Safety and Special Needs Series, Post #2

For this week’s post on Safety and Special Needs, I’m really excited to be running an informative and well-researched piece by Karla, from Tales from Beyond the Dryer Vent.  Be sure to visit her site, where you can read about her adventures raising her daughter, Little Miss, and trying to keep an aquarium of fish alive.

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Safety & Special Needs: Identification

Communication issues are often rolled into the challenges faced by special needs families, and this particular challenge is never as frightening as when it comes to identification. Weeks before we took our first family trip with the Little Miss, I had nightmares of her becoming separated from us and being unable to communicate even the most basic information. Lost and terrified (and probably having the meltdown of the century), how would Little Miss be able to share her name or other identification that would help us to reconnect with her?

My first solution was simple, cheap, and effective – but there are a lot of options out there for families to try. I’m going to use this opportunity from Flannery and The Connor Chronicles to share with you some criteria for making the best choices for your own child’s identification. Then, I’ll finish up with links to some of the solutions available.

So, what did we do?

I’d seen some families use a strip of masking tape to attach a phone number to their child’s shirt… but I didn’t want Little Miss parading around with our phone number for everyone to see. Instead, I found one of those tiny jewelry bags, wrote all the contact info I needed onto a brightly-colored slip of paper, folded it up, slipped it inside the bag, and pinned it to the back of her shirt.

The emergency info in a zippie bag worked out perfectly for our brief vacation and gave my husband and me some much-need piece of mind. But, as Little Miss has grown a little older and “elopement” still remains at the top of her list of maladaptive behaviors, we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re going to need a much more robust solution.

What are the criteria for an ID solution?

Privacy: Above all, the emergency information has to be private. Little Miss has no real sense of stranger danger, and I worry about the very real possibility that someone could walk up to her, read her name from the emergency information, and tell her “Hi ____! Your mommy and daddy sent me.” If the person also happened to have a bag of goldfish crackers, Little Miss would have herself a new best friend.

Visibility: This may seem contradictory to the privacy thing, but visibility is critical in a situation where identification is in question. Odds are that if Little Miss has become separated from us, she will be confused and maybe upset. The challenges with her executive function will make it very unlikely for her to point to an ID tag hidden inside her shirt and say “Hey – call my mommy and daddy.” So, the thing has to be visible.

Durability: The emergency info in a zippie bag had one major flaw – after about three days of riding around pinned to the back of Little Miss’s shirt, we seriously needed a new set. That’s fine if your goal is only to get through a few days’ vacation, but if you’re looking for identification that can be worn daily, you’re going to need a LOT of zippie bags.

Hard to Remove: During our vacation, we pinned the zippie bag to the back of Little Miss’s shirt because we knew it would be nearly impossible for her to get it off. At the time, Little Miss did not know how to remove her own shirt. But times — they have changed. Now whether or not Little Miss is likely to remove her shirt is another question entirely, but it still begs the question – could she and her ID easily become separated? If the answer is “yes,” the solution is not going to work.

Enough Room: Our family is one of many special needs families out there that deals with multiple diagnoses. In addition to her autism diagnosis, Little Miss has epilepsy. If we became separated, it would be critical for first responders to know of this disorder so that they could respond appropriately. So, the right ID for us needs to include more than just a phone number.

Cost: With the budget already overloaded for therapy, school, doctor bills, and everything else, cost is always a consideration.

Options, options, options…

Google “special needs identification” and you’ll find a LOT of options. Since Flannery has been gracious enough to host me this far, I’m not going to wear out my good graces but going into all of them. Instead, I’ll show you some of the basic types out there and rate them on a scale of 1-3 (1 being a total fail and 3 being the best) according to our criteria.

Disposable ID Bracelets (Example: TigTagz) Description: Think of those single-use bracelets that amusement parks use when you buy the “ride all day” option – made of heavy laminated paper that you have to cut with scissors to remove

Criteria: • Privacy: 2 (you could wear the bracelet inside out), • Visibility: 3 • Durability: 2 (for single use) • Hard to Remove: 3 • Enough Room: 2 (allows about 3 lines of information) • Cost: 3 (less than $1 per piece)

Medical ID Bracelets (Example: Sticky Jewelry) Description: There are all kinds of medical ID bracelets available – and many kid-friendly designs offered on comfortable fabric bands. The added benefit of using a more standard medical ID is that first responders are trained to look for them.

