Autistic neighbor

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I don't have autism and none of my 3 kids have it either. I'm posting about a neighbor. He has a young boy with Autism. I'm guessing the boy is around 9. He has always liked being in my yard and playing on it. He plays around the other children and doesn't cause much of a problem. They know he's different and don't tease him or anything.

Recently, he's started ringing our doorbell repeatedly. He'll ring maybe 50 times in 30 seconds and run away and repeat it several times a day. Not a big deal since we know it's him and ignore it. Yesterday, he opened our door and walked into our house. I have to draw the line here. We keep our doors unlocked when one of our kids is out so they can get back in. I'm afraid he'll get into our house without anyone knowing and do who knows what.

He also runs towards moving cars. He thinks it's funny. Fortunately, there's always been someone around when a car comes to grab him and/or get the car to stop. Up until recently, there was someone from their house to keep an eye on him, but now they let him go outside on his own. I told them they can't do this, it's far too dangerous, and their response was they thought it was OK since there were other people around.

The other people are typically school aged children, so not exactly reliable and I kind of resent them expecting others to look after their child. Particularly without asking them if they would do so. I told my kids to never agree to look after their son. I don't want to be sued if something happens and they're not exactly qualified.

One of the parents seems to be very lazy and I suspect the reason his son is unsupervised is because it's too much trouble to look after him. After I talked to him yesterday, he said he was busy working. I know it was his day off and this has happened many times before. Even when he's outside supervising his head is buried in his phone watching stupid you tube videos and such. If the child needs rescuing, he will sit and yell and someone else will have to grab the child before he gets run over.

I like the neighbors and recognize their child is far more difficult to handle than ordinary children, but I'm afraid their son is going to get hit by a car or do something in my house. I'm also afraid things will get worse as he gets older.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this?

You could put a house key next to the door so if one of your children go outside to play they can just lock the door knob lock and can easily get back in. I'd recommend you only do this is you live in a relatively safe so no one convinces your kid to give them your house key. You should also explain to them that the key is very important and they have to take great care of it when they take it outside. I'd recommend you put in on a lanyard and hang it off the door knob so when they do go outside they can easily hang it from their neck.

A solution to the door bell could be to have a talk with the autistic kid if you know they're comfortable around you and tell them that the noise bothers you and may even ask if any noises bother him as autistic people have problems with loud noises, white noise, etc. I think you should do this immediately so the door bell does not get too deep into his daily ritual.

The sensitive way in which you've handled this situation so far is admirable; a lot of people would have had a blazing row with their neighbours. Frankly, they're lucky to have you living next door, basically watching out for their child because they can't be bothered. But it can't continue like this, and you're right to be concerned. It sounds as if the boy's parents are in denial about their son's condition (or just plain uncaring and lazy).

It might be a good idea to sit down with your neighbours (you don't mention a mother, so I'm assuming she's still around) and state your case in as friendly way as possible. Point out that while you like him and don't mind him coming to your house, he is their responsibility not yours. After all, you have no specialised knowledge of autism - although you seem more intuitive than his mother and father! As you say, there is the serious matter of legal responsibility. Is there a social worker, counsellor or therapist supporting them and their son? Perhaps you could make discreet enquiries. This situation has the potential to go badly wrong, so I think you should act promptly, for your own sake as well as the boy's.

Incidentally, the doorbell thing will probably pass after a while. Some children with ASD can develop a fixation with certain noises that they enjoy, and it sounds as if this is his particular obsession. Plus it involves pressing a button. But of course, he might move on to some new fixation that could be more dangerous.

Hope this helps.

Call child services. Its obvious this child who has special needs is in danger if no one is watching him.

Time to lock your doors and your kids should have their own keys or knock to get inside. If the doorbell gets too much, take it down and now people will have to knock an time to have up a sign saying "knock please, doorbell out of order" and if you don't want him in your yard unsupervised, time to put locks on the gate.

That sounds like a very bad situation for everyone to be in and I blame the parents, not the child. He is so unsupervised so his parents are using all of you and your neighbors as free babysitters but if anything happened to him, it wouldn't be either of your fault.

