Would you hire a blind babysitter?

I have the same nightmares other parents do. When my daughter was three, I had a nightmare about her running out in front of a truck at night with her purple coat on and being hit. I got rid of that coat and I was paranoid about her being near roads after dark for at least a year after that. 

But I have a special nightmares too--those involving newspaper headlines. And that's not because I've been a journalist (except possibly because my brain knows all to well how the media works). My nightmare headlines say things like:  "Child drowns in river while blind mother is oblivious" or "Community shocked to learn mother of hit-and-run victim couldn't see the car coming."

Because there are a few facts are simply unavoidable:

1. A few children will die or be horribly injured in tragic accidents ever year.
2. Some of these accidents are due to parental neglect. Many are not. Helicopter parents are not all that much less likely to lose their child to a terrible accident. 
3. Most people, including most journalists, wouldn't think a blind person could safely keep track of a toddler.
4. I'm legally blind and I have two young children.

On number 3, I know this because blind parents who go out in public with a white cane and small children all get asked the same questions over and over again, such as "Why did you get pregnant and risk passing that on to your child?" and then "Aren't you afraid they'll get hurt if you aren't looking?" I've been on the receiving end of those questions and I know plenty of other visually impaired parents who've heard them too.

That's why I have extra nightmares. The irony is that I am not really worried that my vision impairment could specifically cause me to miss preventing an accident.

Here is just one example of why I think my kids are just as safe (and as unsafe) as any others:

When our daughter was two and a half, we adopted our second child. He was ten months old and he was extremely emotionally needy due to experiences in a not-particularly-progressive orphanage. As a result, our daughter became a bit more independent. 

A few weeks after we brought our son home, we went to a park by a river for a picnic. It was early in the day and there was no one else there. Our daughter was playing by a tributary stream, throwing pebbles into the water; my husband was reading a book; and I was changing the baby's diaper under a shade tree. I mentioned to my husband that he really needed to watch our daughter if she was going to play close to the river and he assured me that he could see her while he read. I don't have a real concrete idea of how fully sighted eyes work, so I accepted this, though I've since been told it isn't really possible. 

I remember looking up and catching a glimpse of the blur of my daughter's white shirt near the stream a few times. I can't see much beyond about ten feet, but I can pick out bright contrasts of color. Still, I was nervous. I didn't know why at the time, though I have since realized that I was subconsciously uneasy because the noise of the river made it so that I couldn't hear what my daughter was doing, which is how I normally keep track of her.

Once I looked up and didn't see her white shirt by the stream. I looked around and saw the splotch of white on the other side of me, about twenty feet away, near the steep river bank. My husband was facing that way though and I thought he was watching, so I went back to changing the diaper.

She ran back and forth between the stream and the river several times. There were bushes and trees around as well. If I had looked up and not seen her, I wouldn't have panicked. My husband later said he felt the same way, except that he wasn't on edge at all. He was reading his book and casually glancing up and down from it to keep track of our daughter's whereabouts. 

When I had  finished with the diapering process, I started  putting stuff back into our backpack. I happened to be looking up, watching our daughter by the river in a relaxed, summertime way.

And then she disappeared. 

It was silent. Or at least I couldn't hear a sound over the rush of the river. Not a splash. Not a scream. Not a peep. The splotch of her shirt was just there one second and then gone.

I leaped up, left the baby laying on the blanket and raced across the grass. Right by the  river, I could hear her flailing in the water. It was so cold that she couldn't scream. She had already been carried downstream a few feet by the strong current and was now hidden by bushes. I jumped into the river and had her in my arms in the space of three heartbeats. My husband was still putting down his book, looking dazed and alarmed, when I scrambled back to the bank. 

What did I learn from this experience:

1. Children can fall into a river much more quickly and unobtrusively than new parents usually think.
2. If children are by a river, an adult needs to be paying full attention at all times. 
3. If there is more than one adult, there needs to be a designated person to pay attention to children by water because relying on the idea that more adults will mean enough safety doesn't cut it.
4. Sighted people often take their ability to see where a child is for granted.
5. Being fully sighted isn't necessarily a great advantage in this situation.

