Growing Up Blind Conversations With Dr. G podcast

55:05

Send us a text My friend Susan who was born with retinopathy of prematurity and had 20/400 and 20/800 she is effectively mobility visually impaired – perhaps that cutoff is 20/500, so by 100 ? that’s a lot of stress. Susan and I met because she was the interim director of a program that I was hired to take over, she was the boss, and then I became her boss- e. Susan’s life experiences are as a “high partial” someone considered having a lot of vision at the school for the blind, and not so much at home. It’s a tough place to reside. – I really think this interview is raw, inciteful and worth a listen. Wow- she really never understood that it was her right as a human being to be able to feel safe – she began telling us that to get about she held her mother’s hand and she wasn’t allowed to travel alone until freshman in college or 16 -either way – all related to the other problem of her parents not wanting her to use a white cane – so as to attempt to conceal her visual impairment. That’s a rough way to grow up- I wish we could all just allow blind and low vision human beings to feel safe from the start. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Mike Jones born 1963 - grew up using echolocation until his first dog guide in his second year of college. 1:51:39

12 weeks ago1:51:39

1:51:39

Send us a text For New Years Eve 2024 I’m bringing you one of my all-time favorite interviews- conducted November 1999, just shy of Y2K- blind travel was not for the faint of heart. Born in 1963 –he didn’t get a full-time mobility tool until his first guide dog in his second year of college. Sit back and relax – this is a good one Mike’s honesty about the importance of mobility tools in his life is also filled with the push and pull of the lifetime of growing up with the philosophy that it shouldn’t be that hard to walk if you can’t see. Mike explained safe mobility has become to be the first and most important aspect of his life and his sincere wish is that everybody prioritize safe mobility for all blind travelers. Happy New Year!! Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Barbara born blind in 1953 her first long cane in 1980 when she was 27 years old 1:13:07

13 weeks ago1:13:07

1:13:07

Send us a text From 1999 – 2001, as a young professor I conducted over 100 interviews with employed adults with blindness. I was seeking insight into my profession from the everyday consumer – and I continue to learn and improve my practice by listening absent bias and judgement. This week we have Barbara Hadnott Her interview was conducted November 21, 1999 – She was born blind in 1953 – Her life is a vivid picture of someone who is at home with the reality of growing up blind, being active, smart, accomplished and yet for the first 27 years never knowing what was in her next step before she landed on it –. Barbara teaches us that to grow up being guided as a means of efficient blind travel is to accept to being guided as natural adult lifestyle. Yet, she felt able to finally break free once she got her long cane at age 27, and is seeking to become more self-sufficient. Let’s listen to a wonderfully fun and insightful interview Barbara What an amazing story of triumph– in every other part of life, Barbara was a pioneer and a leader – except the one that was set for her by circumstances beyond her control- Growing up without any independent means to feel safe when walking independently. Her life is a vivid picture of someone who is at home with the reality of growing up blind, being active, smart, accomplished and never knowing what’s in your next step before you land on it – It makes you prefer to walk with someone else, and all travel is with someone else. She can and does travel alone – yet this is not a competition – her life of having a guide for most travel was created from the ground up- from day one in her life. In 1954, when she turned one, there was no mobility tool available for one-year-old toddlers. Her parents never had a choice. There is nothing wrong with a life tethered to others, I guess- except that Barbara urged parents to start their children with the cane as soon as possible. Which is now possible with the Pediatric Belt Cane. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Audrey Born 1953 working mother who embraced wayfinding technology before it was cool! 1:22:43

