[blparent] Keeping young children safe asparentswith a visual impairment

Sun Jan 1 00:25:27 UTC 2012

Sounds like it can stay on Bookshare! :)
Sharon
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Deborah Kent Stein" <dkent5817 at att.net>
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2011 4:21 PM
Subject: Re: [blparent] Keeping young children safe asparentswith a visual 
impairment


>
>
> 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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>>
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