1. How does attachment style in blind children differ from those who are not?
An experiment done by Mary Main concluded that there are 4 different attachment styles both for children and later discovered by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver that the same can be applied to adults:
Secure: Child protests caregivers departure and looks for comfort
Avoidant: Little distress upon caregivers departure
Ambivalent/Resistant: Distressed upon caregiver's departure, but unable to comforted upon the return
Disorganized: Display of contradictory behaviors
While it is the bus/taxi drivers that drop the kids off, not the parents, I wonder how our presence in the classroom effects the children. One boy, for example, will give anyone a hug. Is it that he doesn't get enough attention at home? Or is it that his mother is avoidant when dealing with him? One of the girls shows no change in emotion when we say she is going home nor does she show any emotion when she enters the classroom. One thing she does do is cry a lot despite being greatly attached to one of the other teachers. These are the kids that are completely blind as opposed to the ones who can see, but only slightly.
On Sunday, we had a Chanukkah party with the parents. It was mostly the moms, but there was one or two dads, at least in my classroom. The kids all look exactly like their parents. It was adorable seeing them together. It was also easy to see why some of the kids act the way they do. The boy who is always giving out hugs, had a mother who didn't really seem that interested in making the dreidel with her son. He is obviously vying for attention. In my opinion, I think that he wants to be touched so that he knows he exists. His whole world is through sensory tactility. Even when I put him to sleep, I will hold his hand. This doesn't usually help, but at least he stops crying.
The girl who is attached to everyone, but has one specific one she loves, and who I would classify as "secure attachment", had both her parents there as well as her older sister from one of the other classrooms. The girl who is the most independent and talkative had a mother who let her be creative while guiding her in the correct steps. And the boy who is quiet, but knows exactly where to put his arms and legs when you pick him up has mother who is quiet and shy, but was attentive towards the boy.
2. How are the blind affected by gender stereotypes?
In many of my psychology text books, there was always the claim that children learned about stereotypes based on observation. One specific example that I remember was a picture of a girl putting on lipstick with her mother. If blind children are unable to observe because of their impairment, how do they realize their gender? I could see that if a child heard mostly women's voices from the kitchen and mostly men's voices from the living area, that an assumption could be made that women are in the kitchen because they do the cooking. That's how females learn that stereotype. At a family get-together, who are the ones that are usually in the kitchen helping out and who are the ones sipping a beer on the porch?
I ask this question because one of the kids was wearing his twin sister's socks. Another boy was wearing a pair of pants that were clearly from the girls' section. Being unable to see what colors and style they are actually wearing, how is gender specified. In addition, I wonder if blind children are more willing to play with toys that are commercialized for the other gender. There are no gender specific toys in our classroom. There's a pink ball or a purple bell, but no Barbies and trucks. Because they are unable to see this gender-specific toys, how do they understand the world in terms of "male" and "female"?
3. Where/How does a blind individual pick up certain social cues?
When seeing-individuals talk to someone, they are subconsciously reading the other's face. We see when we verbally hurt someone when their facial expression changes. We then know not to talk about that subject anymore and we move on to a different one. Since the blind are unable to see these subtle changes, are they more in tune with tone of voice? Even seeing people use their sub-conscious to determine tone of voice.
On Friday, I was across the room and called to one of the kids. She turned, looked at me, and gave me the cutest smile and sparkling eyes. When I call the blind boy's name, he'll turn his head and say "what?" He doesn't realize that the correct social response is to turn and respond to my smile on my face. This also goes for table manners as well. Obviously one and two year olds don't really have table manners. However, they know they are supposed to sit until they are done eating (even if they don't want to) and they know how big of bite they need to take, most of the time, so that they won't choke. The blind boy is able to feel how big the cookie is, but he still stuffs the whole thing in his mouth and asks for another one. He is always the first one done with breakfast and lunch unless one of us gives him his food piece by piece. The seeing kids still stuff the food into their face, but they don't usually bite off more than they can handle.
4. What's the standard for determining attraction?
I think it would be interesting to look at married blind couples. There have been experiments where it has been proven that the most successful marriages are the ones where the two people have similar facial features. I guess the blind would be able to use touch as their method of attraction, but what how else do they determine this? While physical attraction is not everything in a relationship, it is part of it so how do the blind take this into account, if at all?
When I was sitting in a classroom listening to professors lecture me about how so-and-so had a huge list of questions, all I could think of was "how has everything not been answered already?" However, working in an environment of my interest promotes me to think about the psychology behind how these blind children grow up. It's a very different world if you are blind and as a seeing-person, I imagine a difficult one too.
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