[blindkid] learning braille & print?

[Kim Cunningham]

Bernie,
Thank you for saying what we also have learned. My daughter was also deemed a "visual learner" and suffered the consequences. We were told by a doctor when my daughter was very young, that we needed to input as much "vision" into the brain while we can (as if vision made you a smarter or better person - ugh!). He said she could always learn braille, but could NEVER learn vision. I put my belief in that theory until the need for reading (5th to 6th grade) increased and the fatigue took over. If I only knew then what I know now, we would have started with braille straight out of the womb! Parents, please listen to Bernie and understand she knows the reality of things.
Kim Cunnnigham


________________________________
From: Bernadette Jacobs <bernienfb75 at gmail.com>
To: "Blind Kid Mailing List, (for parents of blind children)" <blindkid at nfbnet.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2012 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] learning braille & print?

Sweetie:

Take this from someone who's been there, done that!!  I speak from
firsthand experience.  This duo-learning thing was only tried for a
while till my mom put her foot down and said "She's learning Braille
and I simply W O N ' T have it any other way!!!  I want her to have
one very good skill that she'll be able to handle efficiently and
profficiently for the rest of her life without any interuptions.  If
she learns print and loses her sight, then what?  She simply becomes
illiterate???  I won't have it!!!"  Since then gang, I've had both
eyes removed and now have prosthetic eyes.  My mother will have been
dead and gone now for 40 years in October.  and, guess what folks?
I'm still reading Braille and loving it!!!  Braille lives on!!!

Furthermore, I was a student at a school for the blind in Wisconsin
from K-12.  I've seen way, too many students which were taken that
route and later in life, they were profficient at neither reading
medium!!!  I also have a very close friend in Madison, WI whose
favorite passtime was, in fact, reading.  She used to present anywhere
from 53-60 book reports a year in English Class.  One morning about
fifteen years ago she woke up only to discover that she had lost her
remaining vision.  Worst of all, to her absolute horror and
devistation she suddenly became ILLITERATE???  Because she was never
taught Braille???  What a horrible, cruel, rude awakening!!!  She then
disappeared into the woodwork and very few of us ever hear from her
anymore!!!  All in the name of teaching her N O T to be bline, after
all, isn't it much better to allow her to use her remaining vision
with all the headaches and eye strain to go along with it rather than
teaching her an alternative technique that would stick with her for
life???  After all, she was a very bright woman with loads and loads
of potential!!!  God Bless her!  Wwe were best friends through high
school and I guess that's why I feel her pain so terribly!  Oh Honey:
I can think of story after story; name after name; and they all speak
the same language!  Please don't do that to your baby!!!

Bernie

On 6/29/12, Nicole Cannon <nicole at cannonig.com> wrote:
> My son is almost 5 with visual acuity about 20/200.  He can see large
> print, but I've noticed he seems to be a tactile learner.  I've been
> reading about learning to be a dual reader to give him the most tools,
> but I'm somewhat concerned about overloading him with too many things to
> learn at once.  Does anyone have any input on the best way to go about
> teaching him Braille and print?  I'm going to talk to his IU teacher
> also, but so far, the IU has been focusing on using the vision he has.
>
> Thanks,
> Nicole
>
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