Announcer:
Welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast, presented by the National Federation of the Blind, the transformative membership and advocacy organization of Blind Americans live the life you want.
Melissa Riccobono:
Hello and welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast. I am Melissa Riccobono and I am a proud mom. And I'm here with my cohost...
Anil Lewis:
Who is a proud dad, one of the most proudest titles that I have. This is Anil Lewis. Welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast.
Melissa Riccobono:
And if you haven't guessed, our topic today is parenting. Oh my goodness. Yes.
Anil Lewis:
If you haven't guessed, then you might need to tune into another podcast, (laughing) but we're good. We get to talk about our favorite topic, our kids today.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, absolutely.
Anil Lewis:
Really about being parents in the face of society, blind people, parenting kids. Yeah.
Melissa Riccobono:
People have their own thoughts about this. And I had a coworker when I was pregnant with my first, and she actually flat out said to me, "I just don't know how you're going to do this. Kids move so fast and I have no idea how you're going to do this. I'd be scared to death." And I just, anyway, she knew me. She'd seen me for two years. We'd worked together, and I just thought, okay, if I haven't convinced you in this amount of time that I'm an adult and I'm competent, I don't know what else to do for you. And luckily we didn't have to work together after that. She was leaving. And so I think she felt safe saying that, but that was pretty hurtful. And unfortunately, I'm sure other people have had those types of comments. And then we've had those great comments too.
Anil Lewis:
Well, mine was frightening because I got divorced soon after AmarI was born, and I was afraid that his mom was going to use the social misperceptions about the capacity of blind parents to actually get custody. But luckily, we were at least able to act like mature adults in that process to do what's best for Amari. I did get custody, but let's stop talking about this. Let's talk about the fun stuff, Melissa, you got any experiences you want to share? Now remember, this is not a five hour long podcast, and we have some guests that we're going to be introducing.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, I can't wait to hear from my guests. Well, first of all, let me just start with, I have three children. Cynthia just turned eighteen. Oh my goodness. I don't know how that happened. Brianna is fourteen and Elizabeth is twelve. And parenting is one of those journeys where just when you think things are going great and you got it all figured out, something changes. And this has just been from little tiny on, you think they're sleeping to the night and then they start teething or they start getting ear infections or they start learning to walk and all of a sudden nothing that was safe just a mere day or two before is really safe because there's little hands that are reaching for it. Or they go to school and that brings different things, or they get involved in activities or they're going to go to college or they're going to go to work. I mean, there's just a zillion things. And what has really kept me grounded, and what I always try to remind myself through all of these experiences is, number one, every kid is different. Number two, you're a parent and you're given those gut instincts for a reason. And listening to them generally has not really led me too much astray. And number three, parenting is hard, period. I don't care who you are.
Anil Lewis:
Parenting is hard exclamation point.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, exactly. I'm sorry. You're correct. Parenting is hard exclamation point. I don't care who you are. I don't care what kind of perfect child you think you have, there are going to be times, and it's not all hard. There's some lovely, amazing moments, and you have to soak all of those in when they come because there's going to be a hard moment around the corner
Anil Lewis:
If you're doing it right.
Melissa Riccobono:
If you're doing it right. And that's the thing. And just knowing that and having a community of other blind parents has been incredibly helpful for me. But also having that community of regular old sighted parents has been equally as helpful because when my kids were doing things like trying to sneak cookies, and I was kind of, oh, poor me. I'm this blind person and they're taking advantage of my blindness. It was so refreshing to have one of my best friends say, I can't believe what they're trying to do. They're sneaking cookies. And I thought, oh, bless. you. You have no idea what type of gift you have given me in this moment. And that's just so...
Anil Lewis:
Little tattletale (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
But it's absolutely what I needed. And I think it's absolutely what we need. And I think we as all parents, I think, need much more of a village than society really allows us to have at this point. But that's a whole other soap box. But why don't you tell us just a little bit Anil about Amari.
Anil Lewis:
You went a little deep. You got philosophical and all that stuff.
Melissa Riccobono:
I did. I did.
Anil Lewis:
I just want to tell you one of my favorite stories. I just want to tell you one of my favorite stories with Amari.
Melissa Riccobono:
How old is Amari now?
Anil Lewis:
Well, I kept feeding him, so he's twenty-seven now. He's almost as tall as his dad.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh my goodness.