I think calling child services is the best advice ever. If the parents can't handle their own child so they keep him out of the house where he runs free, maybe they will finally get help after you make the call.

I also would call child protective services, but only after seeing if there is a social worker already working with the family. If there is, I'd try to talk to that person first and let them determine if more intervention is necessary. Just know that since you already mentioned something to the neighbor, if they get a call from CPS, they will automatically assume you reported them (unless several neighbors said something to the family.)

Thanks for all the replies.

I've thought about contacting someone in the local government but my wife doesn't want me to. She says it's none of our business. The problem is primarily with the father. The mother seems to look after him when she's home and in addition to having to care for an autistic child, she has to make sure the father does his part too. I think money is tight right now and they can't afford to hire someone.

I'm on good terms with them and wouldn't want to jeopardize this. Yesterday, the door bell ringing was going on but he didn't attempt to enter the house. When he did this the other day I was angry. He could tell. And I dragged him home against his will. So maybe the message got through. The door bell ringing doesn't bother me as it doesn't happen when anyone's asleep. I would prefer it didn't occur, but it's not worth making a fuss over.

We have house keys, but my kids would definitely lose them and loan them to neighbors. Our 16 year old has a key to our back door in case of emergency.

Talking to the autistic child probably wouldn't do much good. He speaks a little but I've never seen him do what he was asked. Sometimes I think he understands, but the processing of how to do what he's asked gets lost.

I hate to say it, but I honestly think the best thing that could happen is for him to get hit by a car. Not do serious damage to him or the car. Just enough for him and his parents to learn a lesson. We live on a cul-de-sac so cars are typically going under 15 mph.

None of your business? This is why people ignore child abuse when they suspect it or when it's so obvious or when there is neglect involved. I had a friend who was always locked out of her house and the mother would go to work and leave her six year old son in charge but instead he would go to a friend's house leaving her behind so she would be wandering block and neighbors had to watch her. My mom can remember seeing her playing in the dirt across the street in a diaper. I wondered why in the hell didn't anyone call social services on this mother? I asked my mom why didn't she call them and she said she didn't know. Then I had another neighbor who was abused by his mother, she was our renter and she would yell and scream at him and pull his ear and hair and call him names and say things like "Don't be a twit." I wanted to call social services and he often missed school and he was always left alone without a baby sitter because his mom also could not afford one so he would often miss school and my parents never called them either. reason why I never called was because A) I didn't know how to do it and B) I was told by my therapist it would be hard to prove it because it was all emotional abuse and she wasn't beating him and C) I was told by my aide in school that you can pay a fine for making a false report and I didn't want to be accused of making a false report because they couldn't prove the abuse.
But the moral is someone finally called (I assume the school) and he was taken because he disappeared and all his stuff was gone and it was just like that over night. I was relieved. She apparently got him back though because my brother and his friend saw her in town with her son in her car and then I heard from my mother later that year that they moved to Spokane and I said that was good because they have family there and maybe she will get help raising her son.


I would just call anyway and pretend it was someone else who made the call.

This could easily be one of my autistic boys.
Couple of weeks ago I disconnected the wiring in our own doorbell because the ringing whenever they came home from somewhere would wake up our baby daughter.
And running after moving cars - yep.

KidHorn, you did the right thing. Calling child services is a last resort, not an initial response or a substitute for face to face talk between neighbors, unless you have reason to fear them.
It can easily do more harm than good to the kid:
- If they take him away: who can say that whichever random strangers will take care of him, will do a better job than the parents?
- If they don't take him away: it may turn out that everything stays the same, except the parents get more stressed and irritable

There may be some middle ground, where a "gentle" threat of getting authorities involved may cajole the father into looking after his son better. Might be worth a try if you can pull it off. If I were to attempt something like that I'd probably have my phone in my pocket, recording everything just in case the parents give you a hard time. From your description it doesn't sound like they would, but just in case.

