[blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
melissa R green
graduate56 at juno.com
Tue Jan 14 18:43:48 UTC 2014
I have people tell my guide dog that she is doing a good job of taking care
of her mom meaning me.
I just usually shake my head because trying to change their thought process
has not worked.
My nephew had a good come back when he was 2 and someone said that it was so
good of him to take care of his aunt.
He said "I not take care her, she take care me and help me. wy you say
that?"
It took all I could not to laugh.
The person who said it was stunned because she couldn't answer his question.
Lol!
Blessings and best wishes,
Melissa R. Green and Pj
"We love because he first loved us."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
To: "Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 8:33 AM
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Gabe,
I have never seen a case where a child was complimented for taking care of
their sighted parents, nor have I ever
seen a case where sighted parents were told how lucky they were to have kids
to take care of them, unless we're
talking about parents who live with their adult kids. As a blind parent, I
have had to deal with both sentiments,
and it was an issue when adopting, were we just looking for built-in
readers, etc. The idea that kids can and
should take care of their blind parents is unfortunately not that uncommon.
We have to be careful not to fall
into the trap of thinking "if it doesn't happen to me then it doesn't
happen."
Best regards,
Steve Jacobson
On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 09:53:28 -0700, Gabe Vega - CEO Commtech LLC wrote:
>i've seen this with sided parents as well, so to be honest, I don't know
>what the big deal is and what the
connection to blindness is. Alyssa how they've specifically said the
Woodbine, I don't think there's any room for
concern here. If she did mention blindness, then I agree, it is concerning
very concerning in fact that your
daughter feels she have to's take care of her mother, not because she's
alone at home, but strictly because she's
blind. If you were cited, I don't think your daughter would feel this way
>Gabe Vega - CEO
>Commtech LLC
>The leader of computer support, training and web development services
>Web: http://commtechusa.net
>Twitter: http://twitter.com/commtechllc
>Facebook: http://facebook.com/commtechllc
>Email: info at commtechusa.net
>Phone: (888) 351-5289 Ext. 710
>Fax: (480) 535-7649
>> On Jan 12, 2014, at 9:46 AM, "Michelle Creedy "
>> <michelle.creedy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> People pull this stuff all the time. I went with my sister to pick my
>> ppre-school nephew up from school a few
years ago and the teacher started on the whole "Oh look how nicely you're
taking care of your aunt," thing. He was
holding my hand in order to walk out of the school. Of course, my sister saw
both sides because deep down, it
makes her feel validated that someone is praising her child and showing what
a nice little boy he is. Sadly,
sometimes, I think having children brings out the worst in families and
others.
>>
>> Michelle
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of sheila
>> Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 3:49 PM
>> To: Blind Parents Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
>>
>> hi Mark went through a time in which he felt very responsible for dad and
>> I. It didn't help that he was often
told by others to take care of mom and dad. If mark was out for recess and
saw us leaving the house he would worry
about whether we got home okay. We tried to leave when we knew he was in
class hoping he would settle down. We had
a very suppportive pediatrician so when things came up at school dealing
with mark or our blindness we kept him in
the loop. we had a social worker show up because someone reported among
other things that we weren't sending him
to school and I informed her of the situation and also let her know that we
had reliable witnesses and we never
heard from her again.
>>> On 1/11/2014 2:42 PM, Jo Elizabeth Pinto wrote:
>>> Okay, bear with me, because this does have to do with blind parenting,
>>> and weâ¬"ll come to that, but it doesnâ
¬"t start out that way. Sometimes things get really compicated, and my
questions are one, is there anything Iâ¬"m
missing that I can do to reassure my daughter that I havenâ¬"t thought of?
And two, am I right to keep the school
counselor out of this, or am I paranoid? I admit I am, a little. My
feeling is, once the psychologist gets
involved, an issue is made where there wasnâ¬"t one, and itâ¬"s really hard
to get rid of the professionals once
theyâ¬"re sniffing around. And once someone hints that blindness might be
part of the problem, which I donâ¬"t
think it is at all, then youâ¬"ve got red flags where they donâ¬"t need to
be.
