[blparent] blindparent RE3 kids being SNEAKY

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Generally if it is someone in the public that I'm never going to see again, 
unless I'm feeling particularly feisty that day, I just shake my head and 
move on.  I'm getting too old to take on every battle in the world, and 
sometimes it's hard to tell when somebody's talking down to me because of 
blindness or doing the baby talk thing to my child--and who knows which is 
worse!  *Smile.*  Although my little girl tends to say what's on her mind, 
and at almost six, she's getting to the age where if it's particularly 
obvious, she's beginning to notice social stupidity at its worst.  I had an 
appointment with my rheumatologist not long ago, and she had to tag along. 
The nurse was particularly in need of some sensitivity training when it came 
to dealing with the blind, I guess, because instead of addressing me, she 
spoke to my daughter in a candy sweet voice, saying, "Oh honey, isn't it 
great that your mommy brought you along to help?  I need you to walk her 
over here to the scale and help her step up on it so I can see how much she 
weighs, hmmm?"

I was about to say something, probably something snarky, but my daughter 
glanced up from her Strawberry Shortcake coloring book and told the nurse, 
"She can walk over there and step up all by herself.  I'm kind of busy right 
now."

Last spring, a new nurse came in and gave my daughter her booster 
vaccinations so she could start school.  I was supposed to hold my 
daughter's hands out of the way, but the nurse didn't tell me when she was 
going to deliver the shots.  So I wasn't holding on tight, and my daughter 
reached out and grabbed the needles.  I snatched her hands back right away 
as soon as I figured out what was going on, but the nurse started screaming 
in my face, "I told you to hold her hands!  She could have ripped herself 
open with those needles!  What's your problem anyway?"

I don't do well with someone yelling in my face because of childhood abuse 
issues, so I started flashing back, shaking really bad.  The next thing I 
knew, my barely five-year-old was screaming right back at this nurse, "She's 
blind!  You're supposed to tell her when you do the shots!  What are you, 
stupid?"

She and I had a little chat about how we don't scream at grown-ups or call 
them stupid, or really anybody else, for that matter.  But I told her I was 
proud of her for sticking up for me and that she was right, the nurse should 
have given me a heads-up when she was going to put the needles in, and the 
whole problem would have been avoided.  She's a smart kid.  That time I did 
file a complaint with the clinic.  Apparently the nurse in question didn't 
usually work with kids; she was one who floated in from another department. 
I said she needed to work on her people skills in general.

Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may 
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at 
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message----- 
From: Jennifer Stewart Jackson
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 10:19 AM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] blindparent RE3 kids being SNEAKY

This really can be so murky and even more so when we are trying to figure
out the motivations of others. I am sure I have mentioned here that
culturally in Oklahoma,  we refer to children as being little helpers. This
makes it even harder to address those people who intend such a comment as
one about my blindness and my needing a child to help me. The up side is it
does make it easier to ignore when I am not willing to take on the challenge
of educating  the public because my own small children are generally unaware
of the differences in context and tone.

I struggled, mostly internally, with my mother's intentions and motivations
on the subject of my blindness and related independence for years. She
always said the right things about my being independent and how proud she
was, but her actions did not always follow suit. Then about 12 years ago she
hired someone to work for the juvenile justice related program she was a
manager for and in listening to her talk about this woman a lot of things
were clarified for me. My mother spoke about this woman almost as if she
were up for sainthood because she was the daughter of two blind parents.
Yes, this almost saint did so much to help her totally blind father and was
such a caring and committed child. Now when I learned more, I learned that
Dad and Mom had both been visually impaired her whole life, but that mom had
been a high partial and had taken care of all the paperwork. The dad's need
for help seemed to have more to do with the fact that he was in his
seventies and that his wife was deceased. I learned a lot about my mother
then, but also about why finding employment is so hard for us as blind
persons. My mother is completely unaware of this conflict in her belief
system as far as I can tell, yet will someone with this kind of prejudice
ever actually hire a blind job candidate?

Now please no my mother is supportive in many ways. For example this last
Easter my grandmother's husband said something inappropriate to one of my
kids just as lunch was about to be served. I tried to direct the
conversation another way out of respect for my grandmother. Her husband is a
wretched man whose own family does not like him and he has only gotten worse
in old age, so please do not think I was being oversensitive or not
understanding him. I mean, they keep a chair at dialysis on the far side of
the room from the other patients and a curtain up to try to protect the
other patients from this man. Anyway, back to my mother, I put my napkin on
the table and said "Jackson's go to the car." Without any noticeable
hesitation my mother stood up in support and left with us. I know this is
rambling off topic, but I did not want my mother to seem like she is
unsuportive or a bad mom.


