Yes. My mum's answer to me wanting to help her in the kitchen (with the exception of mixing ingredients for baking) was always 'not with your eye, it's too dangerous' or 'you can't, you're blind in one eye' or some other variation that made me feel useless and small because I had a vision impairment that I barely even noticed at the time.

I think that's the main thing. I didn't start cooking at all until I was 12 or 13 (and then, only really basic, easy, relatively safe things), because I literally said 'screw you. I'm not useless.'

My vision has of course, changed in the last ten years, and I now prefer not to cook, but I think the attitude of 'you can't do it, you're blind' definitely had wider impact on my life than I've even noticed.


Edit: I feel like I should point out that I had a fry cook job for a couple weeks at 15, did two years of commercial cooking in highschool (which I loved) and used to deep fry shit at home all the time too, before my vision changed again. It was a short but sweet love affair with cooking, born purely out of spite.

My parents let me help around the house and encouraged me to do everything my siblings did. When I got into high school they became over protective specifically my mom. I didn’t go out much but when I did it seemed to always be a problem. They would expect me to be home at 9 even though I would leave the house at 8. Keep in mind, my friends are nerds! We would go out to walk around a Music Store of a vintage video game shop.

She always wanted me to hang out with my blind friends because she thought they were innocent and were good influences. Little did she know those were the friends I did the craziest things with. The part that hurts most is my other siblings would go to parties and come home drunk every weekend. They got yelled at but they never got a call to go home or told who to be around. My mom has always told them that they’re old enough to make their own life decisions and if they make mistakes it’s their responsibility to deal with them. They didn’t have that same trust for me to make my own decisions.

I feel like this had an impact on my social skills and my confidence. High school was the best time to break out of my shell but then being protective made me less willing to go out. They never let me make mistakes or have fun unless it was on their terms. I’m grateful for my parents and I understand their concerns but it felt horrible being singled out as the special exception.

Most of the time, I think they are too over-protective. But, Their care has protected me from lots of harmful situations and things, so, I would say it's okay. I would have been definitely broken few bones, few hospital visits, and god knows what else without their careful watch and guidance :D

Personally affected me socially. My parents never trusted anyone and saw friends as 'outside of the house carers'. If i went out with someone and came back with a bruise because of my own doing that friend was blacklisted.

If not for rebellious defiance in my teens I'm not sure how much would have changed

My parents didn't which got me in a bit of trouble, but overall led to me being more resiliant. I ended up getting involved with gangs and crime for a bit, which also helped shape my independence as well. Ended up meeting a lot of friends who thought I was a super crazy person for being blind. They were always super accommodative and came up with neat tricks and secret words to help me navigate all of those crazy situations. went cliff diving, hiked mountains, gang fights, and so much more. Hell I was homeless for a year or s one point. Now you could drop me off in Los Angeles with a 10 dollar bill and I'd make it. Really ended up going wild to battle social anxiety that was definitely comorbid as a result of blindness.

Just listened to the episode, fun! I think that a lot of people with disabilities have the experience of their parents being overprotective. My godson is Deaf and his parents did not make him do chores the way his older siblings did, so while his brothers and sister are great cooks, he is just getting into it now. Same with cleaning. I think it is such a disservice to disabled kids!

Didn’t get to learn how to cook until I was thrown into it at my first ever job. A Mexican hole in the wall shop. Not only did I learn how to cook, I also learned how to swear in two different languages AND how to make tortillas of any kind.

I definitely consider it better than learning through my mom who was/is so overprotective that my sighted brother who is 20….only just learned how to carve a Turkey last thanksgiving. Most of my life consisted of sandwiches, crockpot meals and salads.

I have a progressive condition and severe night blindness for which I recently started practicing with a cane. My father is completely unsupportive and keeps asking me why I cant continue to use my flashlight and scan the environment. Im sure he is trying to be helpful but it is very frustrating and demeaning to insinuate that myself, while living with this condition my whole life, had not come to the simple solution of "of oh maybe I should scan the environment around me!" It is also disheartening to feel the stigma and judgment of being outwardly disabled from my own family member.

Podcast looks interesting, will give it a listen later!

Yeah, my dad never really stopped me from doing anything, but he was very quick to do things for me, so a lot of stuff I just never had to learn; mostly stuff outside the house, like traveling independently (not just physically moving around, the interacting with others and the environment, talking to people about things that I needed, etc.) and I never really learned to advocate for myself.

