2024 Volume 61 Issue 1 Pages 72-79
This qualitative, descriptive study explored how children with retinoblastoma understand their eyes and vision, and how their mothers facilitate this understanding. Data from semi-structured interviews with the mothers of three- to seven-year-old children with retinoblastoma were analyzed. Ten categories of children’s understanding of their eyes and vision were obtained, with 26 subcategories. Thirteen categories were generated from 23 subcategories relating to the approach used in understanding. Children seemed to experience no discomfort with their vision, noticed and expressed difficulties in their vision and differences in visual perception between each eye, and learned to cope with their difficulties. They were aware of differences in visual perception and in the physical appearances of self and others, while questioning their own eyes and envying those with normal ones. Mothers observed their children’s behavior and repeatedly explained the need for attention to the invisible. They also provided behavioral precautions to avoid accidents. While fostering their children’s awareness of things they could do without feeling their visual impairment as a weakness, the mothers encouraged their children to protect the remaining eyeball and their vision. Along with assessment-based advice on early childhood visual cognitive development, this study indicates a need to initiate developmental support of visual impairments, in collaboration with specialists in the field.
