REALLY Smart Advice

I just got this email from Unlocking Autism. It is great to see that police can respond so sensitively to autistic people when they are informed. I am gonna do this today.

We received the following letter on Friday night from Jodi Isom who was in a wreck on August 24th. She and her family are fine. She had a safety awareness sticker for emergency personnel and explains in her letter how that helped them through the situation...and that she realized how helpful it would have been if she had been rendered unconscious, or worse.

Our Emergency Stickers are available at our website at www.unlockingautism.org and are provided as a simple tool to help in the event of an emergency in your car or your home to alert Emergency Responders that there is a person with autism who might need assistance inside.

We suggest that your family visit with Emergency Responders (fire and police) in your local area to educate them on how to respond best to your family. We make cookies for both about once every 2 months and go on a field trip to the fire station with Liam. He loves to go climb around on the fire engine and honk the horn and wear the hat. The purpose is to help him become more familiar with uniformed people to realize that firemen and policemen are people there to help him and help him not to be afraid of them.

It is always better to be prepared!

Shelley Hendrix Reynolds

President, Unlocking Autism

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Hello parents,

I want to share this small story and you can benefit too. On my van is a red sticker inside the windshield stating: ATTENTION Emergency Personnel!!! PERSON WITH AUTISM

Then on my back door is the ribbon magnet of AUTISM AWARENESS. This really became a key element on August 24th, when a man who ran a red light and caused me to run right into him. Everyone including Ryan is doing fine and he was seatbelted in the back seat listening to his music. THE KEY FACTOR IS: The officer that approached me saw the red sticker in the window and the magnet not the back hatch. He asked "do you have a child with you or anyone else"? I exclaimed my son is with me and doing okay. The officer says" I see you have the autism sticker and is he okay"? "Do you need medical or a wrecker"? I said "No, we are okay and he is not upset yet". Officer said "I will try to get you out of here as soon as possible and I understand".

Within a few minutes while waiting on confirmation on paperwork he explained that he once dealt with an autistic child in a wreck and the child was devastated and hard to handle. Well, another officer walked up and first thing asked "is the child okay and how is he handling this"? I told him we were both okay and he is being patient. Then the first officer came back and explained they were going to have to put handcuffs on the guy who hit me and mentioned this may upset your child. He had all the information he needed and said I could go. As I pull away, they made sure I was to the next block till they put those handcuffs on.

Thank you officers.

Thank you Unlocking Autism for the wonderful sticker. I even have one in the window by my front & back doors. To purchase this sticker go to www.unlockingautism.org

What if I had been unconscious or , etc.? That sticker was a huge help.

Thank you,
Jodi Isom
Parent Support Autism