My Autism Insights

Now that Keith Kennedy has been found after he went missing for a week (I learned of this over at AutismVox), I feel a little better about our annual camping trip.  We’re going to a familiar place, which has it’s pros and cons of course.  The good part is that Gus is very comfortable there and won’t necessarily feel the need to see and do everything at once.  The down side is that Gus is very comfortable there and sometimes gets the idea that he can go where he wants, when he wants, without letting anyone but the chipmunks under the cabin know about it.

We take the precaution of having an ID bracelet, but if we can’t find him, that doesn’t help us much.  I considered getting one of those kiddie lojacks, but haven’t found one that will work for us yet. 

When Gus was about three, we went on one of our usual camping trips and I tried the Mommy I’m Here Locator.  If he was getting too far, I would press a button, it would beep and he would come back.  It worked for a short while, but it increasingly started to annoy him to the point where he would do a sort of jig before returning to me.  Toward the end of the weekend, he went out into the middle of a field of grass taller than he was (how he escaped a single tick is still a mystery), took the little teddy bear off his show and left it in the middle of the field.  Teddy was never seen again.  So much for that. 

There was anotehr one called Angel Alert or some such thing, but it never worked at all.  In other words, I could barely turn it on.

I thought about the Ion Kids locator, but I’m very skeptical.  So in the meantime, we just make sure that Gus is never left unattended, and someone shadows him at all times.

If anyone knows of a better locator device or an affordable GPS (the Wherifone may be an option when he’s a little older), I’d love to hear about it.  Now that I’m not working weekends anymore, I see a bunch of camping trips in our near future!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS