[blindkid] teaching proper cane use

Joy Orton ortonsmom at gmail.com
Sun Dec 20 04:11:47 UTC 2009


On a child who bangs his cane on the ground and otherwise uses it
improperly, I totally agree with Richard and Merry-Noel; don't take the cane
away. I would say, try to find a way to encourage him to use it properly,
and help him feel that it helps him.

Our daughter had one memorable morning when she sailed out of the house and
caught the brick side of the porch with her face. Ouch! She had a cane in
her hand, but was running exuberantly out of the house. Although
unintentional, it was a pretty effective lesson. We also have a great O&M
teacher.

I have recently read "The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child,"
and we applied his techniques with our (sighted) three year old. Wow, what a
difference! Basically Dr. Kazdin has a program for rewarding the desired
behavior (saying Yes, Mommy instead of yelling NO, or using the cane
properly instead of banging it).

This method is based on research, not on someone's good ideas about how to
be a parent. They really tried it with real kids, and they found out how to
reward so that kids will do the behavior you want. I highly encourage anyone
working with kids who have a behavior you want to change, to get this book
and read it. It's in the details--the author says, Yes, you may have tried
sticker charts before, you may have tried praise before, but try it all
again, my way. So I'm not going to try to describe the program--get the
book. :)

Our three year old went from frequently saying, "No!" in a loud voice to
usually saying, "Okay, Mommy" or "Yes, Mommy" in a normal voice. I am not
kidding, it was great. She also went from frequent timeouts to seldom
needing time out. Is she a perfect kid now? No, but she sure is much more
pleasant to live with!

I hope this helps!
Joy Orton



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