It is estimated that for every 10,000 Australian children born, four of these will be diagnosed as visually impaired or blind before the age of one. As a parent of a visually impaired child, you are tasked with making their surroundings as safe as possible while still providing an environment that promotes independent thinking. Children of all ages love to make the decision about what they will wear each day. So how do you cater to this desire when your child can't easily see the clothing choices before them? Here are two tips to help your child step out of the house as a fashionista, rather than a fashion disaster.

Robe Design

One of the most important pieces of advice you will receive about designing a bedroom for a visually impaired child is that it should be kept as obstruction-free as possible. This is particularly important in the younger years as your child learns to move around the bedroom and out to the bathroom area. If you do not have one already, an inbuilt wardrobe is going to suit your child's needs in a number of ways:

• Wardrobes that are inbuilt into your child's room are recessed into a wall cavity so the door sits flush with the wall. This eliminates the possibility of your child tripping over the corner or walking into the corner of a freestanding wardrobe unit.
• Choosing a sliding door system for the robe eliminates the possibility of your child misjudging the distance when opening a freestanding wardrobe door. Since a sliding door does not swing out into the room, there is no chance of it hitting the face or body of your child.
• A sliding door system that is lined with mirrors can help to reflect light back into your child's bedroom. The more natural light in a room, the easier it may be for your visually impaired child to make out the different shapes of objects in the room.

Another big benefit of an inbuilt robe is that it offers a larger variety of storage options when compared to a freestanding wardrobe.

Robe Storage Options

Freestanding wardrobes generally only offer the fixed shelf and hanger height that they were built with. Inbuilt wardrobes, however, can be custom designed and built to suit the needs of your child. Keep these points in mind when discussing the interior storage layout with your robe designer:

• Incorporate an adjustable clothing rod for the hanging aspect of your child's clothes. As a tip: always have the clothing rod at the same height as the shoulders of your child. This will allow them to stretch their arm straight out to feel the clothing, and eliminates the possibility of the rod making contact with their head if they walk too far into the robe.
• Use hanging hooks that have large, round knobs on the end of the hook for hanging up jackets. The large knob will give your child the guidance they need to hang the jacket and not misjudge the distance so that it ends up on the floor.
• Use different size drawers for storing specific clothing items to help your child easily locate their choice. For example, you could put underwear in a small drawer and t-shirts in a bigger drawer.
• Also, separate the clothes out into colour choices and have these located in different parts of the wardrobe to further help your child distinguish their clothing choices.

It will take trial and error, but your child will learn to memorize where they can locate the specific items they want within the robe.

A loss of eyesight does not mean that your child will always have to rely on you for everything that they need. By making the right choices in wardrobe design, you can help your child be a snappy dresser all by themselves. This will help to increase their level of confidence and that will, in turn, help them to tackle other everyday challenges that people with sight take for granted. If you think an inbuilt wardrobe would help your child, then contact a company like Hills Robes & Screens.