Anil Lewis:
He's about 5 11, six feet. So he is almost as tall as me. Still a great kid. I count myself so blessed. But when I got custody, as I was explaining earlier, it was more scary than joyful because now single dad period, single blind dad, exclamation point. So I really was a little insecure about my ability to do it. But luckily, as you said, I had my Federation family to support me, but I'll never forget, and I'm sure all the parents who are on this call can relate to this, can't wait to introduce them to hear their stories. But we were walking around and ofcourse when you walk around as a blind parent, everybody thinks that the child's taking care of you. So everybody's saying, "Oh, that's so wonderful the way you're taking care of your dad." I mean, at this point, he's like six, six or seven. Oh, that's so wonderful.
So we were walking through this place and I noticed that Amari was just getting a little lethargic. I was like, what's going on? So I got down to his level. I said, Hey, man, what's going on? He's like, "Daddy, everybody just keeps staring at us". So that's one of those moments how as a blind parent, you're thinking, well, how do I deal with this? I don't want him to think of his dad as a blind dad. This is not the right place to try to give him this whole paradigm shift of thought around blindness in the capacity of blind people. So in the moment I looked at him, I said, man, you just have to understand with a dad this good looking, people are going to stare. And he just laughed. He just laughed. And all the rest of the day we walked around and I just could hear chim huckle. And I knew that when he was doing that, people were looking at us. But that's one of my greatest memories. There's so many though. You want to hear some more? No.
Melissa Riccobono:
Sure.
Anil Lewis:
Let's introduce our guests.
Melissa Riccobono:
Okay. Let's add it. But that's a great one. And I don't think I would've thought of that type of comeback. I would've probably gone into the whole philosophical, but I mean, what a great story.
Anil Lewis:
One of my favorites. I love it. So we have the president of our blind parents group or the co-coordinator, co-president and we have the president of our Pennsylvania blind parents division. So you want to do the honors there, Melissa?
Melissa Riccobono:
Sure. Well, we have from California, Lisa Maria Martinez, who is the chairperson of our blind parent group. And then we have Stacy Leap, who is our president from the brand, spanking new blind parent division in Pennsylvania. Nice. And so do we want to just start out maybe with Lisa Maria introducing herself? And maybe a story or so, I know you also have three kids, so you probably have many more stories than just one. But how are you, Lisamaria?
Lisamaria Martinez:
I'm doing great. I am doing very well. I do have three kids. They're a handful at this moment in time. They are thirteem, nine and seven. And the thirteen-year-old is amazing. And I was chuckling at, I think it was you, Melissa, who said they could be good one moment and the next (laughs)... But my thirteen-year-old's a really good kid. And then our nine-year-old and our seven-year-old, they're just balls of energy. Balls of energy. I think an experience that I would like to share is, I don't know if it's exactly, well, it is blind parenting. I have kids who are really into video games, Roblox and Roblox. They're very into games like that. And I know lots of parents in general can easily learn what exactly their children are doing on these video games. And if they are appropriate for that age group. And then those parents, and specifically, they could be sighted parents, can ban or they could say no or yes to this particular game.
For me, as a blind parent, they're all inaccessible. So I talk to my kids about the games they're interested in and what the game is all about. But what my oldest kid has learned, and when my nine and seven-year-old are more into video games, I told my kids, I have the right to take your headphones and listen to what you're doing and talk to the people you're playing with. And to me, that's kind my way of knowing that they're, because they play with other people virtually and they talk with them. And so that was kind of my way of getting to know who he was playing with and starting to learn a little bit more about the games they are playing, the games that I cannot accessibly figure out what they're doing. And with the little ones, I tell them, tell me about the game.
And sometimes I'll sit there with them and tell them to audio describe everything they're doing. And my nine-year-old to every detail will tell me exactly what he's doing. And so that was just kind of my technique of checking in with the kids. And there's a lot of first person shooter games and all this stuff. And I talk to my kids, is this appropriate? Why do you think this is appropriate? And then a lot of times when they are playing games, I would not like, they sit there and they go, "Yeah, it's not appropriate." They know. They know, right. So that's an experience that I wanted to share that I think a lot of blind parents try to, or they struggle with knowing, is it okay for my kid to do this game or not? And just to add one more thing, Anil, absolutely. People thinking my child is helping mom. And so my kids have had various interactions with the world about their blind mom.
Anil Lewis:
And part of it is not necessarily to try to say, no, no, no, because I use those opportunities to actually teach him. So when we went to the grocery store, he was helping me, but he was also learning how to shop. And I'm teaching him how to evaluate prices and those types of things. So it's not like I'm dependent upon him. I'm looking at those opportunities as learning opportunities.
