Hello, everyone. Today, I would like to focus on praise we receive from others related to our blindness, but of course, this could also be packaged into other topics of our lives.
Three types of praise come to my mind: genuine praise, false praise, and meaningless praise.
How do you know which type of praise you are receiving, and how do you respond to it in a productive manner?
Genuine praise is praise that is provided to you because the person who is praising you truly believes you deserve it. For example, if you are an intern in a school system and you show up early and leave late, the mentor teacher may tell you what an excellent job you are doing. First, you will know this is genuine praise because you know what the teacher is praising you for is true because you have actually been doing the actions for which the praise was given. Second, you will know because of the manner in which the praise is given by the teacher and due to the tone of the voice of the praiser. This holds true for praise from anyone. For example, someone might praise you for completing a difficult program by providing you with a certificate of accomplishment and, while doing so, he or she will be animatedly talking about how you put in the maximum effort to complete the task. Your response to such praise should be to say thank you verbally and/or in other meaningful ways.
False praise occurs when someone praises someone else for doing something marvelous or extraordinary as a result of ignorance on the part of the praiser about the task itself. For example, if someone praises you for playing the piano in a way that suggests you are an expert when you can only bang out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, this individual is providing you with false praise. It isn’t that he or she is saying you are accomplishing something extraordinary because of your blindness; it is simply that he or she does not know anything about the piano itself, and so the fact that you can simply play a song must mean you are talented in this area. This type of praise can come from family members or friends, (or others), who are proud of you and want to support you. The reason for it is sometimes due to a lack of formal education on the part of the person. Also, the person may have learning disabilities or other challenges, including mental challenges, that limits his or her ability to recognize your lack of talent for a given task. Sometimes, negative views of blindness can be mixed in with this situation, meaning that praise that results from a person’s ignorance about a task combined with his or her belief about what the blind are capable of result in this false praise as well.
How do you respond to this type of praise? Knowledge is key to solving any problem, and knowing why he or she is praising you as he or she is can help you come up with a planned response for this type of behavior. My family are from deep in the hollows of West Virginia. Many of them did not attend school beyond eighth grade if they made it that far. However, they are proud of me for what I do, but sometimes they do not always realize I can’t do some task. I only see many of them on rare occasions, and so for this situation, I say thank you. If they ask me to demonstrate my skill, I can explain that I really can’t play the piano; I know the very first steps of it. But, I’d be happy to show them how to do what I know. Now, if I know they are asking me to perform the task because of my blindness, I will often not satisfy their request. My response here is different unless it is a special occasion or it is simply a time that requires me to cooperate. See below for how I handle the blindness aspect of such situations.
Now, let’s focus on meaningless praise. This is praise that results when someone praises someone for doing something ordinary, and therefore, one does not need special attention for doing it. This type of praise is why I chose to write this blog today. Holidays are approaching, and many of us will be spending time around family and friends, including some we do not see often. Views of blindness for these people may not be what they should be, and the fact that a person who is blind can perform ordinary tasks, such as folding clothes seems as if that individual has extraordinary talents.
How do we respond when this occurs? I’ll admit that maybe I am not always the most patient blind person in the world when faced with this situation. The best response would be to educate, but instantly turning someone into a believer in the ability of the blind is impossible. So, our best reaction is to determine how we will choose to react beforehand to a situation and then to recognize the situation when it occurs. We can only show through example what we do on an everyday basis, and this is what we should do. If someone says to me to do something because I am blind and he or she is just so amazed, I often will not accommodate him or her. First, it is best to have those who know you are capable to support you, but this will not always occur. My best advice is to explain to the person that you are capable and do tasks like everyone else; you aren’t special just because you can wash the dishes. Because this is the case, you will not, therefore, show them how you can wash the dishes because you know he or she has observed this ordinary task on a regular basis. Then, you might try to explain that asking you to perform ordinary tasks is insulting to you, and so please not to do that. Remember to think about the person and show some patience, even though it’s hard, because this person holds negative beliefs about blindness because of society’s lesson about blindness. What your role should be is to help them become as confident with blindness as you possibly can, but you also have to realize that you can only do so much.
When I am talking about sharing feelings here, I am referring to family and close friends of family. If you are seeing a stranger one time only, you might just opt to not demonstrate yourself performing ordinary tasks and not share with him or her that expecting you to do so is hurtful.
When I am talking here about not demonstrating ordinary tasks to a person, I am only referring to the time when this person is asking you to put on a show for him or her. While around the person, you should continue to perform any tasks you would normally perform, regardless of their presence. By doing so, you are telling them that blindness is only one of your characteristics. It may happen that he or she is asking you to put on a show at the same time that you ordinarily do dishes; in this case, go ahead and do the dishes because you would do it anyway.
I’d be really interested to hear others thoughts on this matter. I can type about this, but it is easier to write than it is to carry out. And, it is probably one of my weakest areas as far as blindness goes. Please feel free to share.
Also, please share the Blindness Blog with others. Remember, it is okay to copy and paste text into a word processor or Braille translation program or to record it on audio for those who are unable to use a computer. Just remember to keep in tact any text and references that I have included so you are not plagiarizing the material. For example, I wrote an article way back at the beginning of the blog about the best educational placement for students who are blind, and this was a research paper I did for school. So I used external sources other than my own words, and if you choose to take text from this article, you would need to give credit to any text that I personally did not author, and so it is probably best to print the article in its entirety, including its reference page.
0 comments:
Post a Comment