[blparent] Ryan Knighton's Book

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Steve, I simply copied the reviews from the book cover at Amazon.com.  I 
wouldn't call ineptitude heartwarming, although it is still sadly quite 
popular in the media to make all fathers out to be hopeless when it comes to 
caring for babies and children, even if they aren't blind.  A good example 
is a plot I saw on Olivia the other day in which the father left one of his 
three children at the grocery store by mistake, and requested that next 
time, his wife put the children on the list of things he should bring home 
from the supermarket.

In answer to your question, I really don't have positive or negative 
feelings about Ryan Nighton's work in general because this is the first I've 
ever heard of him.  My concern is that making himself out to be incompetent, 
whether for the sake of humor or realism, will put a seed in the minds of 
his readers about the so-called dangers that all blind parents face.

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: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2012 8:25 PM
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blparent] Ryan Knighton's Book

> Jo Elizabeth,
>
> I'm not certain how you feel about all this from your note, but one thing 
> I'd like to be clear about is that I do not know
> the whole of his work to know how representative what I heard was of his 
> work in general.  Some of the descriptions I
> read make me think that some of his characteristics are characteristics I 
> would like.  However, I must say that I am
> skeptical of the reviews in your note because it has been my experience 
> that the public tends to feel that sharing our
> exaggerated failings is heart-warming and represents honesty.  Those of us 
> who try to represent what we do has being
> everyday life are often seen as thinking that we have to be supermen or 
> something.  One of the paragraphs you
> included reads as follows:  "Knighton writes of his failures at 
> diaper-changing and baby-minding. After a heavy
> snowfall, Knighton loses his daughter while they are playing outside and 
> there is a sense of panic that infects the
> reader until they are reunited. More tales of near-disaster, or even 
> near-death, are included. The toughest time for
> Knighton is trying to care for Tess while she is a baby. It gets easier 
> for him when she is a toddler since she, even at
> the age of two, can walk and see and lead her father around."  This 
> paragraph gets at what came across to me in the
> interview, and I find it depressing and very sad.  There are those who 
> believe we want kids to have little ones to lead
> us about and to read for us free of charge when they get older.  We had to 
> overcome thinking like this with our
> adoption agency, and I just don't see some of his contributions as helpful 
> at all but rather as making money at our
> expense.  We all have had funny experiences and accidents that we would 
> probably rather not share with others, but
> his portrayals, as Angie said, make one feel he is lucky to survive.  This 
> just blew me away yesterday.
>
> By the way, it turned out that the segment that I heard came from a CBC 
> program originally, so it must have had some
> air time in Canada as well.  Suggesting that another segment be run on 
> blind parenting is a good idea.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Jacobson
>
> On Sun, 1 Jan 2012 18:19:00 -0700, Jo Elizabeth Pinto wrote:
>
>>Knighton writes of his failures at diaper-changing and baby-minding. After 
>>a heavy snowfall, Knighton loses his
> daughter while they are playing outside and there is a sense of panic that 
> infects the reader until they are reunited.
> More tales of near-disaster, or even near-death, are included. The 
> toughest time for Knighton is trying to care for Tess
> while she is a baby. It gets easier for him when she is a toddler since 
> she, even at the age of two, can walk and see
> and lead her father around.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> blparent mailing list
> blparent at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> blparent:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/jopinto%40msn.com
>