To all of those who replied "call child services":
any of you have kids?
autistic kids?
any of you had someone call child services on you?
any of you got taken away from your parents when you were kids?
In other words, do any of you actually know what you're talking about??
To be honest, I was quite taken aback at where this thread was going on Thursday, but couldn't reply right then because of some web server / forum problem that made it impossible to post.

Indeed. Most Child Protective Service agencies are very malicious and punitive for the slightest of complaints. They are no longer social-support agencies, they are law-enforcement agencies.

The good news is that the attention span for most nine-year-old boys is about that of a puppy. It should be easy to encourage better behavior from him. Reward him verbally when he is well behaved, but scold mildly when he isn't. I believe that he will learn quickly and return to the nice neighbor kid he once was.

This will be harsh but its what in my opinion needs to be done.

His parents are responsible for his safety. This being outside without an adult supervising him is unacceptable. Regardless of his disability no child should. He in particular because of his disability should be supervised when outside the house at all times. The fact that he is coming to your door and ringing the bell or entering it shows the parents are not supervising him at all.

If it was me I would talk to the parents and tell them their lack of supervision and the child's dangerous (to himself) behavior needs to change or child services will change it for them. Regardless of the friction this would cause between any friendship you may have with them, its best for the kid. Think about it... the kid could very well end up dead one day being run over by a car or having entered someone else's home and drowned in their pool or mauled by their dog, etc.

I agree with contacting child services. Dad needs to get kicked in the butt to get motivated. You should be able to do so anonymously. I have this same danger of potentially wandering into traffic. It's a legal requirement that I have constant supervision by an assigned caretaker (primarily a family member) when outdoors. He's going to get hurt or lost or wander into a house with a dog and get bitten etc etc.

Calling social services is an extremely serious thing and is actually pretty dangerous for the mental health of children. It should be a last resort.

My dad was socially inappropriate. It weirded people out. Several of them got together and got paranoid. They called social services and accused him of sexual abuse of me and my sister. He never did any such thing. Their investigation was cruel, cold, and traumatizing. I was 8 years old at the time. It destroyed my father's fragile mental health (IMO he got a lot worse after this), wrecked my childhood and caused severe mutism and years and years of emotional trauma for me. I was never sexually abused but because it seemed so many thought I was, to me it was as if I had been. We weren't taken from our parents but I believe social services did more damage to me than my parents did.

Social services are not for families nor are they for children. They go after people they shouldn't and ignore the obvious abuse cases. They put kids in crappy foster care situations where if the kid wasn't abused before they will be there in foster care. They don't care about anyone really. I'm not a fan of them. They see abuse where there is none and ignore actual cases of abuse. It is my opinion that many of the people in that profession are narcisists and sociopaths. They won't benefit this child and the worst part is he won't stand a chance of advocating for himself if he is abused in foster care. People won't believe him because he is autistic so they will think he just was misinterpreting something or "imagining things."

That being said, he does need more supervision. That does need to be addressed. One thing that concerns me is some creepy child molester might live in the area and they will have no qualms about taking advantage of him. That's what would scare me more than anything else about the doorbell ringing and "free-range" roaming.

The neighbor already talked to the father. I think he should talk to the parents again. But that only goes so far! As of yet, the father has not listened. What recourse is there other than to call CPS? If the parents don't listen to the neighbors and provide more supervision to the kid, the kid could be in serious danger.

I get that autistic people can be roamers. My uncle was a roamer and often the police were called to look for him. I was a bit of a roamer (not far, though, and to the same spots.) My son was a bit of a roamer when he was young. One time I found him in the car, another time I found him up at the top of a 30ft rock cliff behind our house. You know, these situations were *pretty dangerous!* One of my "neighbors" in the neighborhood behind my house has a daughter who roamed. She ended up sneaking out of the house one day, and I ended up part of a search in the tens of acres of woods behind our house that contain a small pond. Scary! Thankfully she was found without incident.

I am not advocating calling CPS after a child runs off once or twice or a small number of times. Even the family behind us with the girl had CPS involved, and the girl was not taken away. BUT, they were warned that if they could not get her roaming under control she would be.