24 weeks ago1:22:43

1:22:43

Send us a text Born in 1953, she got the full crazy treatment growing up blind. Yet, somehow she came through it all very well adjusted-a working wife and mother she has the same desires as anyone.. Her life is one lived just before the technology boom hit – before ride-share apps and other helpful smart phone tricks. Take a trip back with a very smart tour guide – growing up blind and living your best life in the latter half of the 20th century. She was pushed to be a free-range child until she changed schools, and the rules changed. She wasn’t given a long cane, but she was told to always use a sighted guide and never take the stairs. One summer after 8th grade she got “a taste of using a long cane for the first time” but she wouldn’t be allowed to use a long cane until High School. The fascination is how we get away with this, still today. Blind children still made to feel like something is wrong with them – but it’s the substandard tools that is keeping them from truly being equal. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Mike born 1952, blind due to RLF/ROP a MUST LISTEN for all O&M Graduate Students!: Part 2 1:48:54

30 weeks ago1:48:54

1:48:54

Send us a text This was one of the very early interviews I had done. Twenty-five years ago, late one evening I sat down across the table in my Hunter College office with good friend, Mike Levy. He had come prepared with written statements of memories and family lore surrounding his travel. I would recommend this interview to every graduate student studying O&M. Mike was taught O&M in the eighth grade – using a very rote method of instruction. His answers and memories are incredibly insightful about growing up a star of the “no pain, no gain” early intervention for blind babies. One can easily hold Mike up as a highly successful employed, married father of two – but there is no doubt the discussion of his travel is a very difficult one for him. He doesn’t like to be questioned too deeply about the meaning behind his memories. His narrative is, he possessed free, open, and no holds barred travel encouraged by his parents that made him the successful traveler he is today, but an adult who stays put waiting for a guide in a hotel room is someone who has had too many bad experiences to risk independent travel. He is proof positive that the “no pain, no gain” upside down childrearing methods caused deep wounds. It would take hours and hours to unpack the harm perpetrated on a human being wo wonderful as little Mike Levy who really is a superhero. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Mike born 1952, blind due to RLF/ROP a MUST LISTEN for all O&M Graduate Students!: Part 1 59:59

30 weeks ago59:59

59:59

Send us a text This was one of the very early interviews I had done. Twenty-five years ago, late one evening I sat down across a table in my Hunter College office with good friend, Mike Levy. He had come prepared with written statements of memories and family lore surrounding his travel. I would recommend this interview to every graduate student studying O&M. Mike was taught O&M in the eighth grade – using a very rote method of instruction. His answers and memories are incredibly insightful about growing up a star of the “no pain, no gain” early intervention for blind babies. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Judy Born 1952 - proof positive you can grow up without safe mobility and enjoy life to the fullest! 1:40:11

33 weeks ago1:40:11

1:40:11

Send us a text Judy is a poster child of success absent safe mobility. As a child, she had light and color vision – and that means she was mobility visually impaired. In the 1950s, she learned to use the long cane, but she wasn’t allowed to take it home until she was older. She didn’t really start using a long cane until grad school. She and her husband go on grand adventures around the world. He is a dog guide user and she a long cane user. Her fall into an open manhole is tough to hear – Judy is a delight. Yes, Judy proves that it is possible to grow up without safe mobility and be a highly successful adult– I’m just not clear why we ask this of our blind babies. But that's another story for another time. This is a laugh out loud great interview –Judy describes her life as a blind traveler before smart phones –with a great story of how she used Atlas speaks an accessible computer maps to help sighted people. I do have a hard time not crying when I hear how much she feels the ability to withstand pain marks the capacity of being a traveler. She said, "It just you don’t worry about getting hit. You don’t worry about falling down. I absolutely believe that one of the greatest survival—one of the things that, that spells how well a blind person does is how well—how able they are to tolerate pain." You might hear Judy and be inspired by how much a blind woman can enjoy life. I hear that too, but she also inspires us to provide little Judy’s being born today with a choice in safe mobility – to reduce the pain of blind travel. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Don McBride born 1936 became blind at age 11, O&M instructor before it was a grad degree. Part II 1:35:15

