[nabs-l] Social skills and blindness

[Anjelina]

Arielle,
I hope you are archiving your wisdom for a book in the near future! I can't add much to your well-written message except I went through similar experiences. In my IEP had goals like I had to talk to so many people a day since I was a more interverted person.
Social skills are wonderful and helpful, but real authentic friendships which are meaningful friendships are most important.


-Anjelina
Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 5, 2014, at 12:22 AM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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