>>>
>>> My daughter was already a bit hesitant about going back to school after
>>> Christmas Break. Vacation was long,
and she was starting in with the â¬SIâ¬"ll miss you too much⬠stuff. I
donâ¬"t know why; she likes school and
has friends, so I figured sheâ¬"d pop back into the routine and do fine. I
let her wear an inexpensive necklace
of mine so sheâ¬"d have a tangible connection to me all day and sent her off
Tuesday morning with lots of hugs.
Well thenâ¬
and I think this was poor timing on the part of the school, but
thatâ¬"s just my opinion, for what itâ
¬"s worthâ¬
the school held a lockdown drill Tuesday morning. I didnâ¬"t
know it at the time. I think parents
should be given a heads-up by automatic phone dialer or e-mail if thereâ¬"s
been a lockdown drill in case their
kids have issues, but whatever. The only thing that happened Tuesday night
was that my daughter mentioned yet
again that she thought she should be home schooled. Sheâ¬"d been seeing
commercials for K-12 Online, a home
school academy you can do on the computer. I dismissed the idea casually,
saying it wouldnâ¬"t be a good fit for
our family and that she needed to learn at school with her friends, and she
went to bed without incident.
>>>
>>> Wednesday morning, out of nowhere, she had the queen mother of all
>>> tantrums, refusing to go to school at all.
Kicking, screaming, ripping her clothes off, insisting she was sick. Her
dad tried holding her down and putting
her shoes on by sheer force. I stopped that because I was afraid either he
would break her ankle or she would
kick him in the face and smash his glasses. So I made him leave her in her
room and shut the door till she calmed
down. I told her if she was too sick to go to school, she could go back to
bed. That was what sick people did,
sleep. No friends, no toys, no TV, no electronics, nothing. She didnâ¬"t
like that idea, so she got dressed and
went to school. We took TV away that night because of the tantrum and
because she was late for school that day.
I felt bad later because I didnâ¬"t know the motives behind any of it, but
she hadnâ¬"t opened up to me.
>>>
>>> Well, about eleven oâ¬"clock, her teacher called me, not very happy.
>>> She told me my daughter had been to the
health aideâ¬
there are no RNâ¬"s in schools now, theyâ¬"re health
aidesâ¬
three times with a headache and a
tummyache. No temperature. Neither the teacher nor the health aide
believed my daughter was sick. The teacher
said she was over it; she had 25 other kids to deal with, it was my turn.
So I got my daughter on the phone and
said she could either listen to her teacher and do her schoolwork or come
home and go to bed. I wouldnâ¬"t get
into the â¬SIâ¬"m really sick, Mom⬠discussion with her. I told her no
more trips to the health aide. Either
stay at school and do her work or Dad would bring her home and she could go
to bed.
>>>
>>> Thursday, two more trips to the health aide. That night, my daughter
>>> and I started talking about what was going on. And she told me the
>>> school had done a lockdown drill on Tuesday. In her words, the office
>>> lady had come on the loudspeaker and said they were going to pretend a
>>> man with a gun had run out of the bank and was coming toward the
>>> school. So everybody was going to crawl under desks and tables till
>>> the teachers said it was okay to come out. (I found out later that
>>> nobody came on the intercom and said anything about a gun. That was
>>> either filled in by my daughterâ¬"s imagination or by what the other
>>> kids were saying. Kids arenâ¬"t stupid. The office person said it was
>>> a lockdown drill, the teacher said a drill might happen if there were
>>> trouble at the bank or in the neighborhood, kids arenâ¬"t stupid. They
>>> know what that means. Nobody crawled under desks, which arenâ¬"t
>>> bulletproof; they stood along a cinderblock wall lined with cupboards
>>> with no windows, which might be somewhat better I guess.)
