[blindkid] Those Amazing Inspiring Blind People

Arielle Silverman arielle71 at gmail.com
Wed May 29 23:40:38 UTC 2013


Oh, and Carol, the courageous thing is just ridiculous. I don't
experience more fear in my life than anyone else does. I'm scared of
needles, but so are many sighted people (and I can't see the blood)! I
certainly don't feel scared when I am walking in a familiar place or
crossing the same street I cross every day. I do get anxious sometimes
about crossing large or unfamiliar intersections, which I think is
mostly conditioned from growing up with over-protective parents and
teachers. It has gotten much better over time and with good training.
Very well said about how we don't make comparisons with sight.

Arielle

On 5/29/13, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Very interesting comments. I am sure it is hard to watch your kids
> lose interest in doing things they are talented at because they are
> afraid of being overpraised. There is some fascinating research on
> children's responses to positive feedback and how praise can be
> redirected to cultivate achievement. For example, it is better to
> praise a child's effort rather than their innate ability. So if they
> get a 100 on a test, it's not because they're so smart, but because
> they studied really hard. The problem with ability praise ("you're so
> smart") is that kids start to see a connection between their successes
> (or failures) and their innate ability. If success means I'm smart,
> then failure must mean I'm dumb. On the other hand, effort-based
> feedback communicates to kids that their successes or failures are
> more under their control, that they will be rewarded with praise for
> trying hard and that if they fail at something, they can recover from
> the failure by putting forth more effort the next time. I suspect that
> blind kids (and kids with disabilities in general) tend to be given
> more ability-based praise and criticism than nondisabled kids. That
> might explain why some of your kids resist praise but then are averse
> to the possibility of failing. Gifted blind kids might get so much
> ability praise that they come to mistrust it and, ironically, start to
> doubt their abilities if they fail at something.
> There is also some research on expert tutors, which shows that some of
> the best tutors praise their students very rarely, yet still bring out
> their students' motivation and help them to excel in a subject. Your
> kids who hate being praised might really benefit from working with a
> private music teacher who takes a tough, no-nonsense approach and only
> praises really big accomplishments. Competition could also be a good
> way for them to get accurate feedback on their talents and to keep
> them challenged rather than just being unconditionally praised.
>
> Arielle
>
> On 5/29/13, Carol Castellano <carol_castellano at verizon.net> wrote:
>> Arielle,
>>
>> We have experienced these same issues, as I'm sure most on this list
>> have.  I remember once entering both my kids (1 blind, 1 sighted) in
>> a wolf-howling contest at our local zoo.  I think Serena was maybe 6
>> or 7 and John was 3 or 4.  Serena was a terrible howler, but what do
>> you think--they gave her the prize.  Well, she was young enough not
>> to realize that she was given that prize because she was blind, but I
>> sure knew.  That day began a series of conversations about where each
>> of us stands in terms of talents and abilities compared to the
>> general society and why someone might give a blind person an
>> undeserved prize.  It wasn't easy for me  to deflate my poor baby's
>> bubble--I had to do it gently--but I knew how important it was for
>> her to realize what was going on--and what would continue to go on
>> throughout her life, if she let it.
>>
>> I think it's the one about courage that really gets, me, though.  One
>> of the reasons sighted people think blind people are courageous is
>> that they feel they would be really scared if they had to move
>> through the world without their eyesight.  They never stop to think
>> that blind kids--especially those blind from birth--are just living
>> their lives, growing and learning every day, not experiencing undue
>> fear, and certainly not making constant comparisons to having
>> eyesight, the way sighted people are.  And sighted people also seldom
>> know about the skills and tools that blind people learn and use to go
>> through life competently and knowledgeably.  They think blind people
>> are out in the world without a clue, so they think it takes courage
>> to live as a blind person.  Grrrrrr.
>>
>> Carol
>>
>> Carol Castellano
>> Parents of Blind Children-NJ
>> Director of Programs
>> National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
>> 973-377-0976
>> carol_castellano at verizon.net
>> www.blindchildren.org
>> www.nfb.org/parents-and-teachers
>>
>> At 11:22 PM 5/28/2013, you wrote:
>>>Hi all,
>>>On the NFB student list we have gotten into a discussion about how to
>>>handle comments from the public about how amazing, inspiring, and
>>>courageous we are for doing ordinary things. I shared some of my
>>>experiences with this growing up and how it made me feel  about myself
>>>and my abilities, and wanted to repost my remarks to this list as
>>>well, since it might be informative for parents. I don't think my
>>>parents realized how these kinds of well-intentioned comments affected
>>>me.
>>>
