practice this. Hide-and-seek games can be full of verbal cues: "I'm in the closet, the one down the hall" or "I hear a noise behind the big couch."
In all these ways we're enhancing visual and auditory processing, while giving the child symbolic labels for how the physical world is organized. A child can get a sense of spatial dimensions and how to symbolize them, simply by playing the games all children play, but with plenty of description and labels. The child can form pictures in his mind of what "above," "beyond," "below," and so forth look like. She can also learn to follow a sequence of verbal cues. To learn more, you can check out How To Know If You Are ADD.
