[blparent] Keeping young children safe as parentswith a visual impairment

[Deborah Kent Stein]

Dear Steve,

Yes, I heard Ryan Knighton's piece on This American Life, and like you, I 
was appalled.  He makes statements such as (I paraphrase here), "My wife 
hadn't had a moment to herself in four months, ever since our daughter was 
born, except to go to the bathroom.  It was inevitable, since I am blind." 
He also quips about "trying to change a nappy in the dark" and notes several 
times that he kept putting the baby carrier on upside down.  He has been 
blind for eight or ten years at the time of this writing.  Ira Glass's 
comments leading into this piece are equally dismaying, about "What happens 
when you are the problem in your neighborhood?"  The only hint that there 
might be an alternative to all this ineptitude is when Knighton comments 
that he's been blind for X number of years but still isn't very good at it. 
I hope he can get some good training, and I wish he'd stop telling the world 
in his sparkling prose (really, he writes beautifully!) that a blind person 
is an accident waiting to happen.  And I fervently hope Miranda's caseworker 
doesn't listen to NPR!

Knighton's book, C'Mon Dad: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark, is available 
on Bookshare.

Debbie

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: [blparent] Keeping young children safe as parentswith a visual 
impairment


> 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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