[blindkid] Dealing with selfish behavior

[Richard Holloway via blindkid]

Marianne, that’s a perfect example of the missing information that causes so much confusion.

A blind adult friend of mine, now in her 60’s once told me a story about growing up blind. She heard all kinds of talk about visual information and never understood it. All this talk of vision. She was well into elementary school before she learned that she was operating under one basic incorrect premise:

For some reason, this person had been given to assume that many, if not all kids cannot see when we are born, and vision is something we grow into. Nobody told her she was not supposed to just wait patiently until she could see herself— she needed to know that she was operating without sight long-term and she would need to learn to do things without vision, not to wait until she could see.

Missing information is a huge, huge issue for our kids.

On Jun 2, 2014, at 11:15 AM, Marianne Denning via blindkid <blindkid at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Allison, those are great ideas. My cousin told me she had to play with me
> because I was blind.  I was heart broken over that.  My Mom always worked
> hard to make me independent but others, no matter how well meaning, may be
> giving a very different message.  I thought my cousin liked to play with me.
>