We discussed this (at length) later. My husband agrees that if he had looked up and not seen our daughter by the river, he would have looked over by the stream. If he had still not seen her, he would have gotten up and gone to look behind the bushes by the stream. By the time, he determined that she wasn't there, at least 30 seconds would have passed and she would have been swept well downstream in the swiftly flowing river. She fell where she was immediately out of his line of sight, obscured by the bank and dense brush.

Parenting 101: We weren't close enough and neither of us was paying enough attention. It was only because I happened to be looking directly at her that disaster was averted. Overconfidence in one sense is dangerous.

I have learned a lot since then and I know many experienced parents (both sighted and blind) who know better than to make those mistakes in the first place. You don't have to be a helicopter parent to know that toddlers and swift water are a bad combination. 

Since then I have learned a lot about how blind parents do what they do as well. Under normal circumstances, I can hear very precisely what toy my children are playing with in the other room and what they're doing with it. They have asked me, when they got in trouble for messing with forbidden items, "Mama, how did you know?" For now, I just let them think Mama has eyes in the back of her head, because... these are trade secrets. 

But I also know what I can't see. If I'm with small children by a river without other adults, I will be physically right with the children. I won't be watching from a distance, if the water is noisy. This comes from experience of children and flowing water more than anything and my approach wouldn't be that different even if I was fully sighted. I know how easily accidents can happen.

A few years ago, a family member told me that I couldn't be safe watching small children because of my vision impairment. As it happened, a year later I was put in the situation of watching that relative's child plus my two children by a river alone for two hours. I had agreed to watch the three children by myself in that situation for only fifteen minutes. But the person who was supposed to arrive to help me, didn't show up for some time. And it turned into two hours.

That time, everything went fine, but I was still stressed out. I am reasonably confident that I can watch children by water, but three preschoolers on one adult (at a swimming hole where a child drowned the year before) isn't a great ratio in general. And this was made worse by the doubts some relatives had already expressed about my ability to watch children. I was uncomfortable with this situation because I knew that if a child slipped on a wet rock, I wouldn't be judged the way other parents are judged. I am inherently suspect.

That's where the nightmares about newspaper headlines come in. As much as I'm afraid of my children or other children I care for being hurt, I'm also nervous about the community wrath and lack of understanding that is likely to result if my child even suffers a common childhood injury.

In the light of the neon fact that I'm legally blind, some other facts that might well be overlooked. Those are:

1. My children have never broken a bone or been to the Emergency Room... yet. (Lucky dog. Could happen, just hasn't yet.)
2. My concerned relative's child has... both things, several times. (Not an extremely risky lifestyle. It just happens, but no one ascribes any special meaning to it because this parent has no disability.)
3. I taught preschool-aged children for ten years and never had a safety problem.
4. I've pulled a silently drowning child out of a swimming pool twice when no one happened to be looking. The first time I did it, I was twelve. (And, yes, I was legally blind then too.)
5. I am as careful or more careful than other parents when it comes to dangers like water and traffic without restricting children's play.

 It's never fun to know that you might be judged more harshly than others if you make a mistake. Granted, sometimes that's just life. But this prejudice raises other issues as well. Many parents won't let their children come to my house for a playdate. Might that be because they are nervous about the same things? What happens if someone brings up these kinds of issues in a custody hearing? What if a legally blind person wants to work as a preschool teacher?

I've discussed these issues with skeptical parents a lot, and it has often come down to a deceivingly simple question:

Would you hire a legally blind babysitter?

Believe it or not, I worked as a babysitter as a teenager. I'm not sure if the parents knew I was legally blind. My career wasn't very illustrious anyway... but for other reasons. One set of parents came home to find me leading their children on an adventurous expedition on their shed roof. If I hired a babysitter who did that today, there would be stern words.

And so it comes down to this. I'm not saying you should hire a "blind babysitter" because blind people always make great parents and childcare professionals. I am saying, hire a babysitter with a good track record, period. 

If he or she doesn't have a reference--not even from their own cousin or aunt who has kids, then I probably wouldn't hire that babysitter, unless I know them well personally and was prepared to be that first reference. (I'd also be careful of babysitters who take children on hikes on the shed roof, even if they might mature into good parents someday.) 

If you ran into an experience babysitter who has an excellent track record and references and also happens to have a disability, would you hire them? Does it depend on which disability they have? Do you have any chilling tales of water hazards to share? I love to hear from you. Comment below using the bubble icon on the lower left. Share this post using the icon on the lower right.