Safety First

Tragedy struck a town close to us last week that reminded me of the dangers of having a child with special needs that I'd rather forget. An 11-year old autistic boy wandered from his home and was found the next day in the river. How tragic. I cannot imagine the grief his family is experiencing. When I heard the news I wanted to break down and cry.

While I know that right now this isn't something that could happen to James, it reminds me of how vulnerable he really is. He can't scream for help, he can't get up and walk away from danger, he can't stop himself from falling off his bed. I think as a special needs parent I'd rather forget these things. We have so much going on already from school, to therapy to feeding that it's easy to forget, or take a passive approach, to safety.

Since James is not mobile that saves us a lot of headaches when it comes to safety. We know he isn't going to wander off in the neighborhood or fall down the stairs. But there are some areas that I know I'm lacking in and I can no longer ignore. The biggest one I can think of is James' bed. When we moved into our new house several months ago we bought the boys bunk beds. I knew that when we put James in a regular twin bed that I was going to need to buy a railing so he wouldn't fall off. But I haven't done it yet. Moving James into a twin bed was a safety decision in and of itself. He was getting his arms and legs caught in the railings of his crib and I was afraid he would break a bone. So to the big boy bed we went. Most of the time he's ok in his bed. But he has fallen out and he has gotten his hands stuck underneath the mattress and scraped up his knuckles. This week I am buying a railing for his bed.

Another recent thing that's popped up is James' safety on our couch. He spends a good amount of time lying down on our loveseat-that's James' spot. I've never thought much about James falling off-he can't roll, so he can't fall off. Wrong. Twice last week he fell off the couch. He wasn't hurt either time, in fact the second time it happened he was just content to be on the floor. I need to make sure I'm closer by when he's on the couch now.

The last big safety issue I can think of is James' special tomato chair. It has a harness-so it should be safe right? Wrong. We don't use the entire harness. After we moved to our house I couldn't find the pelvic portion of the harness so we weren't using it. Well James has gotten pretty tall and when he arches his back (when he's excited mostly) he pushes on the floor with his feet and is close to pushing himself out of his chair-while it's not a big deal and it wouldn't be a fall very far, it still isn't safe.

All in all every parent has to worry about the safety of their kids. I worry about Elliot getting out the front door/garage door on his own and rushing to the street. But those of us with special needs children need to remember that our children are much more vulnerable and we need to be more vigilant and not forget or get passive about the safety of our children.