The Blind Nursery School Child

THE NURSERY SCHOOL FOR BLIND CHILDREN, ATTACHED TO THE HAMPstead Child-Therapy Clinic, was established to meet the specific needs of young blind children and to give their mothers relief and support. At times, children who had some sight attended the nursery school; but these children were classified as "blind" for educational purposes because they would have to learn Braille. They were visually handicapped and needed much help. However small their amount of vision, however blurred or blunted it may have been, they nevertheless had visual experiences and their development differed from that of the child who grows up without any visual awareness.

This account concerns itself only with children who were totally blind from birth. It does not deal with children who become blind later, because I have been convinced by my work with young blind children that even the very primitive visual awareness which a baby experiences in the first months of life has a lasting impact and influence on him. It seems that some recollection, however dim, of a visually perceived world remains with the child who loses his sight even in babyhood. In our group it was clear that such children were more adventurous, more lively, more socially expressive, more animated, more assertive in their postures than those who were blind from birth. As Helen Keller (1903) says in her autobiography: