Loving People
Some years back my speech pathology case load included a unique group of about 100 or so patients from age 3 1/2 to 21 years of age....all of the patients were blind and something else....blind and deaf... or blind and hard of hearing....or blind with a motor problem....or blind and brittle bones....or.....it goes on and on...bottom line is you were blind and some additional profound diagnosis.

All of them....Wonderful and loving people....really loving and wonderful...the challenges they face are difficult to comprehend till you are there....funny stuff and sad stuff...all super individuals.....try teaching blind 4 year olds object sorting/object discrimintion/tactile memory....then try it with a deaf blind....
any way one patient was blind and autistic

he was a young child about 6.... extremely outgoing...wanting to investigate everything....he had already been living in the residental apartments a year of so....tactile modality big time...cannot see a thing so everything is explored with taste, touch, smell, location in space and time in day.....no vision....so sound and sound frequencies are the major source of imput for knowledge. Turn your back on this guy for 20 minutes and he will totally dismantle the vacum cleaner..the motor..the wheels...the cord...the bag...the switch on the handle...everything....he would leap on it like a tree frog on a fly....his tactile memory would be smoking...

This autistic blind boy most of all adored the modality of sound...especially music...sound is a tactile thing really...you known the air particle bouncing off your ear drums is tactile...

This Autistic and blind child's ultimate thing was music....he loved the Casio electric keyboard... he would spend all night with the instrument if it was not put up away out of his reach....he loved the production of music...all music he heared he could reproduce....he loved sounds and the field of sound we are all enclosed in....

He was a Rain Man with the Casio keyboard....combine him a a dorm of singing blind kids and away you go....all little angels...

Some of my fondest memories are of listening to those blind children singing their hearts out while he played the piano....at christmas time they sang and sang...it was so wonderful those young sweet voices singing....

Loved ones please include all visually impaired individuals and their loved ones in your prayers.
- posted by Samuel Bell @ 9:26 PM