Providing Security and Safety for an Autistic Child?

JHDrexler asks: "I have read Slashdot for several years and often find topics/posts about security to be especially interesting, enlightening, educational, and sometimes entertaining. I consider myself to be fairly well educated and experienced when dealing with and enforcing security. But the situation that I am forced to deal with is, at its core, the basic fundamental reason for the requirement of security, but at such an unbelievable extreme that it has perplexed everyone that I have asked for assistance. While most security systems are designed to keep the un-trusted out. My application requires keeping the un-trusted out, while also keeping the un-trusted in and robust enough that the trusted users cannot break it." JHDrexler has three children, one of whom is autistic and tends to get into trouble. Could some form of system be developed (on a budget) that would be easy to use for the non-autistic children, yet restrictive enough to keep the autistic child from getting out, and possibly harming himself?

"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."

Comments

A dog

[Anonymous Coward]

A dog might be trainable to watch the kid and bark if there's a problem.

Re:A dog

[aridhol]

Damn...my mod points expired yesterday (unused) :(

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.

Reading Ability

[Tolchz]

Find a task that one child cannot do, such as (I would assume, read) This after all I believe what you are searching for, some method to tell a difference between the children, either with posession of a key or a certain fingerprint.

Get one of those rollup "indestructible" keyboards that they sell (I think tiger.com still has them)

Use a monitor to ask an easy question known to someone who could read.
(What color is the sky ? , How many fingers do you have ?, etc)

Without the ability to read one could not answer the question on the keyboard and could not unlock the door.

The only downfalls that I can see are the possible costs of interfacing the software with the locking door and the computer/monitor/keyboards.

It would probably be much cheaper then a biometric system but would be a little less fault tolerant as it is homebuilt.

Some factors make this problem easier.

[DeadSea]

You only have to be able to tell the difference between five people. That should make any system easier if you want to do it yourself. If you use biometrics it shouldn't be that complicated to tell the difference between 5 people. The fact that the autistic kid is the middle kid makes it more challenging though.

Specifically, I'm thinking of the stuff my high school chemistry teacher rigged up. He was a very bright guy, and had a very limited budget. He found ways to rig up cheap versions of very expensive scientific equipment. He usually did so with parts from Radio Shack and old computers that the computer lab was throwing out.

I would suggest getting an led, and a detector, having everybody in your family put their finger in between and see how much light each transmits. You would have to find a way to disable access for one while allowing access for four. If the differences are great enough, that would work. Just have everybody in your family stick their finger in a hole. You might want to work with pinky fingers so there is only one finger that will fit.

How about a scale on each side of the door? It would be easy to defeat for a regular person, but I'm not so sure for an 8 year old with autism. Again, you only have 5 people to worry about, not a lot more.

Magnetic keys for pet doors

[ip_vjl]

I've seen variations of this selling in the stores for automated locks for pet doors. There's a little magnetic key that goes in the collar that triggers the locking mechanism so that your pet can activate the door, but other things do not.

The reason I bring this up is not to compare your kids to animals ;) - but that this might be a set of equipment that can be easily hacked apart to make bracelets or something similar for your kids.
Not sure what they cost, but I'd imagine it is easily within the "two weeks pay" limit.

Since kids are bigger than your average cat, I'd imagine they'd have to hold the bracelet to the sensor as opposed to just being in proximity to the door, but should still be workable nonetheless. My guess is that the circuitry isn't incredibly advanced, as it is designed for pet-size doors, therefore the security is probably pretty light (ie. limited number of codes - if any "codes" at all) which trigger the lock. You're not worried about a person getting through that 6"x10" hole, and raccoons aren't very good with electronics.

Should be worth a look as a starting point, though.

Good luck.

exit safety

[battjt]

In case of a fire or some other emergency, a stranger to the building needs to be able to exit.

Joe

Sensors?

[Lochin Rabbar]

You have my sympathy, my wife is a professional in the field of autism and I realise how wearing it can be for the parents of children with autism. However I'm not sure that locks are the answer. While I can see the attraction, and probably the need for such a system, I worry that the authorities and social services might not. A possible alternative might be the type of sensor system that they use for store security. If you could get your son to wear a tag then you would be alerted when he leaves the house, and be able to take action accordingly.

Re:Sensors?

[cybermace5]

I agree completely, you can't just lock the kid inside the house.

