Seminars@Hadley
Putting the Grand Back in Grandparenting
Presented by
Sharon Howerton
Debbie Worman
Jennifer Ottowitz
Moderated by
Ed Haines
EdHaines
Welcome to Seminars at Hadley, my name is EdHaines. I’m an instructor at The Hadley School. Today’s seminar is entitled Putting the Grand Back in Grandparenting.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the first Sunday following Labor Day to be National Grandparents’ Day. In this proclamation, he stated that, “Grandparents are our continuing tie to the near-past, to the events and beliefs and experiences that so strongly affect our lives and the world around us. Whether they are our own or surrogate grandparents who fill some of the gaps in our mobile society, our senior generation provides a link to our national heritage and traditions.”
In the spirit of that proclamation, our presenters today, Sharon Howerton, blind and grandmother of five or Sharon it maybe six, I can’t remember now; Debbie Worman, family education instructor, and Jennifer Ottowitz, certified vision rehabilitation therapist; hope to share their enthusiasm for the priceless experience of grandparenting.
We’ll begin by letting the presenters introduce themselves. There will be a time for questions at the end of this presentation. And I’m going to begin by handing the microphone over to Sharon Howerton.
Sharon Howerton
Thank you, Ed. I’m Sharon Howerton and yeah, it’s five. It’s just five grandkids. Thank goodness! I have been with Hadley for 13 years. I’ll explain more about my grandparent situation in a few minutes. But I’ve been blind all of my life. I have two grown sons which I guess is pretty obvious if I have grandkids. I am 64 and live in Chicago. I will give it now to Jennifer.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Thanks, Sharon! And Sharon failed to mention that grandchild number five was just born yesterday. So congratulations. My name is Jennifer Ottowitz and I’m an instructor with the Hadley School as well. I’ve been with Hadley now for about two and a half years. I am also a certified vision rehabilitation therapist. I’ve worked for over the last 22 years, with a number of grandparents who are losing or have lost their vision. Teaching them a wide variety of adaptive skills to help them be able to live independently and do all of the everyday things they need to do with confidence and again, independence.
I also have a father who is visually impaired. I’m visually impaired, myself. But my father is the very proud grandfather of my 14-year-old nephew. It’s been such a pleasure just to watch their relationship evolve throughout these years. I’m very grateful to my grandparents, and to all the grandparents out there. I’m happy to be here with you today. I’ll turn the mic now over to Debbie Worman.
Debbie Worman
Thank you, Jennifer. Good afternoon everyone and happy Grandparents’Day to all grandparents listening. Sunday is Grandparents' Day so that’s kind of why we scheduled this for today so it was close. I’m excited. I’m very excited to join Sharon and Jennifer in presenting this topic today. I appreciate Ed’s efforts in moderating.
To introduce myself, I guess I’m the senior member here at Hadley. I have been in Hadley since 1988. So my gosh, somebody do the math. I think that’s over 25 years. I am sighted.
Here at Hadley, my teaching duties, as they relate to today’s topic on grandparenting, include teaching courses in the ACE – Adult Continuing Education program with grandparents of students. I’ve had many grandparents. Also I teach in the family education program and I often teach grandparents who have blind grandchildren. I kind of have both roles there.
In addition to Hadley instructor duties, I also do information and referral phone calls and emails, so if people who have questions, they generally come to me. I’ve fielded a lot of questions concerning age-related vision loss.
Outside of Hadley, I have had most fun running inter-generational play groups that were comprised of teen mothers, their babies and toddlers, and then we pulled in some surrogate grandparents from the community and had a lot of fun with that. I also have provided counseling services to seniors in a day program.
So now that we have the introductions out of the way, I will begin today’s seminar. I wanted to share that the seminar topic had its origin in an information and referral phone call that I received from a potential Hadley student earlier this year. This caller and I’ll give her the fictitious name of Anne, heard about Hadley’s free distance education courses. And she had a list of questions about what course she should take and how to go about the enrollment process.
It was during our conversation that I happen to ask Anne what usually is my standard question of all people who call me at Hadley: What were you hoping to most find out about when you called Hadley today? Well Anne got very quiet and then very tearfully shared that her vision had been decreasing for some time.