There are ways to deal with roamers. In my situation, I learned that I had to keep all the doors locked and bolted. Even if I wasn't in the room, hearing the door being unlocked and then opened usually gave me enough time to get to him before he went out. Some people use alarm systems not to keep burglars out, but to notify them if someone *leaves* the house, like they do at nursing homes for dementia patients.

Another thing, too, is that *as soon as* the parent realizes the child has escaped or run off, the parents need to LOOK for the child! I get it that some kids can escape while the parent is using the restroom or taking a shower. But, does that mean the parent just finishes up and then takes a seat on the couch? No, the parents gets out and finds the kid!

It sounds like the father in the situation the OP described is just ho-humming away in his house while the kid is outside bothering neighbors and chasing cars like it's nothing to be worried about. Even if the father can't keep his kid from leaving the house, he ought to be getting outside and collecting his kid or staying out there to supervise.

I agree with the necessity to involve social services/CPS. It's an inconvenience and destructive when there's no actual abuse/neglect going on, but there is very clear abuse going on in this case. It's not just that he is in very clear physical danger, but he could easily be abducted or taken advantage of sexually by a neighbour who appears friendly. I think you're very kind for caring ... the "none of our business" attitude allows abuse and neglect to continue as other posters have said.

I don't know why the kid's parents feel the need to let him out the house ... my mum NEVER let us go out into the front garden when I was a kid. We stayed in the house or in the back garden.

Well, I was a child for whom no-one called child services on. Indeed, even when I got them involved everyone who'd previously had complaints suddenly became quiet.

This may depend on where you live, but generally the idea that social workers waltz into places and take kids is a myth. Even if you believe that the social services department are dreadful and view it as 'law enforcement', you cannot deny that it costs lots of money to initiate care proceedings and maintain LAC status.

Even where SS are involved and there is a clear case of neglect, social workers are obligated to explore and exhaust all other options (generally unless there is extreme danger to the child of such a level where the police need to remove child) before initiating care proceedings. There would have to be clear record of parents not doing their best to follow care plans. Even in cases where there *is* obvious neglect it often takes many months before a child is removed (I'm struggling to find the average number of months before a child before a child is put into care, but where child deaths occurred there was on average 13 months after the issue was first flagged). Further more the University of Reading found this in 2010

"Almost all professionals did everything they could to keep families together. Parents
were given repeated opportunities to prove they could look after a child [...]
However, in the drive to ensure that parents’ rights were properly respected,
children’s needs could be overlooked. This was particularly true for the many
children who suffered from long-term, chronic neglect while professionals waited for
parents to overcome their difficulties and provide them with ‘good enough’ care. A
number of these were younger siblings of children who had already been removed.74"

If children are removed, in the vast majority of cases the plan is then for parents to be supported to become the primary carer again. Where possible children are placed with wider family while they wait. Foster care can be shite and often has poor outcomes, but so does being in a neglectful family. If foster care was likely to be significantly worse than remaining at home for this child, it would be very unlikely they would be removed.

For those people saying this isn't serious and social services should only be contacted when it's really serious, this is exactly why children like Daniel Pelka and Victoria Climbie died. There are many, many other children who suffer significantly but never reach media attention because they lived.

It's the reason media campaigns like this are needed:






As KateCoco, he's a definite risk - getting hit by car even lightly could be traumatic for the child and it takes one person in a rush to cause major accident and there's a clear risk for abuse and exploitation.

I think that if it's got to the point that you're thinking the best thing would be for a child to get hit by a car but 'just' enough to shock the parents into action then it's gone past the point where you need to bring in outside.
I really do appreciate that some children are roamers - I worked with one who often got out but the parents were concerned about it and did their best to supervise the child.

Personally, I would rather the parents be shocked by SS paying a visit and have them work with a social worker to improve than for a child to get hit by a car. And frankly, if the child was hit by a car given this long standing problem it would be negligent for someone not to report it.