[nabs-l] Social skills and blindness

[Arielle Silverman]

Hi all,

OK. Since it was brought up here, I feel compelled to share some of my
experiences and controversial views on how blind people should learn
social skills. Some of you have heard this rant before in part, but I
think it is important enough to bear repeating every few years. I
guess I'm also curious if any of you have had similar experiences
growing up or if the things I am about to advocate make any sense to
others besides me.

I have been blind my whole life and I was always an introverted
person. As a child I had few close  friends, read a lot by myself.
When I did hang out with kids my age I tended to be bossy and want to
control what we were doing. When adults came into my house and tried
to interact with me in ways I thought were childish or silly, I would
go to my room and read. I never was one for a lot of physical
affection, hugging, touching etc.
When I was growing up it was assumed that all my undesirable traits
linked back to my blindness. So it was assumed that because of my
blindness I had poor social skills. There were goals on my IEP
throughout elementary and middle school that dealt with my social
skills and my TVI was tasked with evaluating my progress. For example,
in elementary school I would get graded on goals like "Shows interest
in other children" or "asks others about their day". In middle school,
one goal on my IEP was "compliments others when she likes something".
I am not even slightly joking. My TVI would ask me every day to tell
her how many people I had complimented that day and she wrote it down
on her clipboard. The number of compliments I gave was expected to
increase over time. Since I  was usually a good student and I liked
and respected this teacher a lot, I tried my hardest to give her a
good compliment report every day, by contriving situations where I
could compliment my family and classmates. I still don't understand
what this had to do with my blindness. If I complimented people less
than my parents or teachers expected it was because that just wasn't a
big part of how I liked to interact with people. Had I been sighted, I
wouldn't have been graded on such a silly thing. She also read me
passages from a social skills book as a way to teach me social skills.
Eventually my TVI and I discussed this and she told me that my parents
had really expected her to do these things and she did even though she
knew they were ridiculous.
When people in the blindness world talk about social skills, it seems
they're usually referring to two things: skills at winning friends and
influencing people (charisma, likability, popularity) or following
social conventions like being places on time, attempting eye contact,
etc. (what Jedi refers to as "blending in"). By the first set of
criteria, winning friends and influencing people, Adolf Hitler had
wonderful social skills. I think there are other social skills that
are much more important for having lasting relationships: things like
sharing, helping others in need, being sensitive to other people's
feelings, respecting other people's opinions, not holding grudges.
There are many sighted politicians who have absolutely terrible social
skills by these criteria! These are all things that blind people can
learn just as well as sighted people by listening to other people's
conversations, talking about issues going on in the world, and
actually being a part of close relationships. I think the most social
skills I ever learned was by becoming friends with blind people who
were willing to be blunt and tell me if I was doing something
obnoxious. There is a lot we can learn about social interaction just
by listening, talking and sharing with others. Reading about this
stuff in a book, or being required to engage in artificial
interactions with others, doesn't help build these social skills in
the long term. Role-playing social interactions doesn't help when
you're out in the real world and the thing you practiced feels really
awkward and fake.
On blending in, I do think there are certain nonverbal things that
congenitally blind people should be explicitly told about so we can
make informed decisions about whether or not we want to blend in. For
example, of course blind folks should be told about which colors
people usually wear together or what kind of clothing is appropriate
for a job interview vs. the movies. But then, we still have the right
to choose to blend in or not. So  often it seems that blind folks are
labeled as having poor social skills when the fact is that they've
learned what is "appropriate" but chosen not to follow these norms for
whatever reason.
I realize now that my parents and teachers were unfortunately using
blindness and the IEP system to try to change who I fundamentally
was--to turn me into an extroverted, gregarious, charismatic person.
It took a long time for me to realize that I was OK being myself, and
that I was just reared in an environment where I didn't quite belong.
Although I don't have tons of friends, I have great relationships with
the friends I do have, a loving husband and co-workers who respect me,
and I try to be the best person I can. Most of  the things I learned
to get me to this place came from my firsthand experiences making
friends, my real discussions with others and a lot of trial and error.
I don't think I missed out on the process because I am blind, but I
also don't think the attempts to teach me social skills from a
textbook were either effective or necessary.
In closing, I hope that any good blindness center would support
students in developing social skills--by giving them opportunities to
make friends and have real social encounters--instead of
indoctrinating them with lessons based on a narrow definition of
social competence.

Best,
Arielle