Lisamaria Martinez:
Teach him a hundred percent. And I'm thinking of a time where someone said that my son was being such a good helper, and he goes, "She is my mom. She takes care of me."
Melissa Riccobono:
Good for him. That must have been a very proud moment. Those are the ones that you save. Put that into your little warm, fuzzy jar, and you pull it out when days are long and tough. So Stacie, how about you? How many kids do you have? And tell us about some kind of an experience or technique. I love that LM went with the technique because that's a lot of parenting in general. And blind parenting is no different. And we probably have more techniques. We have to think about more techniques than sighted people do, because of course the world's not set up for somebody who's blind. But it's all about the technique. So do you have either a story you want to share, experience, or your favorite technique you want to pass along?
Stacie Leap:
How many stories? I don't even know where to start. So my daughter, her name's Alana, she's eight-years-old now. Two things that popped in my head, I'm just going to do one. One was when she was a baby, still crawling around. And I remember talking to other blind parents and they said, put bells on your child that way, where they're moving to. And I did that. I put bells on her and she just didn't like it. She kept taking it off. And I remember putting bells on her sneakers. Her shoes would be to the left and her body would be all the way down the hall. And then I switched it to, on her pants, she figured out how to take off her pants. And then I put it around her neck as a necklace. She took it off. So no matter what I did, bells weren't working.
Anil Lewis:
Wow. Wow. Independent from the start.
Stacie Leap:
Yeah and my alternative was to put the bells on the cabinet doors and on the fridge instead. Because that way, if she touches those things, I'm like, ah! Get away from there! (Laughs)
Melissa Riccobono:
That's amazing. I love that. I love that. So something that has worked for other people but didn't work for you, and then you just turned it around. That's awesome. Very, very cool. I'm kind of jealous of you all with your littler, littler kids. I have to say, I have really two in high school, one in seventh grade, and I'm just sort of very emotional lately actually about like, oh my gosh, I don't have any really little ones anymore. So if you ever want me to borrow a little one, I'd be more than happy. And you think about, I think about...
Lisamaria Martinez:
I have two if you would like them.
Stacie Leap:
(Laughs) You can have all of them.
Melissa Riccobono:
Anytime. Okay. Alright, cool. I'll take them for a day.
Anil Lewis:
(Laughs) Melissa, be careful. They're not saying borrow (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
I know. No, they just mean no, no, no, no, no. I would like to borrow. I think they'd miss their moms very, very much. But I do think too, that at least for me, and it's so corny, and it's so hokey, but I'm going to say it anyway, everybody would say, it all goes by so fast and you're in the middle of it and your kid has their fourth ear infection and you haven't slept in days and you don't know when you showered last and you think, this isn't going fast. This is going so slow. And then there's those little things, oh, I can't wait until they can crawl, talk, roll, whatever it is. And my husband was great about, let's just enjoy the stage they're in. And he was better, I think about that than me. Very smart man. And then you also applaud those victories. I mean, I remember the first time all my kids could shower on their own, and I said, please go up and take a shower. And they went up and they did it.
Anil Lewis:
Liberating.
Melissa Riccobono:
I was like, oh.
Stacie Leap:
The time Alana picked up her toys without me telling her, oh my goodness, I was so happy.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes! And you just think, oh, and then they're talking about college, or they're talking about high school dances, or they're in middle school and they're talking about friends who aren't making great choices. And I just think, oh, oh, dear Lord, what was I ever complaining about? I would give almost anything, in some ways to go back to these little tiny humans that needed me in a different way, that I could help in a different way. That's it. As they get older, the way that you can and can't help them changes. And for me as a mom and as a helper, I think that's what, even though I know they need to be in the world and it's their story and it's not mine, and they need to have their lumps and their bruises, and I don't want to be that helicopter parent, there's still that part of me that's like, oh, I wish I could just rock you to sleep one more time or sing you a silly song one more time and not have you roll your eyes (laughs).
Anil Lewis:
Aw, I want you to be my mom (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, I would love to Anil and I sing you a silly song (laughs).
Anil Lewis:
Sometimes I was a bad kid. I was a bad kid. That's why my son wasn't able to get away with anything. I mean, I'm like, boy, you can't try me. I've been there, done that. Get out of here. So he was forced to be a good kid because he very early on realized he couldn't get away with a thing. So we shared this particular topic with our members through social media. Did we get any feedback?
Melissa Riccobono:
We did. But before that feedback, as always, let's just take a quick break for an ad and then we'll come back and give you much more.
Anil Lewis:
Look at that little teaser.
