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

Sat Dec 31 20:38:42 UTC 2011

Did anyone here the writing of a blind father featured on the program "This American Life" today?  Apparently, the 
writer, Ryan Knighton has written a book that one web site says "Ryan Knighton is most recently the author of
Cmon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark. When you strap a baby to her blind father and send them strolling 
into traffic, the only good to come of it is a funny and moving book about family, fatherhood and
survival."  When I read about him, he sounds like an interesting person, but the piece I heard today which outlines his 
walk with his four month old baby makes it sound as though it is just luck that he and his baby survived.  Some of this 
is probably his writing style, and it is captivating, but it just hit me very wrong when I heard it today.  I do not believe 
that we need to never show potential weaknesses as parents, but I have less sympathy for a blind parent making 
money by discussing the possibility of a pit bull making his four month daughter a "chew toy" and saying that when he 
walks in a crowd on a nearby commercial street that he has been knocked over on multiple occasions.  When I heard 
his writing today, my reaction was "What are you doing walking with your baby with your apparent lack of skills?"  
Keep in mind he has been losing his vision for fifteen years.  This is ironic in that this is precisely what most sighted 
people think about most of us.  Did anyone else hear this?  I gather he might be a writer who strives not to take 
society too seriously, and some of his observations are right on target even in this particular selection.  For example, he 
is almost hit by a van, and the driver tells him to be more careful.  Still, this hit me wrong.likes to 

You can read about him at

http://www.ryanknighton.com/vitals.html

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:31:00 -0700, Veronica Smith wrote:

>Miranda, maybe giving the case worker a copy of our emails would make her or
>them feel better.  Hearing it from many blind mom's and dads, maybe that
>would set her/them at ease.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>Behalf Of Miranda B.
>Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 9:58 PM
>To: 'NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List'
>Subject: Re: [blparent] Keeping young children safe as parents with a visual
>impairment

>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 
>visualimpairment> 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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