[blparent] Keeping young children safe as parents with a visual impairment

[January Lifebook]

This group had an interesting conversation not too long ago about how to
find your toddlers when they start exploring.  One parent suggested putting
bells on her little one so that she could hear him.  I have a friend who
found shoes that squeak for her toddler for when they in public.  Her
daughter LOVES them and my friend feels more confident in public.  I have a
little device that I found on Amazon.  I think it is called "Mommy I'm
Here."  It is a little device that goes on the baby and I have a remote.
If I lose track of him (say in a play area or at the playground), I push my
remote and the device gives off a high pitched beep.  I have not had to use
it yet.  My little guy is pretty good at coming back when called, but it is
nice to have!
Good luck with everything.
January

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Miranda B. <knownoflove at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jo Elizabeth,
> Thank you so much for your email! All you are saying is so true, and we and
> our caseworker agree! :) The one question I asked our caseworker during our
> phone conversation was, "When will enough be enough?" I then said, "You can
> not in your right mind tell me that after a point all of these questions
> from the state won't be crossing that very fine line of discrimination."
> Thanks again, and thanks to everyone who has replied so far for reminding
> us
> that we're not alone and we're not crazy!
>
> In Christ, Miranda
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Jo Elizabeth Pinto
> Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 11:46 PM
> To: NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [blparent] Keeping young children safe as parents with a
> visual
> impairment
>
> Give the state any information you can find, but Sheila is right.  Like I
> told my sister when she worried that my baby would put something in her
> mouth and choke on it, or get knocked over by the dog, or some other
> horrific thing--blind parents don't keep the emergency rooms open by
> themselves.  Accidents happen to everybody, and the best you can possibly
> do
> is take every precaution you can think of, and then maybe try to dream up a
> few more, and then relax, know basic first aid, and hope for the best like
> all other parents do.  I know sighted parents whose children drank cough
> medicine and had to go get charcoal in the emergency room, or swallowed
> coins and had to go to the hospital and get them fished out.  I've got a
> friend who had a neighbor that lost her two-year-old to strangulation
> because of a cord on a window blind.  I've got another friend who knows a
> couple with a ten-year-old daughter who nearly drowned in a swimming pool
> last summer.  None of them were bad parents.  Momentarily inattentive
> maybe,
> but who hasn't been?
>
> I guess that would be my main stress point for the social workers, is that
> you realize as blind parents, you have to be more attentive than your
> sighted peers.  You have to know what possible dangers are in the
> environment, eliminate the ones you can, and take extra care to put what
> shouldn't be reached out of reach.  You have to follow safety rules
> rigidly--hold hands in parking lots, cut grapes and hot dogs in half to
> minimize the choking risk, etc--because you know you can't fall back on
> your
> vision.
>
> Jo Elizabeth
>
> "How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young,
> compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of
> the weak and the strong.  Because someday in life you will have been all of
> these."--George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, American scientist
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Sheila Leigland" <sleigland at bresnan.net>
> Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 8:51 PM
> To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [blparent] Keeping young children safe as parents with a
> visualimpairment> I don't know if we did anything differently than sighted
> parents should have been doing accept understand that vision was not an
> option to be used.
> We had baby gates. We had a baby monitor, when we built a deck it was
> railed
> and had a gate on it. We taught him to come when he was called and that
> lule
> was consedered unbreakable. We had a fenced yard in fact it was six feet
> high and then people complained that it looked like a prison. We had a baby
> gate separating the kitchen and the living room until our son discovered at
> the ripe old age of 2 how to unlock it. Then we were told that he watched
> us
> do it surprise surprise he could see. We tried to keep him from climbing oh
> welll that only lasted so long. We held hands when we crossed the street.
> There is no way to plan for everything and sighted people can't do it
> eiter.
>
> And if they claim that they do they are deceiving themselves as well as
> others.
> >
> > Sheila Leiglan d
> >
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-- 
January Wilson
 Discovery Toys Education Consultant
(520)331-2342
http://www.discoverytoyslink.com/esuite/home/januarywilson