Melissa Riccobono:
You're listening to the Nation's Blind Podcast.
Ad:
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Melissa Riccobono:
Alright, we're back. So Janalynn from Louisiana says, "I take pictures of my children's worksheets and read them before we do them. That way I know what they have to do, and it really has given me a heads up in helping me do homework with them." That's great, great, great technique.
Anil Lewis:
Interesting. I wonder if she's using AI to read the worksheets or if she's just using it to magnify or something. That'd be interesting to see when taking the pictures.
Lisamaria Martinez:
Yeah, I did the same thing.
Anil Lewis:
Did you?
Melissa Riccobono:
You did the same thing. Got it.
Lisamaria Martinez:
They had Spanish, so I would take pictures of that because screen reading software just butchered (laughs) the Spanish word, so I used it to magnify.
Anil Lewis:
Oh nice, nice.
Stacie Leap:
Yeah. I did something similar. Alana started Head Start and kindergarten while during the pandemic. So a lot of the things were virtual on the screen and we had to use Chromebooks. And Chromebooks are not, to me, not accessible as a Windows laptop or an Apple laptop. So I ended up having to take pictures using my phone and using the built-in OCR on there. Sometimes I even go through seeing AI and be my eyes to kind of help through what the worksheets are.
Anil Lewis:
Nice. Look at these resilient parents.
Melissa Riccobono:
Really good techniques. Deja from Utah says, "I'm a newish blind mom, and my little girl is sighted. I love to have her explain her homework, artwork and other projects to me first because it gives me a really good idea where her thoughts are on the project, even though I can't see it. It helps me feel involved in her creativity and helps her learn to explain and describe things to me." I love that so much because I think that's a skill that kids of blind parents get because we always talk to them. We can't just point. We always have to talk to them and have them answer and have them explain. And if they hear described videos or audio books even, I think, I mean, my oldest from a very early age, like LM's middle one. Whatever it was, she could describe it. And everybody has said about all my kids, their vocabularies are great. They have really good vocabulary. And in fact, even Elizabeth's pre-K teacher, and this is kind of a different side of it, because Elizabeth's also a blind kid, and Elizabeth's pre-K teacher said she started describing the covers of the books, the illustrations on the covers of the books before she would read them to the class because of Elizabeth, because she wanted to make sure Elizabeth knew what was in the pictures.
Anil Lewis:
Very nice.
Melissa Riccobono:
And she said eventually she started having the other classmates in the class describe, and she said, "It's amazing how much it helped their vocabulary." And she said, "It's amazing the things that they noticed that I didn't." And just the things that they were pointing out. And as we went through the book, they would find things. It was just really cool. So vocabulary is great.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah. It's another example of how just being a blind parent and coming up with those creative ways to make sure that you can be that quality blind parent also peripherally helps your child grow. I mean, that's also an exercise in perspective that a lot of sighted parents probably wouldn't engage in, at least not at that early age. But because of the necessity for full engagement, you're actually teaching them a skill.
Lisamaria Martinez:
That validates what you said Anil earlier, that your kid might be describing something or looking for whole wheat bread instead of white bread, and you're teaching them already how to be a reader, how to explain. And I think a lot of children their age just don't know how to do that. So I feel like my kids in many ways are a little bit more, the word that pops in my mind, it might not be the right one, is mature than their fellow peers because they have this stronger vocabulary and all these other skills that their friends don't have. And Melissa, you brought up a really good point about describing an audio description. All my kids listen to audio descriptions on all the things they watch. And many times when we have family movie night, if something has no audio description, they're like, no, we don't want to watch it. They decide it for me. And I'm like, you could just practice describing things. And my oldest does that for soccer games and basketball games...
Anil Lewis:
Oh wow.
Lisamaria Martinez:
And sometimes he even goes, I'll be like, what does that mean? He goes, "I got you mom. Let me show you," and he'll bring up this (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh my gosh. I mean, there's money to be made in that. He could be a play-by-play announcer.
Lisamaria Martinez:
I told him that, yup.
Melissa Riccobono:
Or I mean, just an audio describer in general. I mean, there's jobs. You can get jobs doing that even if it's not his full-time job.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah, Melissa knows, for real.
Melissa Riccobono:
I do know a little bit, for real. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, I've been having that opportunity.
Stacie Leap:
Alana didn't even know that movies didn't have audio descriptions.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, that's funny.
