The Question of Blindfolds

The Question of Blindfolds

American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Winter 2017 BEING WITH OTHERS
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I Feel for You
How to Teach Your Blind Child about Empathy and Social Interaction
by Mary McDonach

Reprinted with permission from <www.wonderbaby.org>

From the Editor: The mother of a blind daughter, Mary McDonach is a native of Scotland. She is a frequent contributor to the Wonderbaby website for parents of blind children, and several of her articles have been reprinted in Future Reflections.

What do you believe is the single most difficult thing that we as parents have to teach our children?

Could it be toilet training?

Teaching a child about continence can take years of cleaning up after little accidents, understanding about wet beds in the middle of the night, and being patient about finding the public toilets in the supermarket for the third time in a single visit.

That's not easy.

Or are you dreading sex education for your little monster?

Do you worry about putting a "loaded weapon"—knowledge about human procreation—into tiny, merciless hands; living for weeks at a time with every question and enquiry into the functions of the human body, complete with medically correct words?

That's certainly a tough one.

But if your child is blind or seriously visually impaired, have you thought about how you will teach him about empathy? Have you considered how important it is to educate your child about the perspectives of others, and how critically different this learning will necessarily be from the way a sighted child would learn about it?
To become whole, happy, well-functioning members of society, our blind children need us to rework and modify the lessons that sighted children receive visually every day, in order that those lessons can be of use in their primarily nonvisual world.
What Is Empathy and Why Is It Important?
To empathize with someone is to understand how that person is feeling and why he or she is responding in a certain way. Empathy helps us to anticipate how others will react to us and makes us nicer people.
When I first began reading about empathy, I had a basic understanding of what the word meant, but almost no concept of just how important it is in our everyday lives. Here's a quick rundown:

It is why we adore and strive to emulate some people and despise or pity others.
It is how we can find it in ourselves to love, judge, or even forgive the actions of others.
It is why we open doors, both physically and metaphorically, for other people.
It is why some actions or behaviors have the ability to disgust or delight us.

Essentially, empathy is what makes society work. It is how we come to an understanding of ourselves, by looking at the world from the perspective of another as though we were that person.

If your child is blind or visually impaired, this lesson will be the most difficult, most worthwhile, and easily the most valuable thing you will ever teach him.
What the Experts Say about Empathy
For most children, sight plays a crucial role in developing empathy. Babies begin by looking at you to see how you are feeling or reacting to a toy they are playing with or to a silly sound they just made. You've probably seen very young children and babies play with a toy, then turn to look at their parents. If they see a smile, then they will laugh and continue playing with the toy. That's empathy, the understanding that someone else approves of what they are doing.

A sighted child will also point or gaze at an object to indicate her interest in that object. When she sees that the same object holds both your attention and hers, she can go on to examine the object and what you know about it.

Children use these simple forms of empathy to assign mental states to others and themselves; to determine if a person knows a thing, or is being deceitful, or fair in a judgment; if someone is happy, or sad, or bored; fundamentally, it's what your child needs to build social competence.

Involved in this process is the ability to pass "false belief tasks" as a measurement of the child's ability to take the perspective of another. A false belief task is a test that shows us if and when a child knows a thing that someone else does not know. Will the child realize that the other person does not have the same knowledge that the child does?

Yes, that does sound a bit like reverse logic, but here's a simple example. A child, John, is given a closed tube of candy wafers and asked, "What is in the tube?" John answers that there is candy in the tube. The tube is opened to show the child that—surprise!—the tube is filled with buttons.

If the child is then introduced to a second child and asked, "What will Michael think is in the tube?" John will answer that Michael will think there are buttons in the tube. At this stage John is unable to differentiate what he knows from what Michael knows. He is unable to take Michael's perspective. John has failed the false belief task. A 1995 study indicated that blind children were often eleven years old before they could pass a false belief task that sighted children of four years old were able to pass.
How Can I Teach My Child about Empathy?
All children have to see empathy in action in order to understand it. Thankfully, sight is not absolutely essential for this message. Unfortunately, without sight the message will take longer to impart to your child because he will not have the myriad of visual reinforcements of the message—but he will get there.

