Dealing With Social Supervision
All my life, my parents would accompany me whenever I left the house. They would bring me to and from school and drive me to and from extracurricular activities and special events. They would stick particularly close to me whenever I was in an unfamiliar environment.
When I was really young, I would almost always be near an adult who supervised me, especially when I was away from home. At school, I had an Education Assistant by my side nearly all day, and my Mom would be right by my side while attending music lessons and other activities most of the time.
As I progressed through High School, I had more opportunities to travel independently. I would travel from class to class on my own during high school, and attended the vast majority of my classes without an Education Assistant. I was familiar enough with the Music School building where I attend music class to be able to travel independently in that location, but still used occasional help. In 2016 and 2017 I attended an overnight summer camp for the blind called Camp Zajac, where my parents couldn't stay with me. I was under the supervision of camp counsellors and it was a great experience. I learned that I can travel without sighted guide as long as someone was near me to tell me to turn left or right. I also found it pretty easy to follow people just by listening to them. I took more advantage of that when I attended the Blind Beginnings Youth Leadership Training Weekend in April 2018. I stayed in a hotel room with another camp participant and travelled independently by following the group and taking directions from others as needed.
Having learned all those independent travel skills and having learned how to ask for help as needed, I still felt like I was under immense pressure to be chained to my parents more than I would've liked. I just felt it was wrong to have to be constantly chained to my parents as I got older. I started to want the freedom and independence my sighted peers had, but my parents are very protective and still didn't trust me to even travel to school on my own by the time High School was over. I will admit that major mind wandering issues while travelling may have factored into all this. I will go as far as to say that my vision teacher, my education assistant, my orientation and mobility teacher, my classmates, and my friends and teachers outside of school saw me as being more equal to my sighted peers than my parents. My parents recognize the importance of independence and blindness skills, but I still feel that the people that instill the idea that I'm not as independent or capable as my sighted peers are, in fact, my parents, and perhaps myself as well.
Conquering the effects of social supervision is going to be a lifetime battle. I am incredibly thankful for all my teachers and friends who have encouraged me to reach my full potential and not let barriers stop me. I still have a long way to go, but I am happy with how much I have broken through. Even my parents have begun to recognize that I can function more independently without them and how to get help from others appropriately. I'm also waiting for the day when all pandemic restrictions are loosened so I will finally be able to socialize more freely with others and work more on my independent travel skills.
by Ella