I Teach Texas

Texas boy learns to maneuver with limited vision

DALLAS — Does anyone really like tiramisu? Why are there so many Chinatowns? These are the questions on the mind of an 8-year-old boy.

But early one June afternoon, a different puzzle was at hand as 8-year-old Zach Thibodeaux walked, blindfolded, down his suburban street, his white cane only partly guiding the way. Making intermittent clicks with his tongue, he traced the sidewalk, his instructor just behind.

He paused, unsure . then reached out with the cane and found one of the stout, stone mailboxes common in his Lewisville neighborhood.

"Good," said Daniel Kish, founder of World Access for the Blind, placing a hand on the arched structure. "We don't have mailboxes like these where I come from. These are brick bunkers."

Last fall, Zach — who just finished second grade at Mary Immaculate Catholic School in Farmers Branch — was diagnosed with cone-rod dystrophy, a degenerative eye disease that will ultimately render him blind. This month, he spent several days working with Kish, whose 10-year-old organization, based in Long Beach, Calif., aims to teach the blind not just to be functional but to feel able to pursue their dreams.

As part of his training, Kish and his crew teach a disciplined form of echolocation — what bats use to "see" in the dark. By sending out sound waves in the form of carefully honed tongue clicks, Kish said, the blind can effectively sense what's around them, taking acoustic imprints of their surroundings as waves echo back.

"It's like putting clay into a mold," Kish said. "The sound is taking the shape of the environment."

Down the street, Zach — whose task was to note nearby objects — paused again.

"There's something to your right," Kish told him, guiding him back a few steps toward a rail-thin signpost. "You heard it after you passed it."

Kish himself is blind, though you'd hardly know it to see the confidence with which he moves around. He's hiked alone, mountain biked, gone solo-camping for days at a time. At 45, he travels the world, teaching and speaking about his craft.

We live in a visual society, where the idea of sound-oriented mobility is hard to envision. Kish's training, then, is about more than getting around obstacles; it's about overcoming them — as well as societal attitudes that put limits on blind kids' potential.

"We see it a lot," said Juan Ruiz, one of two instructors who work with Kish. "Blind people have things handed to them. If I say, `Where's the trash can?' — odds are somebody will say, `I'll do it for you.' That's the reality of the world these kids live in.

Dr. Guffanti Changed the Way I Teach | Texas Homesteader

Last August, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop by Dr. Stephen Guffanti.  He is a medical doctor, who also has dyslexia and ADD/ADHD.  I wanted to listen to what he said on the subject of ADD, but I did not foresee that his talk would effect me in such a deep way. 

My husband and I always joke that if our son, Jake, attended public school then we would be called every day by either the prinicipal or teacher.  We assume that they would beg us to put Jake on medication. 

After attending the workshop with Dr. Guffanti and reading his book, Does Your Child Really Have ADHD? , I came to the realization that Jake does not have the disorder despite all his seeming trouble focusing, retaining information, and hyper behavior.  Instead he is simply a very kinesthetic learner.