So today Sophia received her first piece of mail in braille. It's funny because I realize that the likelihood of her ever actually needing to use this is pretty much non-existent as her vision is already good enough for her to read letters. None the less it peeked my curiosity as I looked over this jumbled "mess" of raised dots on a page and wondered how on earth anyone could ever make sense of such a thing? There had to have been a better way??
Well if their is one thing I've learned it's that there is nothing that YouTube can't teach us, and in fact after only a 20 min instructional video, "reading grade one braille" I realized that all though I obviously still can't read braille, it's not as confusing as it seems.
Perhaps I have here again another lesson learned; here I was making a judgement on braille simply because I failed to take the time to understand it. I know that this is human nature of course, but I have come to realize over this last year that making a judgement on something without being informed is really the worst thing you can do. Here I was still jumping to uninformed conclusions; I really have to work on learning to approach these things with more of an open mind.
This is just the beginning of a world that Sophia has opened our eyes too, it is completely foreign to me, I can't help but feel lost sometimes. How can you teach your child to read something that you cannot? How am I supposed to teach her things that I have no idea about? I have to learn.
I know she won't NEED to learn braille, but the fact of the matter is that she will likely be involved with many people who do, and how exciting is it that she will get to be involved in a world that most people will never get a chance to know? I'm learning to turn my fears of the futures' unknowns into excitement of new learning possibilities; how many children are fortunate enough to have all these organizations, and opportunities available to help them? Sophia may be on the lower spectrum of needing them, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't make the most of the opportunities presented to her. I hope we can get her more involved with the CNIB and that she can grow up with the realization that, while she sees worse then some children, she sees infinitely better then others. There is always a bright side, sometimes you just need to open the door to let it in.
