[blparent] To Your Queries About How A Blind Person Performs Diapering and Toyleting
Andy Langbart
langbarta at gmail.com
Sun May 20 19:01:44 UTC 2018
Zap
Sent from my iPhone
> On May 20, 2018, at 1:48 PM, Jo Elizabeth Pinto via BlParent <blparent at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> Touching kind of depends on the setting where you are working. I've worked with older children and adults who weren't toilet trained, and honestly, I never had to touch a diaper to tell if someone needed changing. To be blunt, my nose told the whole story. There's a whole lot more waste to deal with on a larger person than there is when it comes to a baby, and the smell is--well, overwhelming. With babies, you have to poke the diaper a little to check for wetness or sniff for poop. With larger children or grown-ups, you'll know. Very likely everyone in the vicinity will know.
>
>
> Jo Elizabeth Pinto
>
> “The Bright Side of Darkness”
> Is my award-winning novel,
> Available in Kindle, audio, and paperback formats.
> http://www.amazon.com/author/jepinto
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlParent <blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Daniella Roccasalvo via BlParent
> Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2018 11:28 AM
> To: Kane Brolin <kbrolin65 at gmail.com>; Blind Parents Mailing List <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Daniella Roccasalvo <daniellaroccasalvo at hotmail.com>; Danika Brolin <dbrolin29 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [blparent] To Your Queries About How A Blind Person Performs Diapering and Toyleting
>
> Hello all,
> Thank you for your responces. To the Foster parent that emailed me, sorry I didn't catch your name. Thank you for your descriptive email. Would touching the diaper through the pants like you suggested to check if it's full be seen as a bad thing in the work force? I am totally blind and could be working with adults, teens, or older children whom are still in diapers. I would feel that I could get in trouble feeling the diaper to see if it's full. What do you guys think?
> Thank you
> Daniella
>
> On 2018-05-19, 10:19 PM, "Kane Brolin" <kbrolin65 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Daniella Roccasalvo via BlParent <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 19:26:58 +0000
> Subject: [blparent] Diapering and Toyleting
> To: Blind Parents Mailing List <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Daniella Roccasalvo <daniellaroccasalvo at hotmail.com>
>
> Hello All, I am in college studying to be a developmental service
> worker for those who don't know. I was wondering as a parent, how you
> do some things. While I'm not a parent, and have no plans to become
> one in the near future, I will be having to do personal care on the
> people I support. I was wondering how you check a diaper if you can't
> touch it. Remember I have to be careful what I do because the people
> I'm supporting are not my children so I have to keep it professional.
> How do you check if it's dirty or clean, wet or dry. When changing
> them, how do you do it? How do you clean everything up, and make sure
> you get it all? Again, due to te fact that I'm working with people
> that are not my children, I'll be wearing gloves. How do you feel that
> stuff through gloves? When the child gets older and is sitting on the
> toylet, how do you know if the pull-up is wet or dry if they can't
> tell you? If they are non-verbal, how do you know they need to go?
> Again, when their on the toylet and your cleaning them up, is it the
> same way as if they were younger? I may also ask one of my college
> teachers if they have any pointers, but how do you word a question
> like that? Any help would be great and I would be very thankful. Thank
> you Daniella
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Roanna Bacchus via BlParent <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 17:09:44 -0400
> Subject: Re: [blparent] Diapering and Toyleting
> To: Blind Parents Mailing List <blparent at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: rbacchus228 at gmail.com
>
> Smell the diaper and see if it is clean.
> -----------
>
> Daniella, hello.
>
> First of all, I greatly admire what you are striving to do. I take it
> that you are visually impaired or possibly even totally blind. I have
> a deep respect for those who work hands-on with different types of
> patients. I wish you stunning and lasting success as you live the
> life you want.
>
> My first name is Kane. While not a health care professional, I happen
> to be a foster and adoptive parent who is blind. I am carbon copying
> both your personal e-mail address and my wife's address on this reply
> to your question about diapering, toilet training, etc. Her name is
> Danika. She might or might not choose to write you and add her two
> cents' worth about how I care for the hygiene of our children, or what
> it is like to live and partner with a co-parent who lives with
> blindness. Just a fair warning, I'm going to be graphic here. So
> those who don't really care about this topic, or who get squeamish (as
> I nearly always do), no need to read further.
>
> Daniella, you wonder how to know when a diaper needs changing. What
> Roanna said in her own, more cryptic message, I have found to be true
> for me as well: The sense of smell is key, especially in the case of
> faeces. It really doesn't help with the #1 issue, but with poop, I
> know that one of my baby girls'' diapers is full long before I touch
> her. Sometimes I sense this even before I am in the same room with
> her. This is not because I have an inordinately strong sense of smell
> in general. I do not--far weaker than my wife's. But somehow, that
> smell associated with human semi-solid waste is always one that I can
> pick up on--even without consciously having paid attention and watched
> for it.
>
> Even though I cannot smell urine very well, I have now been around
> babies long enough to know that every couple of hours I need to call
> one of my girls over and touch lightly between her legs. I have never
> gotten the sense from anyone else that I do this in a manner that
> looks hinky. I don't have to remove clothing or remove the diaper to
> tell what is in it. I can tell just by how snugly the diaper is
> fitted to her body, or by how big the bulge is at the bottom of it,
> whether I need to change it. If I am pretty confident the diaper
> contains urine only, I have learned that I prefer standing the baby up
> on the changing table and holding her tightly with one hand while I
> remove the diaper and wipe her down with the other. This way, I am
> not having to manipulate her legs and pick her up from underneath just
> to remove the diaper. If I know that faeces is inside, or if I
> suspect that it is, then I do take the precaution of laying the baby
> on her back on the changing table and taking the diaper off that way.
