[blindkid] Advice needed about school incident

[Carol Castellano]

Boy, you sure put your finger on the issues.  Thank goodness for the 
NFB and NOPBC and all our outreach and activities for parents.

Because once the parents find out that it's okay to be blind, and 
once their expectations are raised, then the child can be brought up 
in an atmosphere of normal expectations, an emphasis on competence 
and skills, and ideas and answers for those difficult situations.  It 
seems to me the more skill the child has and the more he/she can 
handle his/her own life, the more respect peers have.

I'm so glad you found the Federation.

Carol

Carol Castellano, President
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
973-377-0976
carol_castellano at verizon.net
www.nfb.org/nopbc

At 09:09 AM 11/5/2009, you wrote:
>I had similar things happen as the only blind high school student. 
>Someone took food, ate part of it, and had the whole table laughing 
>when they put the french fry back on my tray and I ate it, not 
>knowing it had been bitten off of. This was a painful experience for 
>me, as I was the social outcast that no one would eat with at 
>school. After the incident I described, I was almost relieved to eat 
>alone. As to being told I was totally blind and others had vision, I 
>think at age six I thought adults could see, because my parents 
>could. This meant they could drive, read using eyes instead of 
>hands, know colors and read my temperature on a glass rod when I was 
>sick. I thought kids read Braille and went on a small bus to school. 
>I got told in no uncertain terms by another little girl that I was 
>wrong. She rode on a bigg bus, rode a bike with two wheels, had 26 
>kids in her class and was learning to read with her eyes. The way 
>she said it made me feel inferior. It took until I was out of school 
>and found the Federation and my husband who is also a part of the 
>Federation before I realized that it was respectable to be blind. It 
>was sure grand to realize our techniques were not inferior, but just 
>different!
>
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