Jennifer
-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo
Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 10:45 AM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] blindparent RE3 kids being SNEAKY

My boyfriend and I got into a discussion that bordered on an argument
recently about the overprotection because of blindness versus family respect
thing.  At the time I thought it was important, but looking back now, it
seems kind of pointless.  It had to do with toys strewn all over the floor.
I slipped and fell on a plastic tote lid and twisted my knee, and my
boyfriend got all over the kids to pick up the toys.  His fallback slogan
was, "When Mom gets hurt, I get mad!"  That annoyed the hell out of me.  He
was in my corner, and I guess that should have made me feel supported, which
was his intent.  It bugged him that I didn't take it that way.  But my
feeling was that we pick up toys because we respect the family space, not
because poor blind Mom could fall and get hurt.  Anybody could fall and get
hurt.  I pointed out that my boyfriend has a torn ACL in his knee; one wrong
step and he could be in surgery.  I also pointed out that I wasn't the one
who took a misstep off a curb last spring and pulled a hamstring, then spent
the next six or eight weeks in not-so-silent suffering.  He didn't like
that, but he couldn't deny it.  He countered with the fact that I twisted my
knee on a toy, which I had injured the first time also falling on a toy.
True, but I had also re-injured it in between those times playing with the
dog in the snow.  Irrelevant, he said.  Maybe, but my point was that I could
hurt my nee doing other things.  Anyway, all this was to say that anyone
could get hurt if the floor was left a mess, not just Mom, so the toys
needed to be picked up.  I brought it up to illustrate the fact that the
lines between saying something should be done because Mom or Dad is blind,
or saying they should be done for other reasons, can get kind of blurry.
Sometimes the one who is doing the talking might not even be clear on his or
her motives.  Sometimes the motives are perfectly clear, like they were with
my boyfriend, but sometimes they're murky, like in the movie Rebecca
mentioned.  So much of what we do and think is so automatic.

Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message-----
From: Star Gazer
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 7:59 AM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] blindparent RE3 kids being SNEAKY

Dawn, your dad sounds very old school. He's probably got things sorted in
his head as "boy jobs" and "girl jobs" and since you're a woman, you can't
teach the "boy jobs" as well as a man could.
You'll see a lot of this if you watch tv shows from the 1950's, and it comes
across in some literature too. I'm thinking specifically of Beverly Cleary's
books that were written in the 1950's.
What your dad may be trying to impart to your boys are skills that they will
need to maintain a family as men. These skills are in some ways very
different from your role as a woman. He may not even realize this is what
he's doing, it's so hard wired.
What I'm getting at is that he isn't really teaching about dishes and
shoveling.
He's mentioning your blindness because it's easy for him to do that.
Your brother has daughters, and he has what we call an "intact" family, so
your dad will relate differently.
Your dad isn't your boys' parent, but men and women do relate to children
differently. I'm trying to think of the movie that conveys this real well.
There's a 1960's version and a current one, the 1960's version is better.

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of dawn
stumpner
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2014 5:37 PM
To: blparent at nfbnet.org
Subject: [blparent] blindparent RE3 kids being SNEAKY

Hi, Jo Elizabeth and Everyone,

     Yes, there have been a few times that my sons throughout the years have
used the fact that I couldn't see to try to get away with small things, for
example, trying to leave the house with their hair a mess or high water
pants on their way to school or pushing a bunch of stuff under the bed when
cleaning their rooms thinking that I wouldn't check.  Most of the time, I
figure out what they are doing, and we've talked about how sneaking, whether
it be getting around my lack of vision or sneaking in any other way, is a
form of dishonesty, is hurtful, and lessens trust.  I think this message has
gotten through, and the kids don't do any more sneaking than I've heard of
my sighted peers talking about their kids doing or remember my brother, my
cousins, and me doing with our parents.  I feel I've done a good job over
all in imparting the lessons I would like my kids to carry through life with
them.  They are loving, curious about the world around them, generous, and
for the most part cooperative and able to put themselves in other people's
shoes.
    What bothers me sometimes is my dad's reaction to my lack of sight.  On
the one hand, he was very supportive of me as I grew up, including letting
me do things like travel overseas that he wasn't always comfortable with.
On the other hand, perhaps because he is of an older generation, I'm a
woman, I'm divorced, and I'm blind, he sometimes acts more like the primary
parent when he visits than just a grandpa.  I have mentioned to him that he
yells at my kids for things that he doesn't yell at my brother's daughters
for, and he responds  that my nieces have two sighted parents, and that he
feels like he has to correct my boys because I can't always see what they do
and my husband isn't there now and wasn't on top of things before the
divorce.  Each thing that the boys don't do thoroughly, such as leaving
their dishes on the table, needing to be told to clean their rooms again and
again, or having to be told to shovel the driveway more thoroughly seems to
him to be because I can't see what kind of a job they have done.  My sighted
friends deal with the same issues as me needing to tell their kids to do a
job twice because it wasn't done well the first time, etc., but although he
says that I do a good job and can do things as well as other people, other
things he says make me feel like what I'm doing isn't enough and is somehow
inferior to what I would be able to do if I could see and that the kids
would not try to get away with anything if I could see.
     Sorry for the long message.  Your email just made me think of some of
these related issues for me, and it's hard for me to be concise about them.
Have any of you ever had difficulty with family members or friends thinking
that what you do is either amazing when it's just ordinary or that any
difficulties you have are because of lack of sight and that they need to be
there to make sure everything turns out okay?

Dawn

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