The end result was that I had zero self-confidence and a lot of anxiety for the first couple of years after I moved out. I didn't know how to do anything and had to figure it all out.

I think it probably had some lasting effects on my confidence.

Yes but in two different ways. Some family didn’t let me go out anywhere and yelled at me for going into the front garden, one half were inconsistent and everything was ether too dangerous or shouldn’t be risky at all, the last lot didn’t think i had any trouble doing anything but I did and wasn’t confident so ‘why don’t you just do it?’ Was said too often. Then the parents took over my finances at 16. I lost all confidence as it was something they could literally always hold over my head. I’m still paying for that now. I’m almost 40 and I’m so tired of not knowing what my limits are or whats sane in pushing my limits. I want a life of my own and I don’t think I’ll ever get one. Someone else always wants to stick their noses in and decide for me who I am and the life I should have.

Yes.

I live with my grandparents and my nan does her best but over protectivness isn’t good.

I have RP so I had much better vision as a child than I do now. My parents let me be a “normal“ kid, riding bikes, climbing trees, getting into trouble etc. and I really appreciate them for that. This is probably because my mom‘s dad had RP so growing up she had a role model of somebody who was blind but fully capable and independent

Oh yeeeeeesssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!


I am totally blind and come from the strictest culture in the world, the asian one, tiger mother type family. They don’t think much of disabled people really. My father wanted me in the spotlight when it was convenient for him told on me to the press and blind organization I was picked up by media by my own doing at a surf trip I went on, but then at home, he would be super protective.

I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, and wasn’t allowed to do anything around the home.just study and do my own thing and do the activities he wanted me to do. After I refused all of his wants I was left to sit in my room all day.

I wasn’t allowed to go out of my neighborhood if you can’t walk there you can’t go there. I wasn’t allowed to take buses, go downtown, or anything.

I wanted to work at a store, all of my peers had jobs a lot of them, I showed up at a store once and asked on my volition near my house my father shot it down and wouldn’t let me work in anything.

My father wanted to talk to my rehab counslor when I applied in my last year of high school. He wanted my password to my school accounts, to give him like grade school a grade report every so often.

I fought my parents for control and won. I wouldn’t let them in to my account. I told them so.almost had a knock down drag out house shatttering fight. Actually I am not sure why the house didn’t break the arguments was so bad. I cried myself to sleep every night in my teenage years. At one point in high school I broke down in school my first period, it was that bad.

I had to sneak out to meat my first friend off of the internet or first few friends. I had to basically accidentally get on the bus, my father had forgotten to pick me up and I waited at school for 3 hours and had no way to call him. So I took the bus home. Then I was allowed to argue to get on the buses more. I went on the train without telling people and a lot of it I had to sneak out of the house.


I couldn’t even do what I wanted on the computer. When they didn’t look I went on twitter and facebook and I had those since like 17. At least twitter. And I was on the zone bbs don’t know if I was suppose to be on there since I was 16. Got on online bulletin boards since 14 or 15. And made one and ran a writing workshop for a sight full of sighted people. It was very successful. But I realy wasn’t suppose to and my parents didn’t want me to talk to internet strangers especially at night. They painted it that only the boogyman went on the internet at night. Yes this was when I was a teenager. I wasn’t allowed to download anything, my dad is paranoid about everything on computers anyway. I didn’t learn about dropbox and skype and useful things on the computer till I was 18. I heard about them but couldn’t do any of it. If I could go on a website then hide it or get stuff through msn or send space okay, but download stuff programs on my computer no. Yes. I was a teenager, not 9 years old.


My parents would yell at me, telling me I couldn’t do anything and denigrate me. Some of that has carried over.


There is much more like this.


When I first went to college I had observed and watch but it was swim or sink and I swam because i knew I had to do well but it was learning on the job how to be independent, how to be financially smart, how to be an adult, and advocate for myself. Not that I lived a normal childhood. I spent a lot of time by myself learning and reading.

I spent my 20s figuring all out what I really enjoyed doing besides stay in my room and read and study things.how to use a computer and all the apps and services out there. And got in to major tinkering and information technology stuff.

Because I couldn’t grow I really didn’t know what I wanted to study or do and not until recently did I I had my 20s to explore.

I am not as unconfident as some but it effects me too and how much I believe I can do but if I put my mind to it I can do quite a lot and I still do. It usually doesn’t effect me that way but occasionally it does.