The words "see" and "look" are so overloaded in our language. We don't even realize we say them they're so entrenched in our vocabulary. When my daughter first lost her sight, I started paying attention to all the things I said that had, in some way, a reference to seeing, even if in many cases we didn't mean actual vision but more so as perception. It was staggering how much of my vocabulary I was going to have to change to be a parent to my daughter.
It turned out that I've had to change far less of my standard speech patterns than I initially expected. If I bothered to count the number of times I used words indicating "seeing" in a day, I wouldn't be surprised if it topped out over a hundred. Try it sometime for an hour when you're interacting with someone—or better yet, count the number of times something's said on a Zoom call or Google Meet in an hour's call.
My daughter is adaptable, as are most blind people by necessity, and while those closest to her may be more aware of the words we use and modify what we say based on the situation, most people around her for her entire life won't have that viewpoint. I just said "viewpoint," which is the perfect example of a sight-based word in our language with an indication of vision without really meaning seeing. The term wasn't even a plant in this post, they just happen, and they're everywhere.
Back to adaptability. My daughter mostly interprets seeing-based words to mean perception. She even uses them herself, like when she says, "I'll see you in a little bit." There are a few times though that what's been said might indicate she can't see while other people can. This has been happening for a long time, and my daughter rarely says anything. Yesterday she did though—and it surprised me.
My children were in the hot tub with one hour left before we were departing for the long drive home. They didn't want to get out. It was after three, and they hadn't had lunch, so they were not the most reasonable about doing what those adults were telling them they had to do. The fun had been had, showers were needed, clothes put on, lunch had and then with a full car, driving home for nine hours. None of that sounded fun at all, and they were balking.
My daughter didn't want to get out because she said she would be cold. My husband said she could eat her lunch on the deck and had gone in to make it while I manned the hot tub since we're still not comfortable leaving them alone in the hot tub. Uncle Eric was there, and he tried a different tactic, saying they could eat on the deck in the warm air and look at the nice view of the sky.
I didn't catch it, my son didn't catch it, and Uncle Eric didn't realize it. But my daughter did. She yelled at him, saying, "you insulted me!" We still didn't catch what had happened as she reluctantly got out of the hot tub and then went towards his voice and found his legs and beat on them as she said, "I'm blind, I can't see the view!"
Oh my goodness, Uncle Eric felt so bad. Honestly, I could have just as easily said the same thing with a slight higher probability I might realize views were a no go and say something like feeling the sun on their bodies to make them warm. He apologized to her, and I didn't know what to say right at that moment because she was one angry little girl. But like she always does, she got over it quickly.
When I got her in the shower, I told her that Uncle Eric loved her and would never intentionally insult her, that that kind of thing happened to us as adults and we said things without realizing it because she was so capable we sometimes forget she's blind. She wasn't mad at that point at Uncle Eric; I think pummeling his legs got her anger out.
The reason I'm telling this story is not because of what Eric said, but because of what my daughter said. In the past, admitting she was blind—even saying she was blind—was not something she did. The fact that she stood up for herself shows she's moving forward at accepting that she's blind.
The best thing we can hope for is in the future she'll turn it around into a joke and put it back on the person in a fun way, showing that comments like that don't bother her at all and she knows it wasn't meant as an insult. Hopefully, she'll be able to say something like, "the good thing about being blind is you don't have to look at all the bad views you sighted people have to endure all the time." Or something more clever than that. My clever button is broken this evening, and I can't come up with something witty as an example response.
So progress—hopefully—on accepting her blindness is happening. We've been on some Zoom calls recently with other blind children, and the ones who totally own their blindness and are comfortable with who they are are a lot of fun to be around. I think that's who my daughter will be in a few years once the anger of losing her sight has been processed. She likes who she is, not being able to see is hard on anyone though,
The Big Boy Update: Random statement in the car on the way home from my son yesterday, "Was Frankenstein a monster made up of a guy named Frank and a guy named Einstein?"
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: As we were getting in the car yesterday my daughter was suddenly frantic to find something in her backpack she wanted to give to Nicole, her cousin. She had me look for the small Marshall character from Paw Patrol and ran back into the house to give it to Nicole. She came out and said Nicole had said she didn't have to give it to her, but she was glad she had. Nicole was going to have a single dorm room in college this year because of COVID-19 and she wouldn't have a lot of things in it. She said she could put Marshall on the shelf and he'd be there with her. She said she had wanted to give her Marshall because "Marshall is her favorite Paw Patrol character."
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