37 weeks ago1:35:15

1:35:15

Send us a text In every accomplishment – the O&M instructor in me wishes more value had been placed on his safety. His life is filled with accomplishments and yet- all I can hear is just how freakin’ hard it has been for him to get around safely and he blames himself – not the inferior tools he’s been provided… He taught orientation and mobility (O&M) too – learn more about that in Part II. Don McBride Recorded 8/28/99 Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Don McBride born 1936 became blind at age 11, O&M instructor before it was a grad degree. 1:37:57

51 weeks ago1:37:57

1:37:57

Send us a text This week is a real treat- I found Don McBride’s interview, he was born in 1936. He is a great storyteller and gives amazing insight into what it was like to be blind child in the 1940s and 50s- he became blind at age 11, he attend residential school and so had certain advantages – but, there wasn’t white cane safety at the time and his older brothers were determined to toughen him up which included knocking his head into trees and poles with a warning he better play outside and well… This is part one of his interview In every accomplishment – the O&M instructor in me wishes more value had been placed on his safety. His life is filled with accomplishments and yet- all I can hear is just how freakin hard it has been to get around safely and he blames himself – not the inferior tools he’s been provided… He taught O&M too – learn more about that in Part II. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Frances born 1952, RLF, prefers her Dog Guide over Long Canes 1:06:24

52 weeks ago1:06:24

1:06:24

Send us a text We are entering the 1950s with Frances who was born 1952 seven years after the first white cane was taught to a blinded veteran of WWII. She remembered knowing that she had to wait to learn to use a long cane once she became 15. This is a terrific discussion of her dog guide use and paratransit. If you’re curious about the reality of getting around while blind – Frances is fabulous- After Interview Thoughts In every way I asked, it was clear that Frances got around on the arm of someone else until she got her dog guide. There is nothing right or wrong with how someone moves about their world. Everything you hear from Frances about long canes and her ability to travel as a child... her narrative, is "everything was fine". She could take or leave the white cane, she got around her neighborhood and school, except to cross streets, and mostly on the arm of a friend. An O&M instructor listening will hear the truth – others may be lulled into false sense that Frances was fine- or that she had a choice. She had none. She was denied all form of independent safety until she was 15. She was raised to go on the arm of another, go in groups, stick together. In 2024, I think children with MVI/B can be trusted to have more safety in their lives, from the beginning - would be best. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Taletha born 1951 with no light perception 1:03:12

1 year ago1:03:12

1:03:12

Send us a text If you want some assurances that growing up blind, waiting until school age to get the first long cane can result in a well adjusted, fully employed and outgoing adult- then listen to Taletha. She compares working with O&M specialists who were sighted and blind. Overall, she felt she should have had much more time with either one of them – she had a 3 bus a day bus route to school every morning – in Detroit. She described herself as someone who these days preferred para transit, “Because this is a dangerous, cruel, unsafe world we live in.” Her story of being picked up by a stranger after getting off the wrong stop…well, the reality is – we need to care more about safety for blind people in every way. The kind of danger she reported, almost becoming the victim of a horrendous crime, is very different from the lack of safety growing up without an effective 2-step safety buffer before her earliest memories took hold. But, I ask us all, do blind people really have to be so tough to be accepted as independent? Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Patricia, born 1951 - To Use or Not To Use the White Cane The conflict is real 44:30

