[nabs-l] Social skills and blindness

Wed Mar 5 21:30:51 UTC 2014

I agree with what has been said from Lily and Arielle.
Matthew Dierckens
Macintosh Trainer
Blind Access Training
www.blindaccesstraining.com
1-877-774-7670 ext. 4

On Mar 5, 2014, at 4:07 PM, Lillie Pennington <lilliepennington at fuse.net> wrote:

> I completely agree with Ariel. Forcing blind students or anyone into being a social mold of what they want is just plain wrong and unethical. Maybe in encounters of social conflict discussing how a situation could have been better handled may be a better option. 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Mar 5, 2014, at 12:40 AM, Mohamed <malhajamy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> You a bit remind  me of how I am.  I'm a big technoligy guy, and always am trying to learn about new things.  I've not really been normal.
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com
>> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list <nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> Date sent: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 22:22:19 -0700
>> Subject: [nabs-l] Social skills and blindness
>> 
>> 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
>> 
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