Toys for children with severe disabilities: Adults and children as Toys

That's what I meant: Adults as toys.  If a child with severe impairments is used to having adults and children interacting with them, it is natural that we become part of their playscape.

Think of an infant..their first play experiences are their caretakers.   Eyes meet eyes, hands gently encourage movement and touch of tiny hands,  mouths smile at other mouths, sounds are echoed.  All of this in play and love.

Children with severe mulitple impairments need encouragement and direct teaching  to learn skills that children without impairments (or with limited impairments)  pick up from their environment.  Think of all the skills and knowledge that children pick up visually.  Take away that vision, put a child in a soft environment like a crib with soft blankets, soft clothing, etc. and the child is put into a sensory deprivation chamber.   There is little to explore, exploration = learning, so the child becomes more impaired than he or she should be with the one disability alone.  When you add other disabilities to either loss of sight or loss of hearing or movement, you are not just adding disabilities, you are compounding them.   According the Lili Nielsen, researcher and founder of the Active Learning technique for children with visual impairments (and multiple impairments) a child is not deaf+blind+quadriplegic; the learning disability has been increased by a multiplier:  deafXblindXquadriplegic.

You as teacher (whether parent, aunt, friend, teacher, therapist, etc.) are the child's first playscape.  Feeling your voicebox and having them feel yours, echoing their sounds, creating new sounds together allows the child to engage in vocal play.  Putting your hands under a child's and allow them to play with your hands, your fingers.  Encourage them to feel your face, lips, nose, hair.  Label what they are doing and label when you touch hands, fingers, legs, feet, face, tummy etc.   All of this is directly teaching the child, sensory input, labelling, breath control, how to use their bodies.  The games need to be repeated often and the child encouraged to mimic you after you have mimicked the child.   It should be fun, songs can be made up and included.  If you don't sing, make it a chant.

Amazon.com:

Great music:   We Sing Series:   Silly Songs, Nursery Rhymes, Travel Songs

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