Category: Parent Talk
Hey all. I was wondering if any of you others who are blind have parents that know braille? My dad doesn't but my mom can braille if she looks at a cheat sheet first. But over all they don't know much braille. I had never bothered teaching them as I managed life without them knowing braille.
Troy
Troy, my father learned btraille when my oldest brother was a child. My brother is also blind. Like myour mother, my wife can do braille from a sheet of paper. One of my students told me she asked her mother to stop learning braille because she couldn't keep secrets. I gues this is a double-edged sword, or maybe I should say stylus.
Lou
When i started going to school and my mam was helping me with my homework she could read braille but now i don't think she remembers any.
Interesting topick.
My Dad doesn't know any but my Mum can write it if she looks at the book.
My Mom learned Braille right after I went blind as a baby, so that she could help teach me to read. She even Brailled a lot of my games for me, such as Candy Land, etc. It was a lot less expensive than buying the Brailled versions, and she did it accurately. She still remembers most Braille, but she's not nearly as fast at reading it as she used to be. Of course she reads it with her eyes, but she doesn't need a cheat sheet. Her Braille has understandably gotten rusty, now that I've grown up. I'm forever grateful that she cared enough to learn it. I think it helped make me the reader I am today.
My mother took an adult ed Braille class, but, never used it. I inherited her slate, stylus, and clipboard. Maybe she would have used her Braille if I hadn't boarded at school? My father and siblings never bothered to learn it.
-D. A. H.
my mother somewhat knew braille, but not that much.
Gypsy tsk tsk..smile my Dad learned first out of curiosity and necessity, mio mama was still in shock. She learned later on when I was 5, and my brother and partner can both read it, 1 by touch, another by sight.
My brother's at least 2 of them did learn braille, but my parent's never did end up learning it.
Wow! You guys are so lucky to have parents who can read braille. I wish mine could have learned. lol But then they were still learning english so I guess it would have made things even more difficult. None of my sighted sybblings can read braille either. I don't think they were ever interested.
my stepdad is in the military, and is in Iraq now, and he's asked me to send him an uncontracted braille lesson book, and i even sent him a slate and stylest along with paper.
i think its awsome if any of my family is interested in learning braille.
My dad doesn't know Braille, but my mom only knows a tiny bit. Actually, she had once wrote a Brailled message in a Valentine's card with my labeler (which she had later given to me as a surprise for Valentine's Day), and she had helped me make something by making words using the labeler. My youngest brother says he knows some Braille, although I'm wondering if he was just looking at the Upword tiles or if he really did have a good memory for some of the letters when not looking. (Upword is a game that is somewhat like Scrabble.) I had tought my sister some Braille, but I don't know whether she remembers it. Also, I had started teaching some Braille to one of my cousins and a nephews, but we didn't get get to finish everything, so I'm not sure whether they remember it. I've also taught another cousin the slate and stylus, and he cought on pretty fast, but don't know how much he remembers from it either. And finally, I sent an uncle a page with Braille characters and it's print equivalents, and he actually found a way to write me a letter.! I don't know how he did it so nicely without a slate and stylus, but he did both a good job on punching out the right characters as well as making the lines even, very clear and readable. *smile* It was like reading a page of jombo Braille without cap signs but with the correct punctuation. *smile*
My Mom reads Grade 1 braille semi-well, and she knows a teeny tiny bit of Grade 2. She can do most anything with a cheat sheet, though. She started learning along with me, but she claims that I "outran her" and that she couldn't keep up. Now she's teaching a little blind girl braille as a fulltime aid, so she's sort of delving back into it. My dad doesn't know a dot of braille; I taught my sister a little, but she probably doesn't remember. I taught my best friend all of Grade 1, and she was really really fast and good at it, but that was two years ago, and we totally haven't worked on it in forever. I sued to write up worksheets for her and everything, all my own ideas on memorizing the dots, etc. And I helped another friend learn braille; she was so into it that she tried to become NLS certified, and almsot made it! Heh. Yay Braille!
Dawn. You are so lucky to have a mother like that. That is freaken awsum. Goblin, it's mia mamma, not mio mamma, unless by some miricle your mother is a man? I didn't think so. Mio is the masculine singular form of my in Italian and Mia is the feminine form. Miei and mii and mie, mi' are other forms. My mother, la mia mamma reads Braille very well, as she is blind. She Brailled all of my children's books by writing on clear see-through dymo tape and putting it in regular kids books. I used to have some sight so it allowed me to look at the pictures and to read the books. Also, she read to me all of the time. For example we read the secret garden when I was six and the Little House books when I was four or five. My father, il mio padre, is sighted and he cannot read Braille. I've explained Braille to him several times, and he understands the concepts of capatal signs, number signs, nemith code, and contractions, both letter and whole word contractions. Here's a quote from Matt, Jeff, Amy and Becky. "Chuck Noris can speak Braille." You can imagine how much flack they caught for that one. rofl
i was about 8 when mum started learning braille, and she does it as part of her job, as a learning support assistant for children with a visual impairment like myself. she can sight read braille. my sister knows grade 1, but, can't read it.
my mum knows the alphabet, she hardly ever uses it though.
she used it when we wrote a letter to london
My mum attended Braille classes when I was a toddler, probably because she knew I'd have to learn it when I started Nursery then Primary School at Dorton House. I think, she can read some grade 1, but she knows nothing when it comes to grade 2 braille. Gran started learning Braille when I was about 8, so she could write letters to me when I was away during the week, at boarding school.
