The leash factor.
There's a particular misconception that keeps coming across my doorstep. It's persistent and steeped in ignorance and it irritates me, in the way that only attitudes coming from a smug but ignorant position can. So I'm taking to the blog to explain it further, and I hope you'll share it with others.
It's been kind of a hip thing, in the past few years, to hate on parents who put their kids on leashes. I've seen the outrage on Facebook, Twitter, and more recently, in the last issue of Outside Magazine. The attitude expressed is laced with condensation and self-righteousness...look at those awful parents who have their kids on a leash! If they're that bad of parents that they treat their kids like dogs, then maybe they shouldn't even have kids! To which I usually reply: You don't know what you're talking about.
In my decade-long career as a behavior therapist for children on the autism spectrum, I counseled many parents who needed to use child harnesses just to keep their children safe. Safety is a hard concept to a child on the autism spectrum: It's abstract, and if you have limited cognitive abilities, if you don't perceive danger, if you don't have perspective-taking, and if you're not wholly aware of your surroundings, you don't get it. 90% of my clients had bolting issues: Whether they were happy, sad, angry, scared, or sick, they could take off at mach speed at a moment's notice. If they weren't stopped in time, they could run outside the center, they could run into traffic, they could run for miles outside your neighborhood. You think you should be able to stop them. Sometimes you can't. You think you should be able to catch them. Sometimes you can't. It's impulsive, it happens LIKETHAT, and most of the time it's this blind, tunnel-vision thing - they're not looking out for cars. They're not looking out for people. They're not paying attention to anything else in their surroundings, except getting farther away or closer to whatever it might have been - the sound of a siren, a funny trick, a song they hate - that set them off.
And we tend to get very cocky, when it comes to other people's children. I do the same thing, too. Before I worked with clients with autism, I thought I knew it all. All it takes is a little teaching! I would think to myself. A little bit more supervision! But you become very humble, after the day when you have three therapists assisting you and still a client manages to dodge all four of you and bolt all the way to the door because he heard a lawnmower outside.
So what do you do, when you have a child who could run out into traffic at a moment's notice anytime you go outside? What do you do when you're a mom with limited means of help and you have a child with special needs? What do you do when you have two other kids who also require your attention during regular outings like going to Target or the YMCA? These parents are trying to keep their child safe. They're not trying to make their own lives easier... They're trying to simply live an everyday life as a family with a child with special needs. The only other safe solution, for children who have severe bolting tendencies, is keeping that child locked inside a house all day. Not a great alternative. And remember - these children could look perfectly normal to you. They could look perfectly well-behaved, perfectly calm. Welcome to the Autism Spectrum Disorder. You don't know until you know.
So please, let's stop it with the automatic assumption that a child on a leash is attached to a horrible parent. Sometimes it might be - I don't personally know everyone who has one. But for the parents I know who do use child harnesses, they are, quite frankly, some of the most wonderful parents I know. They're willing to withstand withering gazes and condescending stares - let's face it, we're not exactly subtle when we're passing judgement - to keep their child safe while also giving them some semblance of a normal life. And why are we so big on judging parents all the time, anyway? There are so many other more important things to worry about. Ben might pick Courtney at the final rose ceremony, you guys! And if that happens, the world might blow up, so let's get in the game and gain some perspective, yeah? The End.
It's been kind of a hip thing, in the past few years, to hate on parents who put their kids on leashes. I've seen the outrage on Facebook, Twitter, and more recently, in the last issue of Outside Magazine. The attitude expressed is laced with condensation and self-righteousness...look at those awful parents who have their kids on a leash! If they're that bad of parents that they treat their kids like dogs, then maybe they shouldn't even have kids! To which I usually reply: You don't know what you're talking about.
In my decade-long career as a behavior therapist for children on the autism spectrum, I counseled many parents who needed to use child harnesses just to keep their children safe. Safety is a hard concept to a child on the autism spectrum: It's abstract, and if you have limited cognitive abilities, if you don't perceive danger, if you don't have perspective-taking, and if you're not wholly aware of your surroundings, you don't get it. 90% of my clients had bolting issues: Whether they were happy, sad, angry, scared, or sick, they could take off at mach speed at a moment's notice. If they weren't stopped in time, they could run outside the center, they could run into traffic, they could run for miles outside your neighborhood. You think you should be able to stop them. Sometimes you can't. You think you should be able to catch them. Sometimes you can't. It's impulsive, it happens LIKETHAT, and most of the time it's this blind, tunnel-vision thing - they're not looking out for cars. They're not looking out for people. They're not paying attention to anything else in their surroundings, except getting farther away or closer to whatever it might have been - the sound of a siren, a funny trick, a song they hate - that set them off.
And we tend to get very cocky, when it comes to other people's children. I do the same thing, too. Before I worked with clients with autism, I thought I knew it all. All it takes is a little teaching! I would think to myself. A little bit more supervision! But you become very humble, after the day when you have three therapists assisting you and still a client manages to dodge all four of you and bolt all the way to the door because he heard a lawnmower outside.
So what do you do, when you have a child who could run out into traffic at a moment's notice anytime you go outside? What do you do when you're a mom with limited means of help and you have a child with special needs? What do you do when you have two other kids who also require your attention during regular outings like going to Target or the YMCA? These parents are trying to keep their child safe. They're not trying to make their own lives easier... They're trying to simply live an everyday life as a family with a child with special needs. The only other safe solution, for children who have severe bolting tendencies, is keeping that child locked inside a house all day. Not a great alternative. And remember - these children could look perfectly normal to you. They could look perfectly well-behaved, perfectly calm. Welcome to the Autism Spectrum Disorder. You don't know until you know.
So please, let's stop it with the automatic assumption that a child on a leash is attached to a horrible parent. Sometimes it might be - I don't personally know everyone who has one. But for the parents I know who do use child harnesses, they are, quite frankly, some of the most wonderful parents I know. They're willing to withstand withering gazes and condescending stares - let's face it, we're not exactly subtle when we're passing judgement - to keep their child safe while also giving them some semblance of a normal life. And why are we so big on judging parents all the time, anyway? There are so many other more important things to worry about. Ben might pick Courtney at the final rose ceremony, you guys! And if that happens, the world might blow up, so let's get in the game and gain some perspective, yeah? The End.
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