Parents of the Blind

When a mother learns that her baby is blind, she usually reacts like a little girl taking care of a "sick" doll--she babies it, overprotects it, cushions it from bumps and bruises. Too often she feels shame and self-pity, and a vague sense of divine punishment. Chicago social workers had seen a lot of this: when they got the parents of a group of blind children together in 1948, they saw youngsters of four or five still being bottle-fed and in baby carriages.

Urged on by the social workers, a few parents of blind children set out to see what could be done. Last week Parents of the Blind was incorporated in Illinois; it had 250 members, a bright record of three years' accomplishments, and an ambitious program for the future.

End of the World. President of the group and one of its most active members is Mrs. Robert G. Davidson, wife of a Chicago advertising man, who learned in June 1949 that her four-month-old daughter Patty was blind.* "What that meant to me," says Mrs. Davidson, "was that Patty would never be able to play like other children, never grow up to know the fun of dances, skating parties, sleigh rides. It was like the end of the world."

But then somebody told Mrs. Davidson about Parents of the Blind; she joined, soon became secretary, then president. All members have a double job: first, to learn from experts how to handle their own children; second, to reach other parents and pass the knowledge along. Mrs. Davidson showed how well she had learned when Patty began to walk at 16 months (many blind babies still crawl at 24 months). She learned to teach Patty to feed herself. "You stand behind the youngster," she explains, "and ease her into a regular rhythm--dip, slide, and in the mouth; dip, slide, and in the mouth." Last summer Mrs. Davidson got Patty, 2 1/2, accepted in a nursery school with normal children.

Bumps & Bruises. The main thing, Parents of the Blind believe, is not to segregate their children; for this reason, they are fighting to get them into regular schools. Says Mrs. Davidson: "Most people are seeing people, and the sooner a blind child can be associated with them, the better for everybody." Another member, Mrs. Seymour Golden, emphasizes the need for teaching the children about their surroundings. "My little girl knows what a potato peeling is, what pans and spoons feel like," she says. "Of course I have to be careful that she doesn't get her hair caught in the mixer. But even when she falls downstairs, I know she's learned something important."

The bumps-and-bruises school has done wonders for the parents as well as the children. "You learn to quit feeling sorry for yourself," says Mrs. Davidson, "and to let your blind child develop. Best of all, you learn to quit shriveling when somebody mentions the word 'blind.' "

*A premature baby, Patty was a victim of retrolental fibroplasia (TIME, Aug. 29, 1949), an increasingly common cause of infant blindness.

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