Stacie Leap:
Yeah. It wasn't until that we went to my grandma's house and she was like, "Mom, they're not talking, there's silence. Why is there silence? Everybody should be talking all the time." I'm like, no, that's audio description. She was like, "Oh, well, I don't want to watch this no more." And with her, when she draws pictures, I notice that she's more spatially aware of what she's drawing. Even to this day, she'll put my hand on different parts of the page and say, this is the sun. I drew the people to the left. She describes everything. But then there's been times where she was like, "I drew the mom over here, but I didn't have enough room for her legs. So the leg's over here to the left." I'm like, okay.
Melissa Riccobono:
(Laughs) That's so funny that she didn't know that there were movies that didn't have description. It reminds me of when Cynthia was little, probably three or four. And one day at dinner she said, "I wish I was blind." And Mark and I sort of looked at each other. We were like, where's this going? And we said, how come? And Cynthia said, "Because I want to be a dad."
Well, I want to be a parent. Well, I guess I should go there. So for those that don't know, Cynthia is transgender. And so at the time, she was identifying male. So at the time she did say, "I want to be a dad just like you daddy." And then we had to say, but you can, sightedness does not hold you back (laughs). But we had to actually think through and we kind of were like, wow, okay. So yeah, this kiddo has seen this blind parent and that blind parent, that blind dad, that blind dad.
Anil Lewis:
Wow.
Melissa Riccobono:
And so we had to reach like, oh, this person in your daycare, he's sighted, he's a dad (laughs).
Anil Lewis:
And that became the norm. That's powerful.
Melissa Riccobono:
It was just the norm. It was beautiful. It was. That's one of my, and I didn't even think about it until Stacie, you said that your daughter didn't know that there was no movie description. Ours wanted to be blind because she wanted to be a parent. I don't know that she still has that desire even to be a parent. But at the time it was lovely (laughs). So this is a good one. Christie from Arkansas said, "The hardest thing is to not do too much for them. Enabling them, advocating for your children is so important, but also teaching them how to advocate for themselves is more important. I grew up having typical difficulties like any legally blind person, but the reality of how hard it is didn't hit me until I had kids. Having to get anywhere: doctor's, groceries, sporting activities, etc, in a rural state is a gut in a parent's stomach when you can't do something for your own kids. I wish I knew more about being a blind parent before having children." That's really powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that because especially in a rural state, I would think that would be difficult. How have you, Stacie and LM, handled transportation? I'm sure you've had similar thoughts. Even if you're not in a rural area?
Stacie Leap:
I know for me, living in more of an urban environment, we take Lyft and Uber almost everywhere. When she was little, we took public transportation and I would put her in the front baby carrier instead of using a stroller. Until she got too heavy, y'all, then I had to get a stroller (laughs). Even when putting her inside an Uber and in a Lyft, I'm using the car seat. So I would have to take her out, put her in one arm, sling the car seat around me, like a book bag, and then have the diaper bag in it. It's a lot of multitasking. I'm surprised I didn't drop the child yet. But (laughs).
Lisamaria Martinez:
Yeah, my kids are so active in extracurriculars that transportation is really difficult with a one driver family. My husband drives and obviously I do not, when they were really little, carrying the car seats in one arm, the diaper bag on the other, it got heavy. It got hard. But they wanted to do soccer, and I wasn't going to say no, but now, dude, Uber for teens has been just the most amazing thing ever. When your kid turns 13, you could create an account on the Uber app and basically it allows your kid to set up their own ride and take it wherever they need to. That has helped immensely.
But we've made friends with teammates and everyone on the team absolutely understands, and they ask for help too. It's just not our family who says, we can't drive to Fresno this weekend because our other kid is doing a game. And people help people no matter who they are. And just one more thing about transportation. We have something out here called BART: Bay Area Rapid Transit. It's basically like a train. My kids love all the different ways that I travel with them. And one day my kiddo was like, "Mom, I like going with you to places because we see interesting people and do interesting things."
Anil Lewis:
Nice, nice. I think one of the things that's important to point out is everything that you guys just described, it's not a blind thing. The struggles that you're having with the diaper bags, etc., that's a parent thing. And the fact that we as blind people can really find ways to get the job done non visually is really kind of core to who we are. But I think that the most powerful part about this particular post is that it really amplifies the need for the Federation. So here's this individual that through this particular effort that we're doing, is able to feel safe enough to disclose that they're having these particular problems to an organization that can really help. So I think that part of the difficulty is we've been there, done that, got that t-shirt, developed some strategies, and sometimes maybe we present it as maybe a little easier than it really is. So it's nice that when we can create an environment where individuals who are going through what we all went through, especially that first time, right, had to learn. So I'm very happy about the fact that what we're doing here is having that type of impact.