Neither of my parents know Braille, nor does my brother. My boyfriend, however, does. He wrote a message on Braille paper and then taped it in to my yearbook. I don't know how much he actually remembers, now that he's been away from it for a while. All of his time and energy are now going in to getting in to a school. He wants to be a surgical technician.
Mum did start to learn braille, but she only knows about the first few letters. She started learning it when I was 5 or 6, but then never carried it on and probably can't remember it. Dad can't read braille and says it just looks like ...................... and my sister can't read braille either, but probably isn't really interested.
My mother has seen my name in Braille, but that's it.
my mom can not read it.
Mom doesn't know braille but Joanie sort of does. I taught her when I was very young. To be fair, she also looked at alot of stuff and tok the inniative, but I give her alot of credit. I think she forgot most of it by now, since it's been so many years, but at least, she got a sense of what braille is like from those experiences and I could talk with her about large books and contractions etc. lol
Ok, first of all it's a stialiss, not a stylist. A stialiss helps you write in Braille when your Braille Writer is in for repairs and your Duxbury hates you and decides to stop working. a stylist, spelled s t y l i s t does your hair and your nails. lol My mother is blind and of course reads Braille very well. My father, who is sighted never learned, but he always had an interest in the basic principles behind the Braille code and was always ready and willing to find creative solutions to adapting things for me. I helped many of my friends to learn rudementary grade one, taught it to lots of classes, both those I was in and those I was giving presentations to, for fun and helped one of my aids to get started learning Braille. Eventually she went on to become certifyed as a Braille transcriber after my helping her and her enrolling in some classes for more complex grade two symbols, grade three, foreign language and nemith code Braille. Everyone I've taught has read by sight, although my fiance is learning it now by both sight and touch. I was surprised that his fingers were sensative enough, but he actually can read some basic Braille with his fingers. I started teaching him a few months ago, but thus far we haven't gone at it actively. Maybe we'll pick that up when he's out of classes for the summer, before the baby comes when we're both waiting around and bored. To the girl who mentioned her mother learning Braille and then using it to adapt games for her; give her a hug and tell her how awsum she is. I don't know any other sighted parents who've taken that much interest and had that much involvement in their blind child's learning of and use of Braille. That's really awsum.
Just curious about the one who said that their mother is teaching a little kid Braille as an aid; isn't there a vision teacher, a teacher of the visually impaired to do that? There should be. Or, maybe I misunderstood? Perhaps they just help with the teaching that the TVI does? I remember my mom going absolutely crazy at a presentation lecture at a camp we used to go to in Ohio. I think it was actually called Camp Ohio, or something equally as uncreative. It was a camp for kids with disabilities and their family members. The lecturer, sighted of course, got up and told the sighted parents of blind kids at the camp that there was no reason for their kids to learn Braille. My mother went mental on the presenter and hopefully made quite an impression on those parents. I can't believe that someone would put such a damaging idea into the heads of sighted parents of blind children. gah!
My mom knows Nemeth Code, and both grade 1 and 2 of braille. She helps me out with my math homeowrk, and any other things that she wants to look at if i don't have the print sheet for, or if I have to do them in braille. My dad, doesn't know anything about braille. Neither do either of my sisters.
Mom doesn't know anything of braille, neither does my dad. Tried to teach him and we got pretty far but he doesn't do much reading of it so he's forgotten. Oh well, with the aid of a BrailleNote I can do homework without help, and yes folks, I actually used to need help calculating expressions cuz I had no calculator! But I don't see the point of teaching them so its ok. All my dad,mom,bro's,and friends know is the letter a,b,and c. Lol!
Better then nothing I guess.
Another family member who kind of knows Braille is my niece. She seems seriously interested in learning it. It had been her idea for me to write the letters, numbers, and some punctuation on a paper and then tell her what each symbol was so she could write it down. She even uses my slates and styluses when I bring them out to write, and she asks me how to write the letters she needs. I'm still not sure she gets that she has to write the letters backward, (this is where a Jot-a-Dot would be nice to have *smile*), but I think it's cool that she really wants to learn it anyway. She already remembers some letters, and I think she would be able to write most of her name without help.