The eyes.

How does one check the eye sight of a tiny toddler who’s not yet able to read? Or even talk.

– Please read what’s on the bottom line.
– ?!
– Right, how about the line above it?
– ?!!

No, that won’t work. But there are methods. First you trick the one and a half year old into looking through the big binoculars, somehow. Oh, so that didn’t work? Scared him, did it?

Right, well then you make the child look at something intreresting, wide eyed and completely still… Meanwhile you use the laser gun like instrument and shoot a ray straight into the little eye. And, believe it or not, that worked. But it took a dad’s lap to sit on, a nurse to wave a funny toy over another nurses head, that other nurse aiming and shooting the laser thingy.

Abbe was shown pictures of lines which, after looking for a while, could be made out to be figures. He looked, and the doctor held different prisms in front of his eyes. When Abbe reacted to having seen something, she changed the image and the prism. Don’t ask me how she knew if he’s astigmatic or not, but she seemed happy enough with the whole thing.

Many 22q11 children have problems with their eye sight. Being cross-eyed is a common one. The doctor tried that one by holding a pen closer and closer to Abbe’s nose until he looked completely cross-eyed. She was happy with that to. Strange. I thought the whole point was for him not to cross his eyes?!

And so, finally, the letter board. But instead of D’s, G’s, O’s and S’s it had pictures on it, in varying sizes. Larger at the top and smaller at the bottom. Abbe was to tell them what he saw. Well, telling as in signing some and trying to say the namne of others. The ones he didn’t get were just left.
Conclusion. Abbe seems to have good eye sight. We’ll come back when he’s older, for more tests.