Stacie Leap:
I think that transportation caused all of us to have great arm muscles.
Melissa and Anil:
(Laughs)
Stacie Leap:
Having to figure out how to do the diaper bag and the car seat and the baby. Yes.
Melissa Riccobono
Isn't that the truth.
Anil Lewis:
Look at the lemonade.
Stacie Leap:
Oh my goodness. I think the biggest part of my body or my arms now (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Well, and I also think it really helps our kids. I mean, my kids walked.
Anil Lewis:
I did. I did.
Melissa Riccobono:
I'm not saying I made them walk five miles when they were tiny, but I mean, we did do a lot of walking and I mean, yeah, my arm muscles were also strong because "Mommy, I'm so tired, carry me." And so you have your cane or your dog in one hand and you're carrying a kiddo on your hip and you're just hoping. But I mean, I do think there's a lot. And we used to play games when we walked. We used to talk a lot when we walked. It was kind of like our car. They say now, especially with teenagers, they say that the best time to have conversations often is in the car because you're not needing to look directly at each other. You're both kind of doing your own. You're locked in thing, but you're also locked in and you're having kind of this common experience of driving from point A to point B.
Anil Lewis:
I think it was better. I think walking was better than riding in the car for conversations. I mean...
Melissa Riccobono:
It was really good. But yes, I do echo. Uber for teens has been lovely. We cannot wait till Elizabeth is old enough. I'm sorry. Here I am doing it again, saying, I don't want her to grow up, and yet you're twelve. I just can't wait until you're thirteem. One day you'll be able to do this just because you turned one year older. But that does definitely help. But I think the rural state would be more of a challenge if you're way out in the country and you don't know a lot of people. I think that's really where that community comes in, trying to find those people, trying to connect with different organizations, trying to be creative where you advertise for drivers.
Anil Lewis:
But like LM said, it is people helping people. So you don't want to get to a space where you're thinking, oh, I'm so dependent because I'm blind. Well, there are other ways that you can reciprocate. You can pack lunches for the carpool or so I think that people should recognize that the blindness doesn't make you a dependent person. You just have to find creative ways to be interdependent.
Stacie Leap:
For me, I'm the pharmacist of my whole group.
Anil Lewis:
And the Benadryl. Yeah.
Stacie Leap:
We have some drivers, and I'm the one that brings all the first aid kits and they're like, "Oh, well, you're hurting yourself. Go to see Ms. Stacie." And at first there was a few parents who were very skeptical about me being the nurse/aid or whatever with first aid stuff. But then they realized I did it for my daughter. They're like, oh, well, she could do it for my child. So even that education about, even though we can't see, we can still help with the little booboos and stuff like that.
Lisamaria Martinez:
We often say to the folks who are driving our kids like, hey, if you ever want a break, a date night, we're happy to have your kid over. And so that was a great way actually for me to get to know who my kids were hanging out with. But yeah, we are the household where all the kids come at least, at least one time.
Melissa Riccobono:
That's great.
Stacie Leap:
You have energy like that. I can't do that. It's too many kids in the house. You have so much energy for that (laughs).
Lisamaria Martinez:
Just wait until you have six, thirteen-year-olds all under one roof. I did not have the energy (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
So we're kind of winding down. I mean, we could talk about this forever. There's a few resources that we can kind of talk about at the end, but I love this question. And so let's kind of do this one before we start talking resources. This question says, what are five tips that you would give to blind parents, especially new parents? It doesn't have to necessarily be five, but are there any that jump to mind that you'd like to share?
Lisamaria Martinez:
Grow your community, even if it's terrifying. Grow your community. And not just blind parents, but sighted parents too.
Melissa Riccobono:
It's good tip. Stacy, what's your number one?
Stacie Leap:
Bells don't always work (Laughs). Always look for an alternative. A lot of times always what might work, what you think for the majority might not work for you and your family, but always try to find an alternative.
Lisamaria Martinez:
I'm totally going to use your idea about putting it on cabinets, especially the snack cabinet.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, that's an excellent idea. I love that.
Anil Lewis:
These four don't have a chance. My advice is not necessarily blind parents specific. I just tell everybody, especially like the newborns, sleep when the baby sleeps. Don't feel any obligation to make sure you clean your house, whatever. Like Melissa said, don't worry about when the last time you took the shower, that baby's asleep. Go to sleep. The other thing is set expectations, and this is for blind parents. Set expectations for your child to be a good kid to have fun. Don't try to handicap them because of your disability. Try to make sure that you're making it possible for them to have the same experiences that their peers are having so that they can grow up and be integrated fully into society. And that's going to also help you become more integrated.
