[nabs-l] Blindness vs. other minorities

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Jedi,

That's true about children in orphanages, or homes, that don't allow for
exploration. In terms of adoption, a lot of adopting families have had
to hurdle this obstacle when adopting children from particular
orphanages. My dad, who's a minister, went on a mission trip to Romania
a few years ago, and while visiting a local orphanage, he encountered
many children who had never experienced much outside a crib and the
orphanage walls. They didn't recognize love either, and many end up with
disassociative  identity disorder, which is a psychological condition
where a person has severe issues interacting with other people. It
shares similarities with some behaviors seen with autism.

Someone pointed this out in a post, but I can't remember who, but a lot
of problems and behavior exhibited by blind people isn't specific to
blindness, but people, us included, attribute it to the blindness. Just
like if my shoulder clips a wall even when caning properly, and it's
something anybody could do, but because I'm blind, this is what it's
attributed to.

I always tell people that if sight is what keeps us from accidents,
sighted people would never have accidents. This usually makes people
think and giggle, smile.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:19:21 -0500
From: Jedi <loneblindjedi at samobile.net>
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Blindness versuses other minority groups
Message-ID: 537e9ac1-72a2-4261-abeb-aa793d2d79af at samobile.net
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed"

Bridgit,

It's a thought supported by research. Back in the 80s and 90s, Romanian 
children in orphanages were studied. Back then, these orphanages were 
known for keeping their kids cooped up in small spaces with not a lot 
of adult attention. Researchers found that these children exhibited 
some pretty strange mannerisms of movement and behavior, much like the 
ones we often find in blind children who didn't get much opportunity to 
explore the world and socialize with others. Annecdotally, we've found 
that getting blind children involved in the world from birth, as we do 
other children, seems to lessen the impact of unusual developments of 
behavior. As a sort of research, we could each consider , the kind of 
mannerisms we have or used to have, and think about whether or not we 
had much opportunity for exploration. I'd be interested to see if there 
is a contingent relationship here based just on our observations of our 
own lives. As for myself, I used to rock a lot, but I also used to have 
a fair amount of exploration. In my case, I wonder if I didn't pick up 
rocking from my mother; she used to rock quite a lot herself and she is 
sighted. I will say that I didn't have much social opportunity; I lived 
in an isolated situation most of my younger years with few children to 
play with. I think I experienced some fear regarding certain activities 
and so didn't engage in them much. As a result, I don't think I 
developed physically as well as I maybe could have until much later. As 
for the rocking, my mother and I both decided to try a new technique to 
kick the habit: we both decided to substitute the behavior for one 
considered more "normal." I don't know how well the technique worked 
for my mother, but it worked for me; I suspect changing my behavior 
caused me to consider it consciously and thus extinguish it.


Respectfully,
Jedi