[blindkid] Those Amazing Inspiring Blind People

Wed May 29 05:10:41 UTC 2013

Arielle

This is a issue many of us parents deal with all the time.  It can be an
issue and its one that it important not forget about.

I give both my children heaps of praise but thats my job. I cringe when my
daughter gets the "She is amazing" comments when its dealing with things
that are quite ordinarily. I cringe almost equally when I get the "your an
amazing mom" comments. I am not an amazing mom.  I am what all half decent
moms do. I fight for both my kids.

I am so over using the word amazing here.

Its simply not amazing that my daughter is in sports, that she is in a
dance crew, that she walks home from school, that she has friends, that she
can read with her fingers.  Its not and yes she gets a lot of attention for
some of those things.

My daughter is  great kid and I am pretty proud of her.  She amazes me all
the time because I simply can't believe  child with such spunk came from
me. Its remarkable that she is so much smarter than and thankfully she
hasn't realized it yet.   She can also be a brat sometimes to.

I get disgusted when she gets extra attention for doing such simply things
as walking down the hallways, playing, eating, cooking and other simple
mundane tasks.

A few years ago something quite horrible happened. It still makes me ill
when I think about it. Abby was a member of service group that was helping
out at a ceremony that was honor veterans. Some living and some who had
passed. The ceremony was at a veterans ceremony.   There was an
announcement when they thanked the girls that Abby was blind.  She got
attention for a blindness in a realm that was completely inappropriate.
 This was about veterans and their sacrifice and my daughter didn't need
anymore attention than the other girls who were doing the same task. It was
even in a veterans ceremony.

Some days she deserves extra praise just like every child does.  As an
example my son (who is sighted) has had life long speech issues.  This year
he practiced and practiced a little speech for a presentation he was doing
for 5th grade.  He did an amazing job and I had tears down my face because
while what he did was quite ordinary it was extraordinary for him. Hard
work should always be praised.

Its a complex issue.

Its not amazing my daughter can dress her self just as its not sad she is
blind.

I will say some of the coolest people i know also happen to be blind simply
because the blindness community is so small.

-Penny

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
> On the NFB student list we have gotten into a discussion about how to
> handle comments from the public about how amazing, inspiring, and
> courageous we are for doing ordinary things. I shared some of my
> experiences with this growing up and how it made me feel  about myself
> and my abilities, and wanted to repost my remarks to this list as
> well, since it might be informative for parents. I don't think my
> parents realized how these kinds of well-intentioned comments affected
> me.
>
> Hi all,
> I think some great points have been made here. When someone tells me I
> am amazing or inspiring or courageous or whatever, I don't like it
> because it implies a lower standard. There's always part of that
> compliment that goes unstated: "You're amazing......For a blind
> person". It's really a backhanded insult to other blind people, even
> though it may not be intended that way. Also, I don't like being told
> that I must have overcome great obstacles or that I must have great
> perseverance and passion to get to where I am today, because I don't
> think that's true. My blindness hasn't interfered much with my
> educational achievements and compared with many others my life has
> been over-privileged. When people make these assumptions I feel they
> are judging me based on blindness without knowing much else about me,
> my upbringing or anything I've done.
> I also think that the "amazing" comments are particularly tough on
> blind youth who also happen to be high achievers. It's hard to know
> how to interpret these comments and when we are truly amazing vs. just
> exceeding people's low standards. And sometimes, being an inspiration
> is just too much extra pressure when our lives are already filled with
> a lot of internal and external demands.
> When I was growing up, I got used to these accolades because my
> parents had many friends who would marvel at my accomplishments. When
> I was young I was often asked to show off my Braille reading for
> company and this just completely blew people away. Then as I grew I
> was a high achiever in school and won some awards for spelling bees
> and things like that. They deserved recognition, but probably not to
> the level that I got. One night when I was ten, I wrote down some
> musings about how I felt about blindness and dealing with sighted
> kids. My mother ran across my writing on the family computer and
> through a random string of events, what I wrote got published in our
> local paper. Then when I was eleven, a magazine editor read the
> newspaper article and was so amazed and inspired that she asked me to
> write a column for her magazine. This of course only compounded
> people's awe and amazement in what I could do, since not only was I
> blind but I was also famous. It took several years, but I eventually
> realized that I wasn't an amazing writer. I was a decent writer, but
> not particularly outstanding at it, and not good at fiction or poetry
> at all. The only reason people were so impressed with my writing was
> because I wrote about blindness and that was a topic that intrigued
> people. I had to get a lot of painful criticism on my writing before I
> eventually realized I wasn't as outstanding as those folks made me out
> to be. Around the time I came to that epiphany, I also began to resent
> all the accolades. I remember thinking, at the age of fifteen, that
> "adults always treat me like I'm five and fifty at the same time. But
> I just want to be a normal 15-year-old girl!" I felt like on one hand,
> I was being held to an impossibly high standard--expected to be an
> amazing writer, an inspiration to all--and on the other hand, held to
> an extremely low standard--expected not to be capable of basic
> independence. People would praise my writing but then worry about my
> ability to walk across a room. I just wanted to blend into the crowd
> of teenagers and gossip about boys and clothes (well, mostly just
> boys) instead.
> Then, at the end of ninth grade, I "accidentally on purpose" failed my
> algebra final and earned my first B on my report card. There were some
> problems on the final that were hard and I didn't feel like answering
> on the last day of school, so I skipped them. I didn't intend to
> fail--I think I just got a little overconfident about my ability to
> earn straight A's. But I also wonder if on a less conscious level, I
> bombed the test so I could prove to myself and others that I was a
> human being and I was capable of screwing up--and not always an
> inspiration. Just a week before that final exam, I remember my algebra
> teacher admitting that he had doubted my ability to pass his class at
> the beginning of the year, but that he was totally impressed with my
> performance. I remember being angry at him for assuming I wouldn't
> succeed in his class just because I was blind. And so perhaps,
> ironically, I failed his test to try to show him I wasn't amazing, I
> wasn't a superhero, I was just a normal teenager doing the best I
> could to succeed in school.
> OK, enough rambling about my childhood, but I do think that the
> unnecessary recognition we get from the public can be just as damaging
> as true discrimination, especially when we are young and trying to
> figure out where our true talents are. None of us should be forced
> into the position of inspiring others. As first-class citizens, we
> have the right to achieve at the level we wish to achieve at, and we
> have a right to accurate feedback about how well we're doing at
> something. Fortunately, as others have stated, there are sighted folks
> with high expectations who are willing to hold us up to rigorous
> standards and to give us a true picture of our strengths and
> weaknesses.
> Best,
> Arielle
>
> _______________________________________________
> blindkid mailing list
> blindkid at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> blindkid:
>
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/pennyduffy%40gmail.com
>

-- 
-- 
--Penny
----------
My Blog - visionfora.blogspot.com

NH Parents of Blind Children http://www.nhpobc.org/
NHPOBC on facebook   https://www.facebook.com/nhpobc