Comment by miki123211

Congenitally blind person here, here are a few pieces of advice that I think are the most important.

1. Be the polar opposite of a helicopter parent. A lot of blind people end up extremely incapable as adults, because their parents were too afraid to let them learn anything that might have possibly been somewhat dangerous. Sighted kids can recover from this by watching how others do things, or, in the worst case, watching some tutorials on Youtube, we don't have that luxury. Beware of the sighted specialists that encourage these protectionist attitudes, which we unfortunately have plenty of.

This stuff is genuinely hard, my parents actually tried pushing me to learn, but I never really had a motivation to do so, so I mostly didn't, and then had to deal with the consequences later. I figured it out and basically ended up fine, but many in my situation would probably have been stuck at home forever.

If you can find a way to teach your kid good white-cane skills without making them miserable, they'll be grateful to you forever.

2. Most blind people eventually end up unemployed, because there aren't that many blind-friendly jobs to go around. The best chance of getting a well-paying job is being somewhat good at tech, and trust me, blind people need to be a lot better at tech than the sighted to use it effectively. You can't just pick up a smartphone or computer and "wing it", you need to actually learn how a screen reader works. Then there's the inaccessible software to deal with, and to do that, you need to understand all the weird features that your screen reader can offer. It's a good idea for parents to encourage tech use. Mine were extremely hands-off about the internet and what I did on it, and I genuinely believe that it's the single best decision affecting my life that they've ever made.

Keep in mind that, to a blind person, a smartphone is not "just" a smartphone, it's also a way to communicate with other blind people around the country / world (and there are few enough of us that just meeting your friends in-person isn't often an option). Not to mention the apps for reading books (which are important because many books never get released in Braille), detecting colors, describing things, reading text on paper documents / labels, interacting with kitchen appliances that otherwise wouldn't be accessible, checking train/bus schedules that you wouldn't otherwise be able to see and so on. With that said, a phone definitely does not replace a white cane, and probably never will.

3. Avoid blind schools for as long as you possibly can, preferably forever. Go mainstream if you have the option. No idea what country you live in, but the idea applies in most places.

4. Encourage forming friendships with sighted people. Make them aware of the blind community, definitely, but don't let them get stuck there. This is hard, far, far harder than it would be with a sighted kid, but it should be a priority, and you should do everything within your power to make this possible.