We are still recovering from this year’s Families Connecting with Families Conference, which was such a great experience! Parents and their children who are blind or visually impaired, including those with additional disabilities, networked with other families throughout the United States, coming together in a beautiful constellation of strength and hope, as Anne put it so well.
The “Eye Condition Networking” lunch was again one of the most popular sessions, and the Children’s Program offered terrific opportunities for children of all ages, including siblings. Their activities included:
- Beep baseball training courtesy of the Boston Renegades
- Music therapy
- Art
- Yoga
- Self defense
Here are just a few of our favorite moments from the conference:
- Terrific keynotes speeches by Dr. Eli Peli, Dr. Kay Ferrell, and Kathleen Martinez
- Speaker David Lepofsky, quoting his mother about his blindness: “The biggest hurdle is not other people saying ‘No, you can’t’…but believing them.”
- Kids learning beepball in the activity room, and creating their own games involving yoga mats
- A rapt audience watching the audio-described “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”
- Trying out the new Perkins SMART Brailler
- Connecting with motivated parents from around the country
- Getting great, substantive feedback from the parents who previewed the new FamilyConnect design (Coming soon! Send an email to familyconnect@afb.net if you’d like to get a sneak peek, too, and provide input.)
- Seeing whole families rocking out at the Saturday night party!
What were yours? Please let us know in the comments, and keep connecting with each other through FamilyConnect and on our Facebook page! As Helen Keller famously said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”