Allison, you bring up some interesting points here. I've been thinking about what you've said and think I see what you mean. My mom isn't a person who can handle reading manuals very well, and my brother isn't either. I think my dad tailored his response to us based on our personalities. My brother is a hands-on learner who has a reading disability, though he is fully sighted. My dad would physically demonstrate things for my brother or draw diagrams for him. I think my dad figured out when I was young that I love to learn things and go into depth about anything I study. I also like being able to do things in my own way and rarely use software or anything else at its defaults. My dad and I are a lot alike in our personalities, and I think that helped him know how to challenge rather than overwhelm me. So I'm not sure if this has as much to do with me not asking for sighted help as it does in him encouraging me to stretch as far as I can. I'm not sure he ever sat down and reasoned it out this way. I can only really understand the results. All I know for sure is that I generally feel happy when I'm trying to figure something out and feel bored or generally unhappy if I don't have something to work on mastering.
Monica Willyard