Imagine the huge risk you face, if the rest of your family has to use keys, or pass biometric testing, to exit the house.

If there is an emergency and the system works, the autistic kid won't be able to get out. If he was following you, and the door shut behind you and was locked from the outside, that's a huge problem.

If the system failed, no one can get out. At the very least, you have delayed your exit while you break a window, each family member crawls out, etc.,.

All I can see working here is a "house arrest" type of solution. An ankle bracelet will sound an alarm if the wearer wanders too far away, or if the bracelet is tampered with. Commercial solutions exist, obviously. They do usually call the police department in an alarm situation; the best solution would involve some kind of pager your wife would wear. If a ready-made solution is not available, a local consulting engineer may be able to provide a one-off solution for a reasonable (considering the risk) price. You may even be able to find a senior project group at a nearby engineering school, who may be able to get funding in other ways (grants, Lemelson funding).

Re:Sensors?

[cybermace5]

No, the RFID tags are much less complicated than the ankle bracelet.

There are several problems, though. A detector must be placed at every possible exit point, rather than a radius-based system. Also, the RFID tag has no way of triggering an alert if it is tampered with.

Maybe guarding one or two entrances is ok, until the child figures out how to climb out of a window. The ankle bracelet system works well for actual house arrest cases; they don't use RFID tags.

RF is also too easy to defeat: tinfoil. My RF passcard for work used to set off store alarms, until one of the stores gave me a "Schlage Shield" (piece of tinfoil covered in paper). The autistic child may not actually think of wrapping their RFID bracelet in tinfoil to get past the alarm, but this could happen accidentally; foil-lined potato chip bags, or anything metallic like a watch or pie plate could shield the RF tag. An active bracelet would trigger if communication is interrupted.

They are kids, and he will learn and adapt...

[stienman]

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

Re:Check ebay and liquidations.....

[aridhol]

My guess is that he can learn over time if he can watch numbers entered in a keypad

My wife's lab has a keypad with sunken keys and LEDs under the keys. To open the door, you press the "reset" button, which will put all ten digits on the keypad in random order. This ensures that someone shoulder surfing can't get the code, as you need to be directly above the keypad in order to read the LEDs.

Are you underestimating his abilities?

[dacarr]

IANADoctor.

If he can think enough to read over the shoulder of your other kids to learn the codes, he is just going to break any sort of fence you put up for him.

In short, follow the RFID lock suggestions given here. That should help out, but it may be only a matter of time before he picks up a carelessly left bracelet.

Skidata and Swatch

[wimbor]

In Europe at least (don't know about the States) we have ski resorts that use a special Swatch watch that has an RFID chip inside. The system for the ski resorts is provided by Skidata. (www.skidata.com) The system is also used to protect garages, ...

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!

Instead of locks, how about noise?

[splattertrousers]

How about making all the exterior doors beep loudly when they are opened? That way, the adults in the house will at least know when doors are being opened. You could probably do that yourself with simple parts from Radio Shack.

You could go a step further, and attach some sort of biometric device to the main doors that disables the sound temporarily if the fingerprint or voiceprint matches. You wouldn't need the device on each side of the door, but it wouldn't hurt.

Hooking a biometric device to a buzzer sounds a lot easier and safer than hooking it to a lock. You might be able to find one that stands alone and doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer. Or, you might be able to hide a small, old computer near the main door and use a computer-connected fingerprint scanner or something. Then you'd have to figure out how to get the computer to disable the buzzer, but that shouldn't be too tricky.

Gate Mechanisms and RFID

[Rentasmo]

I worked for four years in a group home for children with developmental disabilities. Several of our children had issues with elopement and I understand how stressful it can be monitoring children who like to run off but don't understand that traffic is dangerous etc...

At the group home in which I worked we had a gate which required a semi-complex procedure to open, one had to lift a ring, turn a knob, and slide the handle of the gate all the way to the left in order to open the latch. I could possibly diagram the mechanism for you if you were interested. This would probably not work for your child if he is able to observe and remember keypad sequences.

As for the RFID devices, what about attaching or implanting them in the shoes of your children? Most children only have a few pairs of shoes and they aren't likely to be leaving the house without them. Nor is it obviously apparent to your other child what is unlocking the door (especially if you can get your children to be nonchalant about the device)

Simple Solution

[perljon]

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.