[blindkid] Advice needed about school incident

[holly miller]

I've been thinking on this a lot.
I do think Kendra should be told.  At first I had been thinking why upset
her if she didn't even know anything happened?  She is a little kid and she
has a long time to learn people aren't always so nice.  Then I thought about
first graders.  They are terrible at keeping secrets.  If I were in your
shoes, I'd rather she heard it from me than on the playground.

I'd want the message to the offenders to be "It's wrong to steal food from
other people"  rather than "It's wrong to steal food from the poor blind
girl"  Believe me, I understand the poppa & momma bear feelings welling up
right now but that's not what she needs.  She needs her community to
understand wrong is wrong no matter who it happens to.  Depending on the
rapport you have with the teacher, see if you can get a feel for what kind
of kids these are.  Maybe the little snots *are* stealing from all the kids,
not just Kendra.  If that's the case, in a bizarre 1st grade way it could
actually be a sign of acceptance.  As if the other kids don't see her as
needing special exemption from their rottenness, she's just one of the gang.


It's late so I don't guarantee I'm making much sense right now LOL!
Holly
aka Hank's mom

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Richard Holloway <rholloway at gopbc.org>wrote:

>
>
> When it comes down to it, I guess the actual incident is not that big of a
> deal-- that one child took part of another's lunch. And if you were one
> typical kid grabbing another sighted kid's food, you would no doubt want to
> do that when that kid wasn't looking as well, so I cannot really put my
> finger on just how or why this seems so terrible, yet it still does... I
> mean on the one hand, we want to say everyone is the same and equal, but on
> the other, there is a weakness here (for lack of a better term) and somehow,
> right or wrong, it does seem to be a good deal more inappropriate (at least
> to me) to grab a blind kid's food than it does to sneak it from a sighted
> kid when he or she is not looking.
>
> Richard
>
>