Life Cannot Be Locked Out

Ali Family Autism Truths #24 – April 24, 2016

Life cannot be locked out. Nor can safety or protection be locked in.

The truth is, like it or not, when raising a child with autism, locks can be a large part of your world. Some autistic individuals have a tendency to bolt or run away, which means better and more locks on doors to the outside.

(There was a terrible, frightening period when D did this, and in the span of 48 hours before we could get extra locks installed on all doors leading to the outside, he just left the home twice. The first time I ran throughout our neighborhood in a panic looking for him, called the cops, and then found him in someone’s backyard on their swings. The family in that home knew he was autistic and did their best to keep him playing in the backyard until they could figure out where he lived.

The second time it was early morning, and I woke to my doorbell ringing. A neighbor about four houses down had seen D wandering in the street and brought him back home to us. Those two times were enough to scare me for life.)

We’ve ended up installing key locks on our other two kids’ bedrooms. They couldn’t manage the pop locks door knobs, so we switched them out for key locks and instructed them to keep their door locked when they weren’t in their room.  Too many times D had gone inside and “messed things up,” according to the kiddos.

It’s a hard decision to lock up rooms in your own home. I mean, this home belongs to us all, right? Of course there are rules where the kids are allowed to play and not play (our room is off limits for playing). But they aren’t locked out of anywhere. Except D is. Too many times things were misplaced or beds were messed up or things were dumped in H’s fish tank or A’s necklaces became bead twirlers for D.

I hate it. I hate that D is locked out of different rooms. But we are a family of seven living together, and I have to take the other kids’ needs and feelings into account.

The pantry has a lock on it too, because too many times D has gorged on something from the pantry when he shouldn’t have. We rarely keep the pantry locked though, because we are all usually around and can help teach him that only one chocolate is good.

Here’s the thing though. God bless him, D’s learned how to unlock doors with keys. Just taught himself, and there is no end to my delight in that. The keys are tied around the door knob, so anyone can unlock it if they need to. And now D’s taught himself how to take said key and unlock a door. It’s freaking fantastic!

Except that, well, this is now happening all too frequently:

Negative: there was a zalzala (earthquake) disaster of food and chocolate and cereal and wrappers and rice and just one of the worst food messes I’ve walked down too. This has happened too many times for me to count.

Clearly D woke hungry. He almost always does. Don’t we all? And I came down an hour after him, so breakfast was delayed. Big mistake on my part.

Why can’t he get himself his own breakfast?

Positive: obviously I’ve been remiss in teaching this skill to D. He is capable. I know it’s in there. I pray it is. It will take loads of time and dedication. But must be done to step more towards greater independence.

The truth is life cannot be locked out. The permanent answer is not locking D in (for safety) or locking D out of that which he cannot manage. There just isn’t locks on all part of life, nor should they be. There isn’t enough vigilance in the world to ensure his health and safety.

So we need to teach D better. I need to figure out how to teach him better skills with getting snacks. With getting himself breakfast. With gorging on candy and not throwing candy wrappers everywhere.

I don’t know how.

I don’t know how.

I don’t know how.

But I know it’s possible.

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