April is Autism Awareness month and April 2nd is World Autism Awareness day. In honor of this I usually post something about how I've applied a lesson learned from Autism to practicing in house or the management of the legal department. While I have one of those prepared and will post it soon, something happened over the weekend that I had to discuss first.
As my regular readers will know, one of my boys is on the spectrum. In my offline life I'm very open about it and how it affects our family. For the most part, it's just become part of our identity and our routines may not be what yours are, but they're normal for us. I can almost forget that LG isn't like other kids. Until he has an "incident".
Over the weekend we had an incident. We were window shopping for a grill at Target when my youngest, the Rockstar, decided he wanted a hat. LG was sitting in the cart busy with a book while my husband and Z were looking at the grills so we split up. I took the younger two over to look at hats, which are an entire store away from the seasonal stuff hubby and Z was looking at. LG looked up and discovered that his big brother wasn't around and got freaked. He jumped out of the cart screaming Z's name. I caught him and tried to calm him down and told him to wait while I turned the cart containing Rockstar around to head back to the seasonal aisle. But before I could turn around, LG was gone. He'd taken off to find Z. With my heart in the pit of my stomach I yelled and ran after him, but couldn't find him in the most direct route. Seeing my husband and no LG, I started to freak. While he went aisle by aisle looking for him, I went to the front of the store to ask that they post people by the doors to make sure he didn't wander into the parking lot - something a lot of autistic kids do.
Target's response was awesome. I don't know if they train on how to handle kids on the spectrum or if this store was an anomaly, but they sprang into action. Two people jumped to the doors, they gave his description out over their radios (including that he was autistic), and they quickly found him back by the Easter toys/candy. They didn't try to grab him, when he wouldn't engage with them they didn't try to force it. They just calmly radioed back his location and followed him until my husband could get there. What could have turned into a very traumatic event for LG was completely avoided due to the calm way those employees handled the situation. It may not seem like a big thing, but for a family having dealt with meltdowns caused by strangers trying to engage him and his affinity for taking off when he gets focused on something, this was huge. So I wanted to take a minute to post a huge Thank You to Target.
I know they've not had the best media lately, but they've earned a customer for life, and they've shown how just a little awareness can change everything. So whether you 'light it up blue' or 'tone it down tan', take a minute today to share how autism has impacted your life - raise awareness and let's make my Target incident a regular response rather than such an exception that I have to blog about it.
As my regular readers will know, one of my boys is on the spectrum. In my offline life I'm very open about it and how it affects our family. For the most part, it's just become part of our identity and our routines may not be what yours are, but they're normal for us. I can almost forget that LG isn't like other kids. Until he has an "incident".
Over the weekend we had an incident. We were window shopping for a grill at Target when my youngest, the Rockstar, decided he wanted a hat. LG was sitting in the cart busy with a book while my husband and Z were looking at the grills so we split up. I took the younger two over to look at hats, which are an entire store away from the seasonal stuff hubby and Z was looking at. LG looked up and discovered that his big brother wasn't around and got freaked. He jumped out of the cart screaming Z's name. I caught him and tried to calm him down and told him to wait while I turned the cart containing Rockstar around to head back to the seasonal aisle. But before I could turn around, LG was gone. He'd taken off to find Z. With my heart in the pit of my stomach I yelled and ran after him, but couldn't find him in the most direct route. Seeing my husband and no LG, I started to freak. While he went aisle by aisle looking for him, I went to the front of the store to ask that they post people by the doors to make sure he didn't wander into the parking lot - something a lot of autistic kids do.
Target's response was awesome. I don't know if they train on how to handle kids on the spectrum or if this store was an anomaly, but they sprang into action. Two people jumped to the doors, they gave his description out over their radios (including that he was autistic), and they quickly found him back by the Easter toys/candy. They didn't try to grab him, when he wouldn't engage with them they didn't try to force it. They just calmly radioed back his location and followed him until my husband could get there. What could have turned into a very traumatic event for LG was completely avoided due to the calm way those employees handled the situation. It may not seem like a big thing, but for a family having dealt with meltdowns caused by strangers trying to engage him and his affinity for taking off when he gets focused on something, this was huge. So I wanted to take a minute to post a huge Thank You to Target.
I know they've not had the best media lately, but they've earned a customer for life, and they've shown how just a little awareness can change everything. So whether you 'light it up blue' or 'tone it down tan', take a minute today to share how autism has impacted your life - raise awareness and let's make my Target incident a regular response rather than such an exception that I have to blog about it.
Thanks for sharing this -- I'm glad to hear about companies getting it right!
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