1 year ago44:30

44:30

Send us a text Patricia Montgomery is a terrific example of the seeds the world has sown. People with visual impairments are expected to be visually capable and blind people are expected to be treated as if they are sighted. Blindness and visual impairment are the most blatant form of stereotyping and marginalizing of a disability group out in the open. Consider the slur, ‘what are you blind?’ Being Blind is a reality for people, and it means they can’t see. It doesn't mean anything else. But when you ask Patricia to describe her vision and then ask her about her travel and cane use – it sounds very conflicted. listen to her story for consistency. In the case of Patricia Montgomery, she doesn’t know the name of her visual impairment. Her description of her visual functioning. I have good light perception. I can see how to get around pretty good. I have good, uh, color. I can tell color real good. She got her long cane and her confidence without it only grew stronger. Yet, unfamiliar places (or perhaps lighting) hard to say – there are times she pulls out her long cane. Is it the expectations of society, the limits of the white cane options or is it real – without the detail vision and reliance on color makes knowing if what is ahead is a drop off a puddle or simply a different floor color very challenging. A white cane cuts through all of the clutter and very simply and plainly says what it is – smooth surface, change in surface, drop off. Why is it so important to walk around with less certainty for blind and visually impaired folks than sighted folks? Perhaps sighted folks need to examine their expectations of blind folks – not one would expect a person who relies on a wheelchair to move about and ignore their need for a wheelchair in familiar settings. Let’s listen to Patricia – I only wish I had the vocabulary to have asked more about her being a student at the segregated school for the blind in the 1960s. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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For far too long adults have held an unrealistic expectation that blind babies will walk independently without the protection of a white cane. 12:05

1 year ago12:05

12:05

Send us a text This is the soundtrack of the video posted on YouTube. It shows footage from 1960s and audio tape interviews of children born blind in the 1950s. Marcia new she was blind when she entered kindergarten. She noticed her peers ran around and she didn’t. Running without a two-step safety buffer is not recommended. A 1966 blind high schooler is shown being shadowed for safety by a sighted peer. This sends the same message- sighted kids are more capable. But that is only true because he uses his vision for safety. Give the blind child a white cane for safety and you even the playing field. A white cane reduces the need to stay close to the wall - to ‘hand trail’ for safety. The job of the white cane is to follow a shoreline, locate objects and drop offs before your feet do. I am Dr. Grace Ambrose-Zaken. I am an orientation and mobility specialist who has taught white cane travel for 30 years. I invented the belt cane so that blind toddlers could grow up knowing only safe mobility. Join me in making 2024 the year we understand that blind babies really hate running their bodies directly into furniture and walls. They would much rather greet the world with their two-step safety buffer between them and it. Safe Toddles invented a safety buffer that works best for blind babies – more white cane designs are needed. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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BREAKING NEWS! Real Tape of Interview with Maureen born 1950 - Dives Deep into Real Life of Living Blind in NYC and Beyond 1:44:28

1 year ago1:44:28

1:44:28

Send us a text Maureen Moscato – a really good friend of mine – she is so funny. I found the original tape – It is worth a relisten!! She is much funnier than I am playing her!! Yay!! Maureen is a real treasure – her stories reveal a woman who grew up in the school of hard knocks and her resiliency go her through – but if you’re interested in the pros and cons of dog guides, long canes, waiting for O&M to get out of the house and be independent and blind politics and ADA- this is a really great listen all the way to the end. Maureen gives us a unique look inside the life of a blind woman, blind from birth– taxis don’t pick her up – she’ll see you at the taxi commission – Listening to Maureen you realize- for her- there are no obstacles. She demanded equal access Niagara Falls and then gleefully left her husband, who has some vision, behind – in the mist. Maureen dreamed of giving young children access to long canes – she said age 6, we say age 10 months. She is living proof blind kids can grow up without safe mobility, but why should we continue this barbaric tradition? Safe Toddles seeks to end the barbaric practice of blind babies walking without a two-step safety buffer between them and danger. And remember if you can go where you want to – please do so as safely as possible. Help support Safe Toddles – to bring safety to the lives of blind toddlers. Visit our website : Email: info@Safetoddles.org TikTok Facebook YouTube Thanks for listening! Please, leave us a review, ask questions and share with your friends!! Please donate to help Safe Toddles Inc. achieve our mission to provide blind toddlers with a solution for walking independently with safety. If you know anyone who needs a belt cane - go to ObtainCane…

Growing up Blind Conversations with Dr. G

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Marcia born blind in 1950 Classic Story of Growing up Independent without a Mobility Tool 1:48:26

1 year ago1:48:26