>>>Hi all,
>>>I think some great points have been made here. When someone tells me I
>>>am amazing or inspiring or courageous or whatever, I don't like it
>>>because it implies a lower standard. There's always part of that
>>>compliment that goes unstated: "You're amazing......For a blind
>>>person". It's really a backhanded insult to other blind people, even
>>>though it may not be intended that way. Also, I don't like being told
>>>that I must have overcome great obstacles or that I must have great
>>>perseverance and passion to get to where I am today, because I don't
>>>think that's true. My blindness hasn't interfered much with my
>>>educational achievements and compared with many others my life has
>>>been over-privileged. When people make these assumptions I feel they
>>>are judging me based on blindness without knowing much else about me,
>>>my upbringing or anything I've done.
>>>I also think that the "amazing" comments are particularly tough on
>>>blind youth who also happen to be high achievers. It's hard to know
>>>how to interpret these comments and when we are truly amazing vs. just
>>>exceeding people's low standards. And sometimes, being an inspiration
>>>is just too much extra pressure when our lives are already filled with
>>>a lot of internal and external demands.
>>>When I was growing up, I got used to these accolades because my
>>>parents had many friends who would marvel at my accomplishments. When
>>>I was young I was often asked to show off my Braille reading for
>>>company and this just completely blew people away. Then as I grew I
>>>was a high achiever in school and won some awards for spelling bees
>>>and things like that. They deserved recognition, but probably not to
>>>the level that I got. One night when I was ten, I wrote down some
>>>musings about how I felt about blindness and dealing with sighted
>>>kids. My mother ran across my writing on the family computer and
>>>through a random string of events, what I wrote got published in our
>>>local paper. Then when I was eleven, a magazine editor read the
>>>newspaper article and was so amazed and inspired that she asked me to
>>>write a column for her magazine. This of course only compounded
>>>people's awe and amazement in what I could do, since not only was I
>>>blind but I was also famous. It took several years, but I eventually
>>>realized that I wasn't an amazing writer. I was a decent writer, but
>>>not particularly outstanding at it, and not good at fiction or poetry
>>>at all. The only reason people were so impressed with my writing was
>>>because I wrote about blindness and that was a topic that intrigued
>>>people. I had to get a lot of painful criticism on my writing before I
>>>eventually realized I wasn't as outstanding as those folks made me out
>>>to be. Around the time I came to that epiphany, I also began to resent
>>>all the accolades. I remember thinking, at the age of fifteen, that
>>>"adults always treat me like I'm five and fifty at the same time. But
>>>I just want to be a normal 15-year-old girl!" I felt like on one hand,
>>>I was being held to an impossibly high standard--expected to be an
>>>amazing writer, an inspiration to all--and on the other hand, held to
>>>an extremely low standard--expected not to be capable of basic
>>>independence. People would praise my writing but then worry about my
>>>ability to walk across a room. I just wanted to blend into the crowd
>>>of teenagers and gossip about boys and clothes (well, mostly just
>>>boys) instead.
>>>Then, at the end of ninth grade, I "accidentally on purpose" failed my
>>>algebra final and earned my first B on my report card. There were some
>>>problems on the final that were hard and I didn't feel like answering
>>>on the last day of school, so I skipped them. I didn't intend to
>>>fail--I think I just got a little overconfident about my ability to
>>>earn straight A's. But I also wonder if on a less conscious level, I
>>>bombed the test so I could prove to myself and others that I was a
>>>human being and I was capable of screwing up--and not always an
>>>inspiration. Just a week before that final exam, I remember my algebra
>>>teacher admitting that he had doubted my ability to pass his class at
>>>the beginning of the year, but that he was totally impressed with my
>>>performance. I remember being angry at him for assuming I wouldn't
>>>succeed in his class just because I was blind. And so perhaps,
>>>ironically, I failed his test to try to show him I wasn't amazing, I
>>>wasn't a superhero, I was just a normal teenager doing the best I
>>>could to succeed in school.
>>>OK, enough rambling about my childhood, but I do think that the
>>>unnecessary recognition we get from the public can be just as damaging
>>>as true discrimination, especially when we are young and trying to
>>>figure out where our true talents are. None of us should be forced
>>>into the position of inspiring others. As first-class citizens, we
>>>have the right to achieve at the level we wish to achieve at, and we
>>>have a right to accurate feedback about how well we're doing at
>>>something. Fortunately, as others have stated, there are sighted folks
>>>with high expectations who are willing to hold us up to rigorous
>>>standards and to give us a true picture of our strengths and
>>>weaknesses.
>>>Best,
>>>Arielle
>>>
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>>
>>
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