Most people won't care about this rant, or even understand it

[phinnia]

Okay, so we got Sean's IEP back for his group - a six month review of his progress. And they just HAD to use the term 'sighted guide'. "Sean will walk sighted guide for blah blah".

WHY do we have to use this term? What fucking three year old kid DOESN'T generally hold hands with their caregiver while walking out in the wild? We just CAN'T normalize it, can we? We have to put the friggin' blindy stamp on it right away just so the kid will never get out from underneath it. Idiots. We can't just call it 'Sean will walk holding caregiver's hand for blah blah.'

I'm trying to decide if I should complain about this. I don't know. *sighs*

Edit: I did complain. (I had a few other things to mention too. I threw that in. I just really really hate that term.)

Comments

[machineplay.livejournal.com]

i'd complain. seriously. vehemently.

if Sean is comfortable self-navigating, then he should get to do so. if he wants his hand held, then he should have it held. like any other child. all he needs is assistance to learn a new situation, like any child. *hairpull* Sean's not the issue here, it seems, it's that his educational setting isn't constructed to teach everything he needs to learn in each situation. they will assign him a caregiver to compensate for the shortfall in their program design. :p

[ninjakitten]

I'd... let's not call it "complain," let's say I'd make an appointment to voice my concerns that it might indicate deeper issues. O;)

...ooh, edited. Good. Hmph. There is NO reason to make a distinction based on sight or anything else for a behaviour that's typical for all kids of the age.

[beachsomewhere.livejournal.com]

No, your point is absolutely right.

I'm glad you complained.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I understand your point, and think you did the right thing in complaining.

My hunch is that the people doing the IEP just learned that this was the term used for this behavior regardless of age or stage of development. And, with an older child, I could some utility for specifying why the aid would be needed. Would this term bother you if applied to, say, an ten-year-old? (I could see where it might, just checking.) So much of IEP langage seems to come straight from some set of impressive sounding boilerplate. Bleh.

We have IEP meetings for D coming up in a month in preparation for him moving on to middle school. It's going to be a bitch.

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

As applied to a ten year old it would bother me for an entirely different reason. The use of the term 'sighted' in that context really bothers me, because it assumes that a blind person is incapable of working in that role, which isn't necessarily the case (I've got a terrible sense of direction; Chris generally carries the map via his GPS system and has a much better time finding his way about than I do, for instance.). There are other terms (human guide or just guide, for example) that could be used that don't have the same implications. The whole 'sighted people are always right' mentality has no positive implications, only negative ones, and I've seen them time and again. Obviously we can't cushion him from every occurance of this, but we can get rid of some of them.
Good luck with D's meetings. I dread Sean going into kindergarten. :P

[nellwyn.livejournal.com]

Mark will walk with a sighted guide as well. In fact, he has to. He has no choice when we're outside the house. I agree with your complaint. Why do they need to emphasize the fact that the guide has sight? Did they really believe that we'd think they were guiding him with a non-sighted guide? And so what if they were? If he's none the worse for the wear, so what? Silly people.

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

Exactly our point. (As it happens Chris 'guides' him around more than I do. :-) )