Infants and Toddlers

Vision is one of the senses that motivates infants and toddlers to reach toward a person or object, and discover what’s there. A young child with a visual impairment will discover movement, interact, and begin to memorize his world—if we help provide him with the motivation to move.

Developmentally, all children need to discover without being told what to discover. A child with low vision needs time to put together the pieces of an object they have explored into a conceptual whole. We can support this exploration by talking about their movements in simple sentences, focusing on interest.

Exploration allows children to learn the concepts that help them organize a mental map of their environment. Concepts such as in/out, up/down, over/under are learned by experimenting and acting on objects and spaces.  The more active a child is in a safe, familiar environment, the more he can learn to safely move from one place to another.