>>>
>>> Anyway, my daughterâ¬
bless her heartâ¬
wasnâ¬"t freaked out for
>>> herself. She thinks sheâ¬"s one of the Power
Puff Girls or Raven from Teen Titans, so she figures sheâ¬"ll kick butt and
take names wherever she is. She
started thinking about me, here alone. She started worrying about how old
and feeble my guide dog Ballad is
getting and what I would do if the man with the gun ran to the house. So by
Tuesday night after the lockdown
drill, she didnâ¬"t tell me why, but she thought she should be home schooled
so she could stay with me and be her
superhero self. And by Wednesday morning, she decided she wasnâ¬"t going to
school. When we made her go, she
tried to get herself sent home sick.
>>>
>>> So I reassured her as best I could. I showed her how the dead bolt
>>> worked and how far it went into the wall,
how the door wonâ¬"t budge an inch when itâ¬"s locked. I made her a pinky
promise deal that Iâ¬"ll lock the door
every day, and that when she leaves with her dad in the morning, she can
check it herself. I sent her outside to
ring the doorbell so she can hear how loud the dogâ¬"s bark is from out
there. I reminded her how fast the
firemen got here once when we had to call 911 because the neighborâ¬"s smoke
alarm was going off and he wasnâ¬"t
home. I said if a man with a gun was running around and I called 911 and
told the police, theyâ¬"d be here that
fast. Is there anything Iâ¬"m missing as far as reassurances go?
>>>
>>> So anyway, hereâ¬"s where the blind parenting part comes in, if youâ¬"ve
>>> stuck with me this long, and thanks
for still reading. I called my daughterâ¬"s teacher to explain all of this
because I wanted to let her know what
effects the lockdown drill hadâ¬
and to find out exactly how it had happened
because I didnâ¬"t quite believe the
kid version of the story. I also wanted to explain why my daughter had been
pretending to be sick so much. The
teacher is great. She understood. But the health aide suggested maybe I
should have my daughter talk to the
school counselor because she said she thought my daughter felt overly
responsible for me, and thatâ¬"s not
healthy. She said a daughter shouldnâ¬"t feel she has to take care of her
mother; a mother should be taking care
of her child. I told her I do take care of my child. I said I donâ¬"t
think weâ¬"re talking about an unhealthy
relationship here. Weâ¬"re talking about a little superhero who thinks
sheâ¬"s going to save the day. Thereâ¬"s
a big difference. I donâ¬"t believe the health aide would have come to the
same conclusion if Iâ¬"d been a sighted
mom. So far I believe Iâ¬"ve held her off, and Iâ¬"m hoping the problem
resolves itself before her worries go any
further. If my daughter gets sent there with false symptoms again, I asked
the health aide to reassure her that
Iâ¬"m safe and that she checked the lock with her dad in the morning,
instead of focusing on the fact that she
isnâ¬"t sick, which isnâ¬"t the real issue.
>>>
>>> I hate these lockdown drills. I suppose weâ¬"re stuck with them in the
>>> world we live in, and hopefully most
kids arenâ¬"t having the reaction my daughter is. But weâ¬"re stealing the
innocence from a whole generation of
kids, and truthfully, Iâ¬"m not sure the drills would have prevented any of
the tragedies at Columbine. I donâ¬"t
know, itâ¬"s said they did help at New Town, where kids knew what to do and
moved quickly into position; I just
hate that kids have to be burdened with this crap!
>>>
>>> Thanks for sticking with me; itâ¬"s been a hell of a week!
>>> 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.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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/sleigland%40bres
>>> nan.net
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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/michelle.creedy%40gmail.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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/theblindtech%40gmail.com
>_______________________________________________
>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/steve.jacobson%40visi.com
_______________________________________________
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/graduate56%40juno.com
More information about the BlParent
mailing list