In this video, practical solutions for parents of severely or profoundly autistic individuals are shared. The podcast covers three key areas: bathroom hygiene, temperature control, and door security. For bathroom hygiene, the recommendation is “P Guard” from Amazon, which prevents urine leaks and odors. Temperature control is addressed through programmable thermostats, offering automatic adjustments for comfort. Door security solutions include “Deadbolt Secure” to prevent tampering. Additionally, the podcast explores programmable locks with individualized access codes and smartphone app tracking. These solutions aim to enhance hygiene, comfort, and safety for caregivers and individuals with autism, offering affordable and effective strategies for daily care.
Transcript
Mike Carr (00:05):
Welcome back to our second episode of Autism Labs, where we’re going to share a technology that’s worked for parents of severely or profoundly autistic individuals. Our son’s 34 years old. He’s nonverbal. He’s incontinent, he has seizures, he has pica behavior. Sometimes he has physically aggressive behavior. They’ll cover three areas today. The first has to do with bathroom hygiene, in particular, urine smell in the bathroom. Number two has to do with temperature control. The third thing has to do with door security, preventing him from opening a deadbolt lock. So let’s talk with the first one. Bathroom hygiene and the urine smell. So we found something on Amazon called P Guard. It’s a little plastic piece that fits between the seat of the toilet and the base of the toilet on the front. So when Michael sits down and when he was little, we trained him to go to the bathroom sitting down.
(01:02):
We didn’t want him standing up because he didn’t understand the aim for the water in the toilet. And so this P guard prevents the urine from going out of the crack, dribbling down, and sinking up the bathroom. Second solution has to do with programmable thermostats. This is about 60 bucks. I think you can program it by day for the entire week weekend, so it automatically adjusts the temperature, turns it up, turns it down, don’t have to worry about it. Highly recommended. We bought one that worked with the system we had, so all I had to do was snap it on the wall, reprogram it, and it was ready to go. The third has to do with deadbolts and basically entry and access within his area as well as outside. My wife, Kay found this little thing here on Amazon. It’s about 20 bucks. It’s called Deadbolts Secure, and there are other brands and it’s very easy to install and has this little clamp that comes over and it keeps him from flipping the lock back and forth.
(02:00):
Highly recommended. The last thing we’re playing with, and we’re still in the middle of doing this, so I’m not sure this is going to really be perfect for you guys just yet, but so far it’s been pretty cool for us is you get these programmable locks that go on the outside of your door. Every colleague can have a different code. So we’re just using their seven digit phone numbers, right? So they know their seven digit phone numbers, or you can program their thumbprint, unlocks the door when they leave with our son to go play basketball, whatever it is, the door automatically locks up to 30 seconds or a minute, whatever. It’s you can get an app that lets you on your smartphone, see a record of all this stuff, right? When are people arriving? When are they leaving? The one problem we had was it requires a 2.4 gigahertz internet.
(02:43):
Our home internet is five gigahertz, so we did have to buy another device. This thing from Wise, it’s basically a second wifi network that we’ve installed downstairs. I’ll share with you more next week how that’s gone. But I wanted to share with you today these three things which hopefully make your life simple, some of which are pretty cheap, right? P Guard, the programmable thermostat, 50, 60 bucks, and then the deadbolt cover, which is helped pretty well. Or the more fancy, more expensive. I think this one’s like 150, 200 bucks. You can get this on Amazon too. So best of luck to you and stay tuned next week for more goodies.
