As I stated in some of my previous work, I am a aide in an autistic pre-school program and I work as an one-on-one aide to a blind boy. As a child who did not have any speech until recently, it was very important to use echolocation to help him navigate his first time out of his home, especially after 2020 and him only being 3 years old. Echolocation has opened my eyes to the importance of background noises. I have become so cautious to every single little thing that goes in around me because he needs to do the same exact thing to survive, essentially. I have had the luxury to take advantage of my sight and not need to rely on the location of certain objects or places just by the sound of that object or of my own voice on that object. This blind student has changed by entire world for the better and I literally "see" the world completely differently since he has been in it. I have learned the importance of sound and how we use it as humans.
Thank you again for sharing your experience, I also work along side an autistic individual but the man that I work with is in his 50s so when I met him he already knew how to echo locate. It is amazing to see even with every obstacle thrown there way that they can still achieve so much.
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