> This helps me to contain the poop, pulling the diaper out slowly and
> doing so with the understanding that a clump of errant poop that falls
> out of it will fall on the changing table towel, not on the floor or
> on my clothing without my knowing it.
>
> I do not use gloves. I understand that you as a professional will
> have to. I find that if I just have a wet wipe serving as a barrier
> between the skin of my hand and the substance I'm looking for, I can
> feel quite easily whether I'm dealing with simple wetness, whether I'm
> dealing with poop (and what consistency), and whether the poop is off.
> Mostly, I still prevent faeces from getting onto my hands and body.
> Not always. In the predicament of a "blow-out," all bets are off.
> Take heart. This is true for the population of sighted caregivers, as
> well. I use several wet wipes to handle even what seems like a simple
> case, because I want to make extra sure that I have gotten everything
> off of her skin surface. I wipe more than what my sense of touch says
> is necessary. I'm sure that my wife would attest to the point that I
> am better at getting all the poop off my baby than I am at getting all
> the poop off of other surfaces, like the changing table, that I or the
> baby or the poop might have touched. I'm sure she will attest to the
> point that in no way am I perfect at either task.
>
> As for applying the new diaper, I find this to be the easiest. I
> always have preferred to stand my baby up, not keeping her on her
> back. This way, I am not forced to reach underneath the baby and lift
> her up while at the same time trying to gain purchase with the back
> side of the diaper on her bum. In the way I prefer, she is standing
> up on the changing table, legs spread as far apart as I can get them,
> facing away from me. From this position, I can apply a diaper to her
> in the same way that I can imagine applying a diaper to myself. I can
> make sure that the back is pulled up tightly, that the front is
> unwrinkled, and can hold her with the same motion that I use to fasten
> the Velcro edges to the front.
>
> Potty training is more Danika's forte. I have done far less of this
> than she has. But in the small part I have played in this, and from
> observing what she has gone through, I can tell you that being sighted
> does not necessarily give you any more information than I've got about
> when during the day a toddler has to go potty. All too often, I
> believe this is a guessing game. My son Max, when he was 3-½ years
> old, used to frustrate both me and Danika to no end, We'd set him on
> the toilet, coax him to poop for 10 minutes or more, maybe get a
> little pee out of him, then hear him say "I'm done." Then, without
> fail, less than five minutes following that attempt, Max would poop in
> his underpants. This happened to both my wife and me during multiple,
> separate potty training episodes. Even after he got into the habit of
> pooping on the toilet, one never could pre-determine how long it would
> take during any given session for his poop to come out--and how long
> it would take to make sure he was done. Remember, once is not always
> enough. Again, smell is the key--from my vantage point, anyway.
> Wiping one of my babies after a toileting session is fairly easy,
> since she already is in a seated position. I can just reach out, lift
> her up--sometimes into a standing position, facing me--and from there
> I can bend over, reach around, wipe her bum, and wipe the toilet seat
> and surrounding area at about the same time.
>
> I am a dad who has had the experience of being blind all of my life,
> but who has had the experience of caring for an infant only since age
> 45. Since 2010, I have fostered 14 children along with Danika, who is
> sighted. Together we have adopted three of those children and are
> anticipating adopting a fourth sometime around the end of this
> calendar year.
>
> Even though Danika has full use of her eyes, and even though she had
> some 25 years of experience off-and-on caring for infants and young
> children before we started fostering--e.g., babysitting, caring for
> young nieces and nephews, and the like--I still have played from the
> beginning of our fostering days a very active role in the hygienic
> management of my children. I also usually take on the sole task of
> executing bath time. This said, all of the children were infants or
> very young toddlers when they first came to live in our home. So
> consistency in the size of those little humans I am managing, has
> helped to make things feel more standardized for me.
>
> Having said this: I get that the position you're in as a would-be
> professional caregiver, is different from the position I'm in. The
> act of manipulating a young child on the changing table and the act of
> actually changing the diaper are probably less nerve-racking for me
> than they will be for you. For one thing, my children at that stage
> of their lives have always been small, because none of my foster or
> adoptive kids has lived with a significant disability. Even though
> technically he or she has been a ward of the state at first, I always
> have acted as though that infant or toddler that someone delivered to
> my home was my own little boy or girl. After all, the child is in our
> home 24×7, interacting with our other kids just as if he or she were a
> natural sibling. What would I do differently if the children I got
> communicated very differently, as with the more severe end of the
> autism spectrum? Or if my children were adolescent and in need of
> diapering as the result of a significant learning disability? I'm
> really not sure how I would handle this. I hear stories of folks who
> work in a high school setting or a group home and who find themselves
> having to diaper a violently angry, 250-pound adult male with some
> kind of attachment disorder or major emotional condition, and I walk
> away open-mouthed with amazement just like some of those who act so
> weirdly the first time they meet a blind person. I guess what I'm
> trying to say here is that I'm probably just as ignorant about the
> particulars of what you're going to experience, as most sighted people
> are of blindness before they really get to know a blind person. I
> will not insult you by saying what you're trying to do is "amazing."
> Your daily work represents an act of basic human decency that we as
> blind people have every right to perform in service to others if we
> choose to. I appreciate your reaching out to this list and, again, I
> wish you all the success in the world as you advance on your journey.
> Write or phone if you wish.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Kane Brolin
> (574)386-8868 (mobile)
> (574)255-9897 (home)
>
>
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