While she felt she was doing okay overall with adjusting and finding resources, what really worried her the most was an upcoming visit from her three grandchildren that lived out of state. Anne expressed her worries about how she would connect with her grandchildren now that she had lost more vision. She was worried about how she would entertain them when they came. They were various ages. She wasn’t sure if she should say anything at all to them about her vision loss. She was fearful that her grandchildren would only have memories of her as their old, blind grandma. I of course assured Anne that while her fears and worries were valid, I did not for one minute believe that her grandchildren would think of her in the way she described.
I began by telling her that my own grandmother, who while faced with the challenges of low vision, scleroderma, and left leg amputation always had a way of making her grandchildren feel special. My memories of grandma Ruha[0:07:45], who I only had for eight short years included baking cookies and making rock candy; playing dominos; dragging toys and games out of her special closet; overnight stays with many, many cousins sleeping on the floor with grandma looking over us from her wheelchair singing in German; sewing a special pink book bag for my first day of school together; and of course always being willing to answer my questions about her missing leg. Also grandma Ruha allowed me to push the buttons to help her go up and down on her hospital bed. I have many, many fond memories of my grandma Ruha.
Much of what Anne and I talked about during our telephone conversation about connecting and creating memories with grandchildren will be discussed in today’s seminar. It is our hope that the ideas shared in this seminar will help you or help someone you care about put the grand back in grandparenting.
You will discover that many of the ideas we share can be utilized in connecting with any child in your life, whether you are a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or family friend. It has been said that one of the most joyous experiences of growing older is becoming a grandparent. In fact, someone once said,“If I knew grandparenting was going to be so much fun, I would have had grandchildren first.”
For those facing the challenges of age-related vision loss, the message is that you need not allow any fears or anxieties to rob you oftreasured moments with your grandchildren. Because those treasured moments are what your grandchildren will remember about you. As we begin the different topics, I would like to dedicate this seminar to my grandma Ruha and all of those wonderful memories I have of her.
The first point we’d like to share to help you put the grand back in grandparenting is seek support. Remember that you are not alone. Just think, there are over 70 million grandparents here in the United States. And 1 out of 6 seniors experiences age-related vision loss due to conditions such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetes, or cataracts. Somewhere, someone can do the math on that and probably figure out some exact percentage. But even my lack of math skills tells me that there are a great number of grandparents out there experiencing vision loss. You are not alone.
With numbers that high, chances are great that you can connect with other grandparents with vision loss.
Begin by seeking out low vision support groups. Your local senior center, hospital, or library can help you locate such a group. Group members might meet in person, online, or by telephone. Sharon, who will be presenting in this seminar, runs a parenting online chat that meets on Wednesday afternoons. I know she invites grandparents to join her then.
If you cannot find a group, consider being a self-advocate and starting one on your own. Check with the church or library that could assist you. Talking with other grandparents will allow you the opportunity to share concerns and to problem solve with others in similar situations. Best of all, it will give you another venue to brag about your grandchildren.
There are many organizations out there who can help you with the support and information you need. With that, I’ll turn the mic over to Jennifer who will discuss the topic of gathering information.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Thanks, Debbie. So whether your vision loss is fairly recent or you’ve been living with limited vision for several years, you may want to learn more information. It may be information about your particular eye condition, about new research, about new products, or adaptive devices that can help you do your everyday task more easily and safely, and help you to stay independent; or you may want to learn more about organizations and agencies that provide services which could be a benefit to you.
There are several ways that you can gather this information. Debbie just mentioned a great one. By being a part of a support group and connecting with others who are visually impaired, you have a wealth of resources to gain information. You can share about what works for you. They can share what works for them and give you a lot of ideas about things to try or where to go to seek assistance.
Now, another way to gather information, of course nowadays, if you want to know anything about anything, you look it up online, right? Even people who have problems with their vision can still use computer technology to do that. I’ll talk about that a little bit later in the presentation. But whenever you’re looking up information online or your family members are looking up information online, we really want to encourage you to not be deterred by the word blind. Sometimes people say, “Oh, I’m not blind. I can still see.”
