I hope this is in the right forum…I seem to be bad at that, but I figured since it’s not really a factual question (since, clearly, the blind person is physically capable of hanging out with a child when no one else is around) I would put it here for the more “personal experience” angle.
So…anyhow, I’ve got this character, David, who’s legally blind. He can only really see very unfocused shapes and colors – not much definition on anything at all. He has cultivated very attentive hearing, so he can sort of track things around him by sound.
He’s living in a situation where there are four adults living together, caring for an a adopted six year old boy (very complicated situation, but it doesn’t really matter…) Two of the other adults work full time, and the other works part time and goes to college, so David, who can’t really work and is done with school, is the obvious spare who could watch the little boy during the day while everyone else is out.
That said, would it be safe/sane/possible for him to do so? Adrian, the little boy, is very sedate and well-behaved (he’d much rather draw than run around tearing up the house, largely because his real mother beat him mercillessly whenever he acted exuberant, so that urge has sort of died in him). However, he is still a child, and I don’t want to create an abusive situation where Adrian would be at a ridiculous risk because of this arrangement.
Does anyone have any experience with a person with serious visual impairment taking care of a child on a regular basis? How did it work out? Are there any gadgets/interesting household innovations that could make such an arrangement more easy for David and Adrian?
He seems to be old enough to understand instructions and generally well-behaved. Sounds to me like he should be safe… a friend of mine with the same level of visual impairment (her husband is completely blind, she sees blobs of light) has raised two seeing daughters. The two grandmothers took unofficial turns being around when the kids were in the crawling stage.
Depending on how old the kid is, telling him that he’s got to help David take care of him could be a good idea. It worked to keep myself and my cousins where Auntie Ana Mari could reach us - she was so blind that she was the first person in Spain to have laser surgery, paid by social security, and she still was legally blind afterwards even though her sight had improved (now she can recognize a big colored blob as being a moving car, and smaller colored blobs as being moving people or standing people or sitting people; before, she could basically say “there’s light, there isn’t light”). Since it was only us three eldest, that means we were less than 6 at the time.
My friend is completely blind and is raising her own daughter, who is now 5.
She is doing a fine job of it.
Of course, she has been a teacher all her adult life so she has much experience looking after kids. She doesn’t miss a trick.
Also her kid has been socialized since birth to having a blind mother - she knows that (for example) lying about what she’s doing when asked is a serious, serious problem. Another advantage that your character may not have.
But overall, assuming the kid is not a deliberate jerk and that the visually impaired adult is as attuned to non-visual signals as the other blind folks I’ve met, it seems quite reasonable.
I was babysat by a legally blind person, who might have been able to see a little better than your character David, but not much. Actually, both my sister and I were. I was probably about 7-9 and my sister 5-8 or so, and there were no problems related to her vision. The house was a bungalow, so there wasn’t very far we could go to be out of her hearing, which helped, but it wasn’t really an issue. It was actually quite fascinating - I’ve forgotten pretty much everything, but she showed us a bit of Braille and her cane (we used to love flipping it open!) and even showed us how she organised things in her cupboards (though if she held cans of food or a piece of clothing up to her eyes, she could read large writing/see patterns). She was a great babysitter. Sometime around the time she stopped being our babysitter (we moved away) she had a baby of her own, and about 4-5 years latter lost her husband in a work accident, and she’s still managed fine.
My one complaint… she was WAY too much of an Elvis fan! I don’t think she could see how creepy that velvet portait was!
I spent a year looking after my 1 - 2 year old boy while waiting for cataract surgery. While it was a bit of a nightmare (put him down in the park and he’d literally disappear after ten steps away from me) we managed. I learned lots of ways of coping and apart from horrible things like stepping in poo a few times (we had wood flooring and it was the same colour - ewwww) we survived.
I did dress him in very vivid clothes and had a rule that he had to ride in his stroller if we were on busy roads or in shops as he had a horrible habit of running off.
It was wonderful when I had the cataract surgery done though, I could read books, let him loose and I do regret that last six months when he was changing so much but I didn’t see it - his hair colour was even different! (And my husband grew wrinkles and got grey hairs but that’s another story!)
I actually have a blind friend (who just incidentally is named David) who has babysat my daughter a number of times. Before my middle daughter, EtherealFreakOfPinkness was old enough to babysit the wee bairn, I’d get Dave to come over. Ethereal could chase little mudgirl all around the house, but Dave was here if adult input/opinion/etc. was needed. Also, he sometimes babysat without Ethereal here, when mudgirl was already in bed. It was vital that he have the phone close at hand (or know how to get to it quickly), and knew precisely how to get to the baby’s room in case he needed to. He knew how to change a diaper (he never really had to, but knew how, and knew where all the important stuff was), etc. All was fine. Actually, as mudgirl got older, Dave enjoyed playing with her, because a lot of her toys had sound and/or were very tactile (building blocks, interlocking rings, etc.)
I also know that he frequently babysat his nephew.
It is vital, especially in a house that they don’t live in, that the blind babysitter know exactly where stuff is, since they can’t hunt for it very effectively; but they certainly can, and do, make decent babysitters.
There was a story in a recent issue of some Catholic Magazine that my mom gets that I read for lack of other reading material in the house.
The lead story that month was a couple, now in their 70’s or 80’s, who are both blind, and how they raised 10 kids on their own. She obviously was a SAHM, and I beleive he sold insurance for a long time.
Just thought I would share.
I have a friend with a disability. Being sat for by a blind adult was one of the most positive, affirming events of her life–she routinely describes this when she visits my undergraduate classes as a guest speaker.
I’m happy to see that everyone thinks this is very possible, because I think it will be a very positive experience for both Adrian (who unfortunately underwent some very adverse, loveless conditions before he was adopted) and David (who only began to really lose his sight when he was about 14, and so, justifiably, feels a bit robbed and quite frustrated at how helpless he often feels because he can’t do a lot of the things that other people do anymore.) This will give David something positive to do, while helping to heal Adrian a little from his terrible past.