And then the other piece is don't give up. I think that sometimes we talk ourselves out of doing something as a parent because we don't feel like we can do it or it's just going to be overwhelmingly too inconvenient. But I took Amari, took karate class and all that stuff, and many times, because it was a local park, we were walking because taxis were too expensive. There was no Uber or Lyft. So we walked, about a mile, but we we're going to karate class. So let's get those muscles toned up before you start out. But we should always just not make excuses, just really focus on what's going to be best for your child. Again, I think that's advice for any parent.
Lisamaria Martinez:
I have to talk myself into going to the PTA events with kids screaming all over the place and running around and the PTA moms not knowing how to "handle me." Those are events I definitely have to talk myself into going.
Anil Lewis:
But you got to do it. You got to do it.
Melissa Riccobono:
You do. Or maybe you don't. And I guess that's kind of the counter that I would argue that you shouldn't ever compare yourself to other parents as far as, oh, I'm failing because this mom has her kids in ice skating, piano, flute, drums, gymnastics, soccer, basketball and football. And my kids only in, I don't know, science club, whatever it is. We also do have to be realistic. I've never chaperoned my kids field trips. I'd love to do that. I know my sister did it. She's blind. I know lots of blind parents that have done it for me, that just was not something that I was super comfortable with. Now, I've done tons of other stuff at my kids' school, but for a while I felt really bad. Like, oh, I've never done this. I should just do this. And then I thought, you know what? There's a zillion sighted parents that have never volunteered to chaperone a child's field trip, and I shouldn't feel bad. It's not necessarily even a blindness thing, especially now that I have chronic fatigue. It's much more an energy issue that I wouldn't want to be somewhere and really peter out energy wise and have all these kids and teachers that were depending on me.
Anil Lewis:
Well, to be clear, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't saying you should compare yourself to other parents. I'm saying when you're trying to talk yourself out of something. Push through.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, I agree. I do agree with that. And I would also say my top advice is get really good training as soon as you can.
Lisamaria Martinez:
Amen.
Melissa Riccobono:
Look to the future because there's never a perfect time to get good blindness training. But it's a really difficult time when you are a parent and have a very young child. Where do you even go? How do you make that work? And again, I know that there are parents that do, but there are parents that don't have that opportunity once their children are born. Now, of course, there's also parents that lose vision when their children are young or as their children are teenagers, and that's hard. But getting good quality training, and maybe it looks different for everybody.
Maybe if you're a person who's blind or has low vision and you're going to college and you're thinking, yes, I'd really love to have kids someday. Not only would good training help you with getting employment and becoming more confident, it will really help you in so many ways when you become a parent. And so I would just tell you that if you're looking ahead, it's so important. But if you have lost vision or if you didn't have that opportunity to have really good training, or if all of a sudden you're sort of struggling and trying to figure out what you could do or all the different techniques, that's really where, as LM said, growing your community.
And in this case, maybe definitely your blind community because maybe there are people that can help you. You don't necessarily have to go to a training center to learn to cook. It's great when you can, but if you really can't, but there's somebody down the road who's a really good cook and is willing to teach you, take advantage of that. Traveling; if you're not a super confident traveler, figure out some ways that you can at least get more comfortable because just as Anil said, you're going to want to travel with your child. You're not going to want your child to feel like, "Oh, I'm always stuck in the house when dad's watching me because he's blind. I always have to wait until grandma comes who can see for me to do all these fun things." That's not fair. And so really trying to figure out if it's not for you, doing it for your kids is super important. Or the kids that you will have or want to have. And that's also where our Blind Parents Connect Facebook group comes in, our Blind Parent Connection Podcast. AnIl, I know you were really involved with that.
Anil Lewis:
Shameless plug there. I've talked several times about how a lot of what we're talking about is not really different for blind parents, but we have to admit that there are things that are different. We have touched on some of those here, but it was so fun co-hosting that with David DeNotaris. We called ourselves two Blind dads.
It was just so funny. Trust me, it is helpful because what David did was he interviewed a lot of other parents, so you get really the wisdom and advice of a whole lot of parents with different perspectives and different strategies, etc. It was so much fun. But I'll never forget the time that he and I were talking about nursing. I'm like, that's not the two blind dads' topic. So it was pretty interesting, a lot of fun. I enjoy it myself and David did a great job with the interviews and the content there is still rich and still timely.
