[blparent] sighted children at convention?

[cheryl echevarria]

Well I tell them and sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is not I had the 
same issue when I went to visit my sister in DE. I am the only blind member 
in my household and still getting comments.

But I was with my nice and she was helping me with something.  My niece is 
9, sharp tongue since she was born in NY but has the tongue of a New Yorker. 
And before I finish.  At one of our state conventions here in NY. Anil Lewis 
President of GA, was our national rep, and his statement when he left was 
that New Yorkers are not rude, we honest and to the point.

So one with my story my niece was helping find something and a girl said 
rudely oh that lady is blind and that girl is helping poor lady.

Well my niece said to the little girl, well that is my Aunt Cheryl, she is 
not poor, she cannot see and she came to DE to see me for my birthday, and 
she is a travel agent.  Her mom said that blind people aren't travel agents 
they cannot see at that point. I said and gave her my business card and said 
yes I am a very good one.  She started to get rude and nasty.  So as we 
started walking away, I said loud enough that the lady could hear me, that 
is a person who is uneducated and only sees things to the end of her nose 
and no more.  That is a statement that your great grand mother told me when 
kids used to pick on me because I am jewish.

Kids get it from there parents they are not born that way Julie, as we all 
know, blind or sighted, jewish or fat or to skinny, someone is going to say 
something unkind, and you can either educate or ignore them, I like to 
educate at first and then just ignore them and tell Sydney he is a good boy 
and there are always going to be people like that.

Cheryl Echevarria
Independent Travel Consultant
http://Echevarriatravel.com
1-866-580-5574

http://blog.echevarriatravel.com
Reservations at echevarriatravel.com
Affiliated as an Independent Contractor with Montrose Travel CST-1018299-10


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Julie J" <julielj at windstream.net>
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 9:13 AM
Subject: [blparent] sighted children at convention?


> Hello all!
>
> It's been a while since I've been on this list. It's good to be back.
>
> My Kiddo is 13 now.  Time flies when you're having fun...or something like 
> that.  *smile*  I know a lot of you have younger children, but I'm hoping 
> there will be someone with some ideas for me.
>
> We had an incident in a store yesterday which really bothered my son. 
> There were some children in line behind us who were rude on a variety of 
> counts.  The rudeness that really bothered my son was when the kids 
> decided that me being blind was funny and worthy of making fun of me for 
> it.   I ignored them for a couple of reasons.  I really had no clue what 
> to say.  but the mother was standing right there and I have difficulty 
> parenting other people's kids in front of their parents.
>
> I know I probably should have said something, but it is too late for this 
> episode.  I'll come up with something for next time.  What I'm most 
> concerned with is my son.   He was really upset about these kids.
>
> My son is sighted.  He has been around blind people all of his life and 
> sees it as normal.  I am the only blind person in my town or at least the 
> only blind person out and about anyway.    He will be coming with me to 
> the NFB national convention again this summer.  I think it's important for 
> him as much as it is for me, especially now that we aren't around many 
> blind people on a regular basis.
>
> I know he gets lots of questions about what it is like to have a blind 
> mom.  I talk to him about it and try to help the best that I can.  but 
> what I really think he needs is to talk to other sighted children with 
> blind parents who have struggled with similar issues.
>
> Is there any sort of opportunity like this at convention?  If not, are 
> there parents here that would be interested in getting a group together?
>
> thanks!
> Julie
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