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Providing Security and Safety for an Autistic Child?
"Here is the issue. I have three children and a very loving, hard-working wife at home. My oldest child is a nine-year-old girl, and then I have my eight-year-old Autistic son, and then my five-year-old son. The eight-year-old presents the challenge. If you can imagine a two-year-old mentality in an eight-year-old body then you will begin to understand the issues that we face. This child is intelligent and determined, but he doesn't talk and he doesn't understand us when we talk to him. He doesn't understand fear and he doesn't understand pain. I have seen him play in the snow for twenty minutes, barefoot before we realized he had gotten out of the house. His only complaint was that we made him come back into the house to warm him up. The security in my house needs to be done in such a way that my nine and five-year-old can get in and out, without compromising the security in such a way that the eight-year-old can get out. I also need to do this on my own. Our efforts to get assistance from our local government agencies have failed.
We have tried chains, but he just unlatches them. We have tried keys but the kids (nine- and five-year-olds) either leave them where he can reach them, or they lose them when they need to use them. We have tried keypads, but he ate the buttons off of the first one that we bought. The new one had plastic buttons but after two weeks we found that he would look over the five-year-old's shoulder and read the code as he punched it in. The other two kids mean well and they understand, but let's face it, they are typical users. If the security is too hard to deal with, they won't. They won't close the door if they have to find a key to open it again. Besides, these kids need a life too and I cannot put the responsibility of the Autistic child's safety on these kids. It's too great of a burden and they are just kids. I need a solution that is transparent enough that they can live with it and robust enough that he can't break it. The keypads worked great but are just too easy for the Autistic kid to defeat.
I have looked into biometrics but everything that I have found only locks one direction and was expensive. I need something that will lock in both directions and can be done with less then two weeks pay. I am really hoping that someone here will have a creative, effective, and realistic solution that I can get running in a reasonable amount of time. My wife is pulling her hair out and will have a nervous breakdown soon if something doesn't happen.
I sincerely thank you for your time, your efforts and your ideas."
I think this looks like the best solution I've seen so far. Get a shepherd breed of dog, who's training and instinct will make it herd the child into a limited area.
Or you can get an akita and train it to "protect" your autistic child.
Good luck.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
The first thing that came to mind was RFID. If you have each child wear a watch with an RFID unit, then you can detect who is at or near the door. If there's no RFID unit, the door stays locked.
Of course, you'll have the same problem here that you have with other methods - the autistic child will learn and understand what makes it work, and the other children may not be responsible enough to make sure he doesn't have access to their watches (or whatever article of clothing you may attach the RFID to).
You can train the other children that if their watch opens the door for him then their priveledges of moving freely (ie, having a 'working' watch) will be limited for a period of time. They will learn to protect and secure their watches after a time.
The underlying issue, though, is that you cannot protect one child and completely free the others from the same protection. It's obviously an ideal for you to do so, and inexpensively, but it's simply not going to happen. Raising a child is not just a parental responsibility/burden, but a family one. As much as you'd like to keep them from bearing such a burden, it is unaviodable.
Since your autistic child cannot speak well, you may want to look into voice recognition technologies. Children are very flexible, and your other two children should learn very quickly to be able to say a simple phrase that will unlock the door for a period of time. You can change the phrase as frequently as needed to prevent your second child from learning it, but not so quickly that your other children tire of learning the phrase so often.
This can be done on the cheap, and coupled with another method, such as RFID or a keypad, could work very well. Microsoft has a free speech SDK which allows one to develop fairly robust speech applications (both talking and listening) with tools as simple as Visual Basic. Since it's a simple windows API, you could probably even use perl or another language you already know to interface with it. The API is built into XP and later, the SDK is freely downloadable from their website and will install the runtimes necessary for win9x if needed.
You might even consider a 'turing test' type of system. Put a few hundred very simple questions in the system. They press a button, it asks them the question, and they give an answer. Since the speech program as speaker independant, it should be fairly robust. You'll need to choose your questions carefully, and change them from time to time. It can be thought of as a teaching tool, even. Make sure the questions are simple enough that you don't have to program too many possible 'right' answers (put 5 pictures on the screen - ask what color the bird is type of thing).
This question intrigues me. I'd be interested in the final solution - or if you need help with any hardware (and possibly software) issues I may be able to do so. You can find my email address at my website http://ubasics.com/adam/electronics/.
Good luck!
-Adam
In many electronics do-it-yourself magazines you can find schematics for RFID readers that can connect to an electric door using cheap parts. The watches cost about 45 USD maximum. And kids will love the designs...
Since the watches are read from a distance, there is a large chance that your 8-year-old won't even notice that the watch is the key to the door.... Good luck! Please let us know what you eventually choose!
I had a foster brother that we were scared would kill us at night while we were sleeping. That's kind of scary, but our problem was similar to yours. We needed to keep only him in his room at night, but in case of an emergency, we needed for him to be able to pass through the door to safety. That's what we thought the problem was.
But really, the problem was that we needed to be awake when he left the room to ensure our safety. So my mom and dad bought a sensor that would detect when the door opened. The sensor was on the outside of door and could be turned on and off by the parent. (The sensor is out of reach because of it's height, and because you can't open the door without setting it off.) When the sensor sensed an open door, it set off an alarm that woke everyone in the house up AND the next three houses down. This type of system is available at radio shack for $20.
Result, foster brother learned very quickly that at night he could not open the door without triggering the alarm. And the alarm was loud and annoying. So it was very good in training certain behaviors. (The loud noise is almost like a pain stimulator in modifying behavior).
In short, put a sensor on every door and window in the house, like your standard security system. You can probably do this within your budget if you install it yourself and don't subscribe to a monitoring service. You can even drill the sensors into the door and the door jam to deter tampering when he gets old enough to tamper. You don't need to keep your son in the house, but you do need to know if and when he leaves. With such a system, you will know.
This will require for some adjustments in your living habits. Ie, your other kids won't be able to run in and out of the house (that will save you some heating bills too). They may have to ring the doorbell to come back in from playing, to avoid setting the alarm off, and you may have to get up to temporarly unset the alarm. But they will learn that very quickly as well, as the loud sound is as affective as a pain motivator in modifying behavior. Also, strangers will be safe as well in your house. If a fire breaks out, they can still physically exit your house, although a loud alarm will go off.
Finally, you and your wife can affectively keep the secret code to the alarm safe without burdening your kids with remembering it or protecting it. You can also set the alarm up to simply chime when a door or window is open. Maybe, you can find a system that allows you to set a very loud chime, or you could even place speakers in every room of your house.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
This is actually a great idea.
My g/f lived on a farm with two younger brothers, she was the oldest at 5, and her younger brothers were 4. They got a Bouvier des Flandres to watch over the kids, and it did an admirable job. Not quite on par with Lassie, but pretty close. It made sure they didn't get near any major equipment, or down the silo (she fell in when she was 4, hence hte dog)
It did a good job, and it was kid friendly.