The Great White Cane

 It’s a rainy morning and the Little Dude and I are meandering to his first grade classroom.  He’s got his Cars backpack on, cane in one hand and my hand in the other.  I’ve got 20 lbs. of Perkins Brailler dangling on my shoulder and we’re talking about why there are no elephants in Aruba.  We come to a step up, I squeeze his hand once (two is for a step down) and alert him to the change in terrain.  He’s become a ninja with his cane, and doesn’t need me to tell him but old habits die hard. 

I made some rather controversial decisions when Gabriel was a toddler.  One of them was to go against most of what my research dictated and the advice of my most trusted advocate at the Foundation of Aruban Visual Impairments (FAVI) when I taught him to echolocate instead of having him learn to walk with the teeny-tiny white cane FAVI provided him.

That choice was made with my heart and my head fought me every step of the way...oh, how I doubted myself!  But by then, I knew my child.  He hated that cane with a burning passion. It was the littlest stick you could get but it was still too big for him. It threw off his balance and he would either drag it behind him or manage to trip himself.  It was a disaster. Sometimes I think that his vocabulary is as impressive as it is just because he needed to express how much he loathed that first stick.

 I already knew how stubborn my child can be, and how easily he becomes negatively conditioned.  I felt like a complete degenerate, slacker Mom at FAVI assessments where the only area Gabriel was found to be lacking was orienting himself with his cane (on several of these occasions I had actually forgotten to bring the bloody thing) but no one could really admonish me.  They were too busy being impressed with how the little dude, arms outstretched, occasionally stopping to clap, could navigate his way around a room.

As soon as he learned to walk I noticed that he would occasionally stop, yell and then continue on.  I saw this mostly in the house but occasionally outside near a building.  I realized that my two year old was echo locating like a bat.  I was so impressed.  A little research, an episode of National Geographic’s Superhumans featuring an echo locating teenager and we were off like bats at dusk.

I taught him to clap instead of yelling, and took him to all sorts of places to hear how claps sounded.  We clapped in small spaces, big spaces and every space in between.  We clapped in high roofed churches and low ceilinged basements.  We clapped at trees, people, brick walls and kiosks in the Mall.  I never really had to teach him to do this; I just had to tell him where he was and what he was hearing.

One flaw in the echolocation: Peeee-ople.  In places with lots of background noise and moving people it doesn’t work.  His little clap is swallowed by the ambient sounds.  I told him that school would be like that and he’d have to use his cane.  He reluctantly agreed.

As it got closer to the time he was starting school, we started having cane walks.  There was always some reward or incentive at the end.  Sometimes a trip to the store for an iced tea or a candy bar, sometimes we’d go check out cool stuff in the neighborhood that we usually didn’t have time to explore.  I’d correct him as he was dragging the stick behind him or trying to ride it like a stick horse. A friend had the brilliant idea to make up a game we’d play games with other kids, blindfolded and walking with the stick through an obstacle course.  He liked winning that game.

By the time school started, his hatred had faded to acceptance peppered with just a bit of dislike.  He knew he was required to take it to school with him and was ready. He no longer wanted to bake ‘that dreadful thing’ in the oven…mostly.

He dragged it behind him through most of Kindergarten and it stayed in my suitcase the whole 3.5 months we stayed in Cali. But then something amazing happened.  We came back from Cali, went for a cane walk and my boy was walking with his stick. In front of him!  That’s the most useful way to do it!!  I was so proud (and relieved that my decision didn’t come back to bite me in the ass).

 In my fanciful way of thinking, it seemed to me that the lapse in stick time allowed the whole concept to ferment in his brain. Now, he uses the stick when he’s in unfamiliar places, places with a lot of people (watch your ankles!) and out on the streets.  In places he knows, he seems to keep a blue print of the layout in his head.  He gets disoriented sometimes but he will clap, find a wall and follow it to a familiar piece of furniture or door way to get his bearings back.  Batman’s got nothing on this kid.

 When he started first grade he was presented with a deluxe model white cane with a rolling tip. It was love at first sight.  He doesn’t need to hold my hand anymore, but I don’t yet encourage him to let go.  Batman or not, he’s still just my little boy and I love holding his hand.