Safety in the Community for School Aged Children

It’s natural for parents to be concerned about the safety of their children. There are specific areas of concern that you should address if you have an autistic child. The most common safety concerns for autistic children are wandering and drowning. The following are strategies to address these issues as well as safety in the community and bullying.

It can be helpful to notify your police department that you have an autistic child in your home. Call your police department and ask if they have any identification programs for vulnerable residents such as autistic children. If they do, take time to go down to the precinct, if possible with your child, and register them. If they don’t have a formal way to register, ask if you can bring your child to meet with a police officer to tour the police station to make them more comfortable with what an officer might look like if they are approached.

You can also post a sign or decal near your front door indicating that an autistic person lives in your home and in the passenger side car door where your child would be sitting. Or you can attach it to their seatbelt or their shoelaces.

Wandering and solutions

Many families worry that their children may wander from home or away from you when you are out. A useful resource is the free Big Red Safety Box from The National Autism Association (NAA). This toolkit, given to autism families in need, is designed to to educate, raise awareness and provide simple tools that can assist you in preventing, and responding to, wandering-related emergencies. NAA’s Big Red Safety Box includes identification materials like a bracelet or shoe ID, helpful documents for emergency planning, wandering prevention tools including door and window alarms, visuals for your home and much more.

Pool and Water Safety

If you have a pool at your house it needs a locked fence, pool alarm and pool cover.
Ensure you have a chime or alarm activated on each door of your house.
Discuss water safety and to never go to water without you. A social story with photos that explains safety can be useful. Autistic children may think literally so don’t assume they apply one situation to another or that they will truly understand safety when intrigued by the water.
Never leave children or teens who do not have strong swimming skills unattended by the water until they are able to handle themselves and make decisions about their own safety.
Teach your child how to swim starting from an early age. If traditional swimming lessons aren’t right for your child, explore adaptive swimming lessons designed for children with special needs. Call the Milestones free autism Helpdesk for recommendations.

Safety in the Community

Discuss with your child what to do if you get lost in a store or out in the community using a picture story or chart if helpful.

Make it clear who they can leave with, who your child’s safe people are. Create a picture story with photos of safe people. Mix in photos of some strangers to test that your child understands. Include your physical therapist and others who can spend time with them and touch them. Be clear on what is appropriate touching for that role.

Use it to explain layers of safety: These are safe people in this setting. Their physical therapist sees them in their physical therapy (P.T.) center or your home but is not allowed to pick them up at school and take them anywhere.

Who is allowed to pick them up at school? Make sure they understand getting in the right car with the right safe person.

Teach your child parking lot safety such as holding an adult’s hand if needed and understanding that cars are backing out and may not see them. Using the lines in a parking lot may help children note when to stop and look before crossing. Autistic children may be more likely to run off and not understand the dangers of cars moving in and out of parking spaces. They may experience sensory challenges from the sounds of car engines running, honking of horns, motorcycles revving, and sirens feeling much louder to them than to you. They may want to move quickly away from the sounds.

Gradually work on teaching your child skills like crossing the street safely. The Organization for Autism Reseach Guide to Safety includes helpful tips for teaching skills like this.

Depending on their developmental level, it can be helpful to use basic universal symbols such as stop sign, crosswalk signs (walk/don’t walk/where to cross at a road), and green light/yellow light means slow down/red light.

Safety at School

Discuss safety with your child’s teacher. Share anything you think would help the teacher and school staff understand who your child is and issues to highlight. Before school starts try to meet up and bring your child with you.

Share with the teacher or interventionist issues you’re working on including anything that involves safety. Discuss how you and your child are learning what might set off a meltdown coming on and how you address it at home. Make sure your child learns at the start of each school year what the school rules are including being clear on what to do if they need to leave the classroom to go to the bathroom.

If an issue is a priority to you, you can request it be addressed in the Individualized Education Program (IEP). The IEP isn’t solely for education, it is also anything that prepares your child for the real world. For example requesting to go to the bathroom, school bus safety and teaching who they can go home with especially if allowed normally to leave school without supervision. You can find more information in this Education article about IEPs in the Milestones Autism Planning (MAP) Tool.

Friendship and Risk of Bullying and Being Taken Advantage Of

Autistic children can find it challenging to understand what a friend versus an acquaintance is and who is a safe person they can trust in which ways. You might help them think about it as if they felt scared or sad, who could they trust? Who is supportive and makes them feel happy?

Autistic kids are at risk of being teased, bullied or taken advantage of for their things or money. Or to try to get them to do something such as doing homework or writing a paper for the “friend.”

Kids may face discrimination from other kids or from adults, in other words judging them and not seeing them as a person with feelings and great potential. Autistic children are more likely to be too compliant. They may be too likely to easily say yes to things without thinking about whether it was OK for someone to ask them to do something or whether they really want to do it. They may be very agreeable to whatever another child asks them to do because they think this person is their friend.