The summer I was about 10 years old, I got an insight into how hearing children unfamiliar with deafness must have reacted to me or even felt about having to interact with me. That summer, I participated in a summer camp/school program for deaf children. It was held at a local school for severely physically handicapped children, and was operated jointly with a program for blind children. The people running the deaf program thought that putting the deaf kids and blind kids together would encourage us to be more understanding of each other. I'm sorry to say it had the opposite effect, in part because this was years before inclusion was widely accepted.
We deaf kids had no experience with blindness. I had never seen a blind child before. We were scared, awkward, uncomfortable. They showed us the braille typewriters used by the blind children and explained a little about blindness. It didn't make me any more comfortable.
The worst part was that they kept emphasizing how the deaf kids were supposed to be the blind kids' eyes and the blind kids, the deaf kids' ears. That was their hope of the outcome. Instead, the deaf kids kept to themselves and the blind kids kept to themselves. We had hardly any activities together, but when we walked around the school, we were paired up - one deaf kid with each blind kid.
I couldn't stand my blind partner, a little girl who jabbered constantly while I was trying to look ahead to see where we were going (remember as a deaf kid, I needed to look at her to read her lips, and obviously could not see where we were going if I did that!). One day I could not stand her jabbering any longer and I was so uncomfortable being with a blind child that I did something I will probably feel guilty about for the rest of my life.
We were walking through the pool area. I was holding my partner's hand. She wouldn't shut up, and I was so fed up with her that I let go of her hand - either on purpose or without thinking, I don't remember. Her feet kept moving, and suddenly - splash! She fell into the pool. Counselors were jumping into the water to get her. I got scolded, of course.
Another time, we were walking through the hallways partnered. My partner was jabbering away, and then suddenly she fell down, backwards! I was scared and did not know what was happening. The counselors knew what was happening. They let go of the children whose hands they were holding, and rushed over to make the child comfortable. The blind child had a condition called epilepsy, I learned later.
The discomfort I felt -- the lack of understanding of what it is like to be blind -- is this how the hearing kids felt when confronted with a kid like me? Maybe -- especially back in the less aware, less tolerant days of the 1970s.