But there are a lot of organizations out there that have blind as part of their name just to help identify and group the services they provide. For example, The Hadley School for the Blind and The American Foundation for the Blind. We don’t want you to miss out on all the great resources they have to offer just by eliminating the word blind from your search. These organizations, including Hadley, provide a wealth of information and resources to people with a wide range of vision loss. So feel free to use the word blind in your search.
Now, I do just want to take a moment to tell you that as part of this seminar, we did put together a handout, a resource list handout. That’s going to be available online on our Hadley website once the seminar of the audio recording of this seminar is posted. That will take about a week but then you can access our handout at any time. I’m just going to tell you about a couple of resources that are listed on that handout. But we also have listed the names of books related to grandparenting that we thought you might find interesting. There are other resources on there as well. So we really encourage you to check out that handout in about a week or so when it becomes available.
Right now, I’m going to tell you about a new program that Hadley has called Low Vision Focus at Hadley. This was one of our new programs. It has several different components. The biggest component is that we offer 10 free audio recordings on a variety of topics and I’ll mention those in just a moment. These recordings offer suggestions and tips, so ideas of how to do things in new ways. Things that you always have done, things that you need to do to take care of yourself, to take care of your home, or your family, your grandkids. These recordings are available on digital talking book cartridge. So you can just put that into your digital talking book player and listen to it. They are available on CD or available as a download, an audio download that can be downloaded onto a Kindle or an iPad or a similar device.
Now the topics include making the kitchen user friendly; getting around in the house; going out with a friend; basic tactile marking – and that just means marking items like the microwave or the laundry machines so that you can both see and feel the marks and locate the buttons that you need to operate the machines a little bit easier. There are all different ways you can mark things tactilely and all different items you can mark.
Another topic would be doing simple kitchen tasks. Another is keeping prescriptions in order. That’s very important thing. Low vision cooking is another topic, as well as looking your best. We all want to do that. Going out for a meal. Then finally, simple home modifications. So these are all free audio recordings that you can access from the low vision focus website. I’ll give you that website in just a moment.
I do also want to say that the low vision focus website has a resource link which will provide you a lot of websites from other organizations and services that people who have low vision may find helpful. There’s links on the low vision focus website to other Hadley seminars, our past seminars that people with low vision may find helpful. Seminars on different eye conditions or different recreational activities, just a wide range of things that you may find helpful. To make it a little bit easier, we’ve organized those on the low vision focus website as well.
Coming in 2016, we’re going to have video clips on the site as well. Those video clips will reinforce and enhance the information that’s included in the audio recordings. So it’ll be an extension of that. They’re fully narrated. But they will give you and your family members further illustrations of ways that you can make simple adaptations.
The low vision focus website, I’ll give it to you now. It’s all one word - lowvisionfocus.org; again that’s lowvisionfocus.org. Another important resource that we wanted to share is the VisionAware website. And this is part of the family of websites of the American Foundation for the Blind. But VisionAware provides a lot of great information, really practical tips on doing everything from putting on makeup, to doing home repair, adaptations you can make when cleaning, doing laundry, cooking,all types of things. They also have personal stories that are listed on the site as well. And their website is all one word - visionaware.org. And that’s visionaware.org.
Now, in addition to talking with others who have limited vision to looking information up online, you may want to locate organizations and agencies within your local area or state that provide vision rehabilitation services. They even have websites - The American Foundation for the Blind has a directory, so you can look up what agencies this would be in your particular area. You can inquire about specialized training and daily living skills and travel skills that we call orientation and mobility, and adaptations for reading and writing, and assistive computer technology.
When you gather information and learn new skills, it will help build your confidence and help you remain independent. Your grandchildren will learn valuable lessons about facing life’s challenges just by witnessing all of your efforts. So we encourage you to gather that information. I’m going to turn the microphone over to Sharon now to tell us about the importance of talking about your vision loss.
Sharon Howerton
Thanks, Jennifer. I think before we can look for support groups and services, we have to actually admit that we need help ourselves. It’s just so important to do that, to admit that your vision may not be what it is, what it used to be, that you need help with things. I teach two of our early braille courses and a lot of our studentsare dealing with just those kinds of issues, whether they’re in their 20s or 30s, or in their 70s and 80s. And I have friends too, some older friends who are in their 80s.