CINCINNATI — Sheletta Brundidge understands the difficulty of parenting children with autism. Three of her four kids have autism.
"You spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week trying to keep your child safe in the house," Brundidge said.
Brundidge says she was heartbroken to hear about the 6-year-old boy who wandered from his West Chester apartment and drowned.
She says she hears stories like that far too often. She, herself, has an autistic child who tends to wander.
There's been countless times, she says, where he's escaped after she looks away for only a second.
"We are doing, as autism parents, everything we can to keep our kids safe with gates, and door locks, and hotel chains and fences with combination locks on them and they still somehow get out," Brundidge said.
Brundidge tried everything to keep her kids from escaping but nothing seemed to work.
That is until she found interior combination door locks like this one on Amazon. She calls them "life-saving locks."
"I found these locks four years ago on Amazon and in four years, we've only had one escape attempt," Brundidge said.
It's not the only option for parents either. A Cincinnati nonprofit, EmPath for Autism, is giving out tracking bracelets for free to parents who have a child with disabilities or autism.
Right now, though, applications for the bracelets are suspended due to how many applications they've received. They say they need time to process the registrations. You can still donate to the nonprofit here.
Brundidge knows not everyone can afford the locks. That's why she goes around the country giving them out to parents on her own dime.
She says it's the least she can do to help.
"This is money coming right out of my pocket. I tell my kids, 'I'm sorry we're not going to Disney, we got to save these kids,'" Brundidge said.
Brundidge says parents can find more resources, as well as her best-selling autism children's books, on her website.
