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Medic Alert Bracelet?
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 12465" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>That's a good point, Witz. I'm dreading it when difficult child 3 gets older, although he is highly verbal these days. But I do feel the police should be better educated - I can pick an autistic person really easily almost at a glance (or at least, be fairly sure that it's something sufficiently similar, to warrant a gentle approach) so why can't the police have a similar exposure as part of their training? OK, tazering technically won't do lasting harm (not physically) but what sort of emotional trauma is it going to cause to the victim?</p><p></p><p>We've got an idiot police minister in our NSW parliament. He's trying to get our cops equipped with tazers and actually demonstrated one on a staff member, inside Parliament House (where ALL weapons are permanently banned and he'd previously been denied permission to make an exception with the tazer). The staff member who volunteered to be tazered (on live television) was OK after a while, but said if he'd known it would be that bad he wouldn't have volunteered. A pure publicity stunt that backfired because people could see how bad it was.</p><p></p><p>The problem is, the health alert medallions won't help in this situation - they're too small. Unless you have it tattooed on their foreheads in letters of fire, most people won't notice the medallion. Only health professionals with a downed patient will know to look.</p><p></p><p>Something we used to do with difficult child 3 when he was younger and non-verbal - we had a wrist label (on rainbow 1" wide elastic) that had his name, address and my mobile phone number written on it. We also wrote "autistic". Whenever we were away from home he would be terrified of being separated from the group, so he would willingly wear the wrist band. He wouldn't even take it off for his bath until we reassured him that he could leave it on the bench in plain sight and put it back on when he was getting dressed. </p><p>We also did one more thing - we got those self-adhesive schoolbook labels and wrote his name and my mobile number on it, then stuck it on his shirt. That plus the wrist tag - it was easily seen when needed. When extra young we stuck the label on the back of his shirt so he wouldn't peel it off.</p><p>And it worked - in 2000 we went to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, held where the Olympics were later held the same year. it was a trial run to see how we'd handle the day. The crowds were immense and difficult child 3 was very much a wanderer. He was good about staying close, but late as we were leaving the crowd surged the wrong way and we got separated. Within minutes I got a call to my mobile phone - someone on a lemonade stand had found him and called us. It took me ten minutes to struggle through the crowd and get to him. Without the label he couldn't have given them the details because when he was upset back then he lost his speech.</p><p></p><p>At least now I know he will find a way to get through to me. he's even gone into shops, given them my number and asked them to call me. He won't be able to do THAT much longer - he's getting too good at "pretending to be normal" as he calls it.</p><p></p><p>But back to your point, Witz - I wonder, is there a way in which we can coordinate with, say, the police to develop a method for easier identification of the more vulnerable difficult children? I have an adult friend (in his sixties) who is epileptic, he has a large laminated card which he carries round his neck because sometimes his behaviour seems very odd and people do wonder if he's an escapee from a nearby psychiatric ward. Those who know him just leave him to himself (apart from keeping a lookout for him, to keep him safe - we all love him). But what about if he's out of his area, or someone similar? We need something different here.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 12465, member: 1991"] That's a good point, Witz. I'm dreading it when difficult child 3 gets older, although he is highly verbal these days. But I do feel the police should be better educated - I can pick an autistic person really easily almost at a glance (or at least, be fairly sure that it's something sufficiently similar, to warrant a gentle approach) so why can't the police have a similar exposure as part of their training? OK, tazering technically won't do lasting harm (not physically) but what sort of emotional trauma is it going to cause to the victim? We've got an idiot police minister in our NSW parliament. He's trying to get our cops equipped with tazers and actually demonstrated one on a staff member, inside Parliament House (where ALL weapons are permanently banned and he'd previously been denied permission to make an exception with the tazer). The staff member who volunteered to be tazered (on live television) was OK after a while, but said if he'd known it would be that bad he wouldn't have volunteered. A pure publicity stunt that backfired because people could see how bad it was. The problem is, the health alert medallions won't help in this situation - they're too small. Unless you have it tattooed on their foreheads in letters of fire, most people won't notice the medallion. Only health professionals with a downed patient will know to look. Something we used to do with difficult child 3 when he was younger and non-verbal - we had a wrist label (on rainbow 1" wide elastic) that had his name, address and my mobile phone number written on it. We also wrote "autistic". Whenever we were away from home he would be terrified of being separated from the group, so he would willingly wear the wrist band. He wouldn't even take it off for his bath until we reassured him that he could leave it on the bench in plain sight and put it back on when he was getting dressed. We also did one more thing - we got those self-adhesive schoolbook labels and wrote his name and my mobile number on it, then stuck it on his shirt. That plus the wrist tag - it was easily seen when needed. When extra young we stuck the label on the back of his shirt so he wouldn't peel it off. And it worked - in 2000 we went to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, held where the Olympics were later held the same year. it was a trial run to see how we'd handle the day. The crowds were immense and difficult child 3 was very much a wanderer. He was good about staying close, but late as we were leaving the crowd surged the wrong way and we got separated. Within minutes I got a call to my mobile phone - someone on a lemonade stand had found him and called us. It took me ten minutes to struggle through the crowd and get to him. Without the label he couldn't have given them the details because when he was upset back then he lost his speech. At least now I know he will find a way to get through to me. he's even gone into shops, given them my number and asked them to call me. He won't be able to do THAT much longer - he's getting too good at "pretending to be normal" as he calls it. But back to your point, Witz - I wonder, is there a way in which we can coordinate with, say, the police to develop a method for easier identification of the more vulnerable difficult children? I have an adult friend (in his sixties) who is epileptic, he has a large laminated card which he carries round his neck because sometimes his behaviour seems very odd and people do wonder if he's an escapee from a nearby psychiatric ward. Those who know him just leave him to himself (apart from keeping a lookout for him, to keep him safe - we all love him). But what about if he's out of his area, or someone similar? We need something different here. Marg [/QUOTE]
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