Autism Labs’ Post

Transcript

Welcome back to Autism Labs. This week we're going to talk about multiple layers of safety. So here's the scenario. You get up, the kids all get up the same time, and they're happy. Unbelievable. No screaming, no yelling, no pinching. You're profoundly autistic. Son even sort of dresses himself, puts on his favorite red shirt, pants, shoes. With just minimal help, breakfast goes well, you're all into the car, you give them to school on time, things are going really well. Mid morning you decided to go to the grocery store and you drive right by your son's school. And so on the way driving by the school, out of the corner of your eye you notice a flash of light and and maybe a speck of red and you're thinking what the world could that be? And so you turn. And you notice that. There's a child running by himself out in front of the school building. And your heart stops. It's your sign. It's your profoundly autistic son by himself running out in front of the school, very close to a busy street with lots of traffic, and he does not understand danger. So you slam on the brakes. You don't care. You may cause a car accident. You have got to save your son's life. This is a true story. It was not our son, it was actually a classmate of his. And the mom was able to turn into the school parking lot without causing an accident, thank God, getting out of the car. You know, taking her son before he wandered into the street. Getting back into school and sure enough, when he came into school. She saw our son by himself in the hallway. Wandering around, he was safe, you know, he was going to get in trouble, but he's by himself in the hallway. How could this have happened? Well, the teacher and the teacher said miscommunicated. And they both thought the other one was gonna be watching the kids. And so the kids were left alone for a couple of minutes. But there was no lock on the front door. There was no alarm on the front door and sure enough, one of them got out. So why would this ever happen? And what should you do in your own home? So in our home. We have smart lock on the door, the door of our son's area. We have a chain above the smartlock. We have a ring sensor on the very top of the door so the door ever opens and closes closes. We have an audible alarm upstairs where we are so we can hear it. We have an app on our iPhones since it's a smart lock that will tell us if someone leaves or enters. And the 5th layers of security or safety is we have a camera in this room where we can also see what's going on. So we have 5 layers. Now you may think that's excessive. That's ridiculous, right? You may think, hey, my profoundly autistic son or daughter right now goes to school. That I trust without question, right? The teacher and the TA. Just like our teacher in TA. But our school has. Locked doors. The school policy, Those doors will be locked. And it's school policy that there's an alarm on those doors that that will be activated. And if for any reason those doors are ever left unattended, someone will man those doors. So we're covered, right? Here's a scenario. One morning, middle of the week, toilet starts to overflow in the restroom. It's going to flood everything. Plumbers are called. Plumbers show up, they run in. Well, I need to get some equipment in to fix the the toilet before it just causes an absolute disaster. So you leave the front door unlocked. Turn off the alarm for the front door. That's OK. However, on that same day. Your son's teacher is sick. So there's a substitute in the classroom with the teacher's assistant. Maybe that's still OK. Unbeknownst to you, a week earlier a fire drill had been scheduled for that morning. Fire drill goes off, lots of commotion. The substitute teacher, the teacher's assistant trying to corral all the kids and move them out the back of the building, which is what the protocol is for the fire drill. In all the commotion, a couple of kiddos are left unattended by themselves in that hallway, and sure enough, because the plumbers are there. Front door is open, the alarm is turned off. So it is possible now you can never be perfect. We understand that mistakes are going to be made. We understand that too. What we have learned and what you probably are aware of to just want to let you know. Make sure everyone's aware of the situation, right? Make sure that, hey, we've got some kiddos that just don't understand danger. If that door is ever left unattended. Somebody's got to be there, right? Even on a day where there's a fire drill and there's a plumbing mess, and if it's nobody else is available, it's the principal of school should be parked out there by the front of that door. You know that just as sort of the bare minimum. And then every now and then we sort of pop in, right? And maybe you pop in too, and you just sort of look around, hey, how's everything going? Can I help out? But you start checking everything out. Is everybody happy? Do I have the teacher there is the teacher's assistant in the classroom. And of course, on your way out, you go up to that front door and you make sure it is locked. You take a look up there in that upper right hand corner. You look for that red glow which indicates the fire alarm or the door alarm. The lock is armed and active, so the front door is locked and if anybody were to open that door, that alarm would sound. Because you can never be too safe when it comes to the safety of your child's. Talk to you again next week, see ya.