Letting Your Visually Impaired Child Help
Transitioning into adult life involves taking on responsibility. When your child becomes an adult, he may be responsible for paying rent or mortgage, paying for health and dental insurance, paying taxes, obeying laws, purchasing food and cooking meals, caring for himself and family members, as well as maintaining his property.
As you probably know, it takes a great deal of responsibility to consistently show up to work on time and perform to the best of one’s abilities in order to maintain employment.
The more practice your child gets with responsibility and work, the easier he will find the adult routines of employment, self-care, family life, and maintaining a household. You can help him build qualities of follow-through, accomplishment, discipline, and reliability by apportioning him a share of household chores.
In addition to establishing routine chores for your child, you may consider providing him opportunities to perform extra chores as a means to earn cash. As he is cultivating responsibility, he can also begin to master the concepts of money management.
Of course, it is easier, quicker, and less messy to wipe a sticky table or feed a hungry puppy yourself than to allow your four-year-old to do so. Yet it is a gift to help him develop discipline by assuming responsibility. Consider what chores you can teach him to consistently accomplish around the house. “Learning by Doing: Chores for Your Preschooler Who Is Blind or Visually Impaired” has information on identifying appropriate tasks for your child.
To learn more about using chores to teach concepts involved in work, including responsibility, maintaining a schedule, use of accommodations, and receiving compensation, read American Foundation for the Blind CareerConnect’s lesson plan on using chores to teach work-related concepts.