After difficulties getting some of the kids ready and off to school today (cough Elliott cough), Gavin and I had to run a few errands.

One of these errands took us to the Stark County Courthouse. I don’t know if I’ve actually set foot in that building since the day Gavin’s abusive biological father signed away his paternal rights and I adopted Gavin on the spot.

I hate everything about this building, with the exception of Gavin’s adoption and walking into the building brought back a flurry of emotions I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Thankfully, we were only there for the title office to deal with something for our car but we still had to go through security.

We had to empty our pockets and run everything through the scanner and the deputy said to just cover my watch with my hand but of course that didn’t work. This resulted in me being scanned with the wand and semi-frisked.

It was all great until Gavin set off the metal detector as well and he had to undergo the same procedure.

I didn’t even have a chance to say anything about him being Autistic before he was standing there with his legs spread apart and his arms straight out.

I was thinking to myself, OMG please let Gavin be okay with this because sometimes he can be unpredictable when it comes to being touched.

Gavin ended up doing great but the sorta funny part was that he thought he was being arrested. It’s not really funny but at the same time, it sorta is.

The point of this is that we’ve talked to our kids about how to interact with the police. We’ve told them to simply do whatever the police officers tell them to do, even if they didn’t do anything wrong because we can sort that out later.

Gavin did exactly what we had told him and frankly, there was no other way we could have seen how he would react to this type of thing without him actually being in this type of situation.

I feel good that he did so well.

I’m a huge fan of law enforcement. Having been a fire/medic, I’ve worked with law enforcement on many occasions and while there are bad apples in every profession, the overwhelming majority of police officers are here to serve and protect us.

With everything going on in this country over police violence against black Americans, parents of kids with Autism face similar fears. Kids with Autism may be considered combative or resisting by police because they don’t understand the situation. These situations can escalate rapidly and spin out of control.

I don’t mean to compare the two situations directly because both are major problems but instead I just wanted to point out why we work with our kids with Autism on how to interact with law enforcement.