Criteria: • Privacy: 3 (medical info is hidden on the back of the bracelet – unless you choose otherwise) • Visibility: 3 • Durability: 3 • Hard to Remove: 2 (Velcro closure) • Enough Room: 3 (allows up to 6 lines) • Cost: 2 (could be $25 or more with options)

Shoe Tag ID (Example: Medical ID Store)

Description: You could go for one of the official medical ID shoe tags — or do like we did and order an engraved luggage or pet ID (a trick we used on our second family vacation). The only big con to this option is that the wearer must have laced shoes.

Criteria: • Privacy: 2 (info is on the back, but some tags can get flipped over easily) • Visibility: 2 • Durability: 3 • Hard to Remove: 3 • Enough Room: Many tags allow up to 5 lines • Cost: variable

QR Code Stickers (Example: ChildID) Description: Each sticker has a QR code printed on it that can be scanned with a cell phone. While the QR code can still be decoded even if there is no cell signal/WiFi, the first responder does have to have a smart phone with a QR code app.

Criteria: • Privacy: 3 • Visibility: 3 • Durability: 1 (single- use, stickers can fall off) • Hard to Remove: 1 • Enough Room: 1 (short message + phone included) • Cost: 3 ($4.99 for 10)

Temporary Tattoos (Example: Tattoos with a Purpose) Description: These are like the temporary tattoos you get in a Cracker Jack box but with room for contact

information. The same I found is autism-specific, but there are lots of other versions out there.

Criteria: • Privacy: 1 • Visibility: 2 • Durability: 2 (single-use) • Hard to Remove: 2 (requires baby oil or alcohol wipes) • Enough Room: 1 (2 lines – if you write small) • Cost: 2 ($9.00 for 6 pieces)

Obviously, I’ve just scratched the tip of the iceberg with ideas to help identify your child. But I hope that with these criteria, you’ll be able to solve this important safety question for your own family!

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Don’t forget, the Safety and Special Needs series will run every Monday.  If you’d like to submit a post, please email it to nuttydingo@gmail.com.

Safety and Special Needs, A Series #1

If there’s one thing I can count on, it’s my blog buddy, Lizbeth, from Four Sea Stars, to bring a great story to the table.  She’s been kind enough to be the first contributor to the series, Safety and Special Needs.

Be sure to visit Lizbeth at her blog, where you’ll find many more crazy, funny, and poignant stories about raising her her kids, one of whom has Asperger’s.

Lizbeth, Four Sea Stars

I’ve often joked that my son has a running relationship with cars, specifically the side mirrors.  And by relationship I mean, they hit him in the face when he walks by.  Every single time.  Alex doesn’t have any real sense of where his body is in relation to where other things are around him, so he often runs into walls, misjudges distances, bumps into people, stands too close, etc.  We’re on a constant vigil for things that may cause problems.

When he was younger, we lived in a house that had an open floor plan with one small detail—it had two steps down to the main family room.  It was the house that we brought Alex home to and we grew used to those two steps and never really thought much of them.  Alex never thought of them either.

He fell up them, down them, rolled over them, on them, tripped down them and one particular time forgot they were there all together…..and landed in the Emergency Room and went right into surgery.

Having forgotten about the steps, he careened over them and when he landed, he bit through his bottom lip, he bit clear through it, and it had to be stitched back together.  And since he has sensory issues, those stitches in his mouth were replaced no less than three times before we just gave up—he would relentlessly chew through them.  I can’t begin to tell you the horrors of watching your child chew his mouth into hamburger and how bloody that was.  Enough said.

That was when he was three.

