Houseparents’ Expectations: A Crucial Variable in the Performance of Blind Institutionalized Children

Abstract

The study to test the degree of relationship between the blind child's performance and expectations of houseparents, the most significant others in the institutionalized child's life, supported the hypothesis that houseparents’ influence on behavior was statistically significant. The author contends that it is of utmost importance, therefore, that houseparents and other significant personnel be selected carefully and receive continued training. They must become familiar, through role-taking, with the world of the blind, and blind and sighted together must determine behavioral expectancies for the blind child.

But in human kindness there is a paradox; that which it seeks to help it can also destroy.

—Chevigny, 1946

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