Melissa Riccobono:
Wow. So did people just go to Nations Blind and that's how they find that, or they just search for Blind Parents Connection podcast? Is that the deal?
Anil Lewis:
Well, I'm sure there'll be a link in the podcast notes.
Melissa Riccobono:
I bet you there will.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah. I just searched for Blind Parents Connect on Google, and it would took me right to the page.
Melissa Riccobono:
Great. And then we do have a Parenting Without Sight brochure. That's especially good to have in your back pocket when you're a newer parent. You can give it to hospital staff, doctors, social workers who might have questions about how you're going to do things as a blind parent. That was done a few years ago. But again, very timely advice and all of that kind of thing. So that's a really good thing. You can find that on nfb.org under our publications, I'm sure. Gosh, anybody else have good resources that I'm forgetting?
Anil Lewis:
Shameless plug for one of my mentees that's coming up, they have a Blind Parents podcast, is these young blind women that are parents, they call it Babies Down, Bottles Up. And it's just so much fun listening to them talk because they're just so real. So I encourage people to search for that.
Melissa Riccobono:
That's a great one. Absolutely.
Anil Lewis:
And then does Terry still do Blind Mom in the Burbs?
Lisaarmia Martinez:
No, she's changed to Mother something Runner.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah. Blind Mother Runner or something. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Anil Lewis:
Well, that's what happens when the kids grow up, you have to reinvent yourself.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, I know one. There is a book, Jo Elizabeth Pinto is the author. She's from Colorado, and she has a great book called "Daddy Won't Let Mom Drive the Car." And it says, it's like something about Tales of Parenting in the Dark or something like that. And she really wrote that book and wants to get it out there specifically because of the misconceptions in society. And there are just great anecdotes about her and her daughter and just different experiences. And she is just a rock solid blind mom. She's definitely one of my mentors and one of my moms in my blind community.
We used to have an email list. We actually still do, if you like email lists, you can subscribe to bl parent on nfb net.org. But Joe Elizabeth and I had our first babies close to each other. And whenever I saw her, because the list used to be very active, this was before Facebook. And whenever I saw someone would post a question and whenever I saw her answering, I was like, oh, this is going to be really breath of fresh air, refreshing advice. And it was, we didn't always agree on everything, but she was doing it her way and I was doing it my way, and she had great advice and hopefully I helped some people in different ways and it was great. So definitely check that book out as well.
Lisamaria Martinez:
I highly recommend the book. I got to review it before it got published.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh nice.
Lisamaria Martinez:
Yeah, it is so good. I really love it. We touched on this, but the Blind Parents Connect Facebook group is alive and thriving. We have over a thousand people who are on the page, and we've organized many, not all, a lot of posts by topic. So if you want to learn about traveling as a blind parent, you can search the travel topic and get a few posts.
Anil Lewis:
Nice.
Lisamaria Martinez:
Yeah.
Melissa Riccobono:
And we also have a meeting at the convention, the National convention. And Stacie, I know you have done a really nice job meeting with parents on Zoom. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? I know in Pennsylvania and you always, I'm guessing you really are happy to have people from other states join you guys as well.
Stacie Leap:
Oh, yes, definitely. So we hold a support group once a month on Zoom. It's the third Saturday of the month at 7:00 PM Eastern. We write parents from all over the country. LM has been on there. Melissa, you've been on there as well. So we do a variety of topics. Sometimes we have speakers from other organizations talk about positive parenting, dealing with disobedience, family dynamics, bullying. It ranges from all the different topics, and we're excited to have everybody join. We even had some people from Canada and Europe join as well from time to time.
Melissa Riccobono:
Wow. Nice. Very nice.
Anil Lewis:
Two other resources real quick I want to offer is we have the Parenting Without Sight, which you've already mentioned, but we also have the NFB training centers. And then there was one other piece that came to mind. Oh, yeah, being active with the local NFB chapter. So having that family. Yeah.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, well, yeah.
Anil Lewis:
But as we get ready to close, I do want to offer this. I feel like I'm closing off a presidential release with one of the usual offerings, but I was hanging out with some young people and Dr. Maurer, who was present at the time, and his wife, Mrs. Maurer, of course, they're both blind and he's really sharing with them on a real level. And he starts talking about, he says, "And yeah, the Mrs. and I, we have two kids." And then one of the young people says, "Really? How'd you do that?" And Dr. Maurer says "In the customary way."
Everyone:
(Laughs).
Anil Lewis:
So I'll leave that for you guys to ponder and until next time, remember, you can live the life you want.
Melissa Riccobono:
Blindness is not what holds you back.
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