So we’re always on the look-out for things that we know he will run into, not see, or not even be aware of.   Which brings me to the car mirrors.  My kid is a magnet for them.  We could be in a wide open parking lot and he’d still manage to smack into one.  I would intentionally park away from other cars, I still do.  Trust me, I’m not parking in the back nine to get a little more exercise, it’s to protect my son.  There was a period of time where he had a series of black eyes from running head first into a car mirror.

I can’t trust he won’t be busy in his own thoughts and not be aware of what’s around him.

And that brings me to a bigger issue.  I have to be his eyes and ears—all the time.  I can’t rely on him to pay attention to his surroundings.  I can’t depend he’ll see oncoming traffic and I certainly can’t expect him to walk across a parking lot unattended.

So for us safety is not a given.  It’s not something we take for granted and its not something we take lightly.  It’s something that keeps me up at night.  I’m constantly ticking off where Alex can get hurt, lost, wander away or run over.  And I’m being dead serious here.  The amount of time my neurons are firing, thinking of all the ways to keep him out of harms way, is astonishing.  I can’t trust he’ll look both ways at a corner and I can’t expect him to look up from the ground to see the car mirrors.

So the next time you see me and I’m out in the nosebleed section of Target’s parking lot, know I’m not there for my health.  I’m there for my son’s.

Safety and Special Needs, A Series

Back when Connor was not yet one-year-old, and still crawling, we lived in a house with a fireplace in the living room.  At some point each day, he busied himself with crawling to the fireplace, in an attempt to get into that big hole and play around.

There were several well-read parenting books on my shelf, so I knew that my job was to move him and distract him with his toys.  This didn’t seem to be working, but I dug in my heels and decided I would stick with this plan.  Connor, of course, had not read the parenting books, and as soon as I plopped him down with his toys, he abruptly turned and crawled right back to the fireplace.  I stuck with it, mentally counting each time I moved him away, and when I got to 100, I knew something wasn’t right.  I hadn’t been around that many babies, but I knew that it usually wasn’t that hard to interest them in an alternate object.

Since my main goal was his safety, I got online to look for gates.  Most seemed to be in the $100 range, which was just not in the budget, so we had to be creative.

I found a large cardboard box in the garage, and cut out one side in the shape of the fireplace.  Then I duct-taped the flat cardboard to the front of the fireplace.  Hubs laughed at me, asking “do you really think that’s going to stop him?”

But it did.  As soon as the opening of the fireplace was covered up, it was like it no longer existed.  Connor crawled that way once, looked at it, and turned around and went back to his toys.  He never bothered with the fireplace again, as though it had disappeared.

Now I realize that compared to some, we don’t have it so tough.  There are many parents that have to go to extreme measures to ensure their kids’ safety, often in creative and innovative ways. And there are too many horrible stories out there about kids that have wandered and gone missing.

When I was looking for someone to guest post for me, I had several kind offers.  They wanted to know what topic I’d like, and my mind kept coming back to safety.  And instead of just having a single guest post, I thought this might be a great topic to run as a series.

Every Monday I’ll host a guest post from someone with their story of safety issues for their kids, and what has worked for them.  There are so many great ideas out there, and I know this will be helpful to others.

There aren’t too many rules, just a few:

1.  Contact me, via email (nuttydingo@gmail.com) or Facebook, letting me know you’d like to submit a post on safety.  I’ll run them on consecutive Mondays, in the order they’re received.

2.  Submit your finished post, along with any pics or links to be included, to me at least 48 hours ahead of time.

3.  I will not edit your post.  If I spot a spelling error, I may correct it, but that’s it.  The usual disclaimer applies:  if there is any material that is offensive, abusive, or defamatory, I reserve the right to withhold posting the piece.

4.  As is customary, post a link on your blog on your Monday, linking back to The Connor Chronicles.

I made this handy-dandy picture, meme-y thing that you can use if you want.

(When I added text it blurs just a tiny bit when I save it.  Why?  Why does it do this?  This is the crap that makes me crazy in life, this stuff right here.  If you know how to do this so the text doesn’t blur, tell me and I’ll send you the pic.  Otherwise, this one isn’t too bad.)