Psychologists and educators have spent many years researching how blind and seriously visually impaired children learn. As parents we need to know that there are specific challenges our children will encounter and understand how to equip them most effectively to reach their potential.

Explain everything. Your child cannot see that "picture that paints a thousand words," so get cracking building her a word bridge into that picture. The larger her vocabulary, the better able she will be to express herself and understand others.
Talk to your child about his clothes, his body, how he looks to other people.
Describe the world, the opportunities, the dangers, what clouds look like. A sighted child can see things around her at a glance. Rendering your child's world into words will take much longer. You may feel this approach awkward and cumbersome (lots of parents do initially), but it will soon be second nature to you.
Give your child a code of social conduct. It is not only charming and engaging to speak to a well-mannered child, it makes his interactions with the world much more fluid and smooth. If your child will spend more time bumping into people than a sighted child does, "Excuse me" will be invaluable. Good manners can go a long way toward excusing even the most awful social faux pas.
Use every opportunity. Explain why you are taking his photograph, how you will feel looking at it, the value you place on photos of him, why smiling is appropriate and important when his picture is being taken, how it will enhance the picture and make you feel good and help you to remember that day. Of course, you will need to tailor the language and concepts you use for your child and adapt them as he grows. Does it sound exhausting? That's because sometimes it is!
Talk about the whys. Why do we wear clothes, why do we thank people, why is lunch in an hour's time instead of now, why are cows? (Welcome to my world!) These are the questions that make you feel as though your own mind is unravelling a little bit, but it's gotta be done!
Give serious consideration to getting a family pet. This is not for everyone, and I would strongly advise that the pet you consider for a blind or seriously visually impaired child is not a goldfish, as it would be unlikely to survive the first examination your child gave it. But with that proviso, the responsibilities and interactions that come with having a (sturdy) pet can be invaluable for a blind youngster.
Use joint touch. Use your hands to explore things with your child, while talking about what you can see and what you both can feel and hear and smell. Let her direct your touch, lead the exploration, find the surprises.
Let your child feel your smiles. Let him feel the small and large movements laughter gives your body. Make your expressions extravagant about little disappointments and setbacks you face together so that he has information about these things for the rest of his life. A thirty-year-old man cannot reasonably feel the faces of strangers for information, but a three-year-old child can, and he'll still be using the information you gave him in eighty years' time!
Give your voice character. Emphasize those tones and aspects of your voice that give your child an insight into your emotions. She can't see you smiling; let her hear your smile!
Talk about perspective. Let your child borrow yours. Crouch with him, crawl with him, climb with him, and give him the words for these activities even when they are purely visually descriptive. Show him how to place his body to be a cat, or how his little arms can mimic the movements of a bird's wings. How will he know about hide-and-seek games if he hasn't worked out his own concept of what it is to hide? He needs your help with these bits.
Your child needs to be naughty. It's what children do, so don't be a constant silent watcher in her life. The child needs the opportunity to misbehave and learn from that behavior. Having a parent appear like an avenging angel because she doesn't see you coming is not the way to instill in her the confidence to make decisions, right or wrong. Give your child the space and sometimes the privacy to choose badly.
Teach your child how to deal with setbacks. Give your child a way to deal with dignity and courage with those insults to his ego that he will face. I believe that this is the very hardest part of being a good parent. There will be times when your child is speaking to an empty room or thinks he is still playing with children who have already left him. You have to put your distress aside at these points in order to explain what happened, why it happened, and how he is not at fault. He needs your strength and understanding at points like these to keep going, keep enjoying the company of others, and to develop an internal belief in his own importance regardless of any other thing.
Don't forget the constructive criticism. People are reluctant to criticize the behavior of a blind child; that's your job! Don't ignore inappropriate behavior—address it and help her to change or modify it. You will be helping her to help herself, and that's what you're there for!

Ultimately what you want for your child is what everyone wants for their children: you want to help your child to become a moral, ethical, confident person who exhibits self-control, altruism, and dignity; a happy person, comfortable in her own skin.

It's a big job.

Don't let us keep you!

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