Tag Archives: internet safety

best buddies

Best Buddies Program

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best buddiesI recently heard about a great program that has my son’s name written all over it! (Naturally, when I told him this, he literally looked for his name written all over the program page. It wasn’t there :))

Contrary to popular belief, my son can be very social. By social, I mean friendly and open-hearted when meeting new people. However, if after an introduction the conversation doesn’t revolve around computer code or video games, there is an awkward disconnect.

He has friends all over the world that he Skypes with. Yes, I’ve seen the video chats and know 100% that his friends are real kids his age and not some creepy 50 year-old man pretending to like Minecraft! J has been hacked before and that was super scary!

Anyway, our problem is that my kids homeschool and I work outside of the home part of the time. We miss a lot of homeschool gatherings due to my hours, leaving my kids little opportunities to meet peers. Additionally, being a single parent, I tried to apply for Big Brothers Big Sisters for my son so he has a positive male role model in his life. I was told there was a 4+ year-long waiting list. Whoa! Seriously?

That’s why I was absolutely THRILLED to see this come across my inbox. Although this post refers to the Atlanta chapter, you can go to their website to see if there are programs in your area, as it is an international organization.

The Best Buddies program connects individuals that have intellectual or development disabilities with students from Emory. Each participant will be matched with either one or two Emory students to form a “buddy pair/trio.” The program encourages buddies to contact each other several times a month in addition to hanging out at chapter events. You can also request that your son or daughter to be matched in a same-gender pair.

Once paired with a Buddy, they meet as a chapter once a month during the school year for activities such as movie screenings, arts and crafts, field days and more. Events are typically held on Sunday afternoons on or near Emory’s campus, located in Druid Hills. These usually last for two hours. The first event will likely be in mid-September.

As a result of their involvement with Best Buddies, people with IDD secure rewarding jobs, live on their own, become inspirational leaders, and make lifelong friendships.

Online registration for the 2014-2015 school year is now open. If you are interested, you may register your son or daughter to participate by clicking this here (select Emory University as the chapter).

If you are interested in volunteering, click here.

I will be reporting back on J’s progress once the program is in full swing! Perhaps I will see you there.

autism internet safety

My Son Was Hacked! Let’s Talk Autism and Internet Safety

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A few mornings ago, my son knocked on the bathroom door to excitedly tell me he was chatting with “Him”. Naturally the next words out of my mouth were, “Who’s THAT?!”

He explained that he was just surfing the web and a random chat window popped up, not associated with any instant messaging or gaming program. He told me the person’s name was “Him” and that he had a funny whisper voice.

Of course I immediately wanted to know what things my son said to “Him” – did he tell him his real name, where we live, how old he is? We have been over many, many social stories regarding Internet safety myriad times.

Justin started crying, revealing that he told the mysterious chat guy that he was 10, which broke one of our family rules. I comforted him (amazed at his reaction to a broken rule – this is HUGE and NEW!!) but also dug further into the situation. Three things that “Him” said really alerted me:

“Don’t be scared”

“I can hear you speaking”

“How old are you?”

The chat window disappeared, and I told Justin to take a screenshot and send it to me if it popped up again. In the meantime we searched his computer for programs that didn’t seem to belong but I could find nothing. (I’m a Mac person… didn’t really know what to look for but hoped it would be obvious!)

That afternoon when I came home, Justin told me that “Him” opened a new chat window and tried to engage him in conversation. When my son wouldn’t comply the creep opened my son’s CD drive! Wha? He had remote access? The next thing you know he hid the task bar and all my son’s desktop icons.

I had him shut down immediately.

Luckily, the dog and pony show of hiding icons and opening a CD drive was the worst activity that we saw. “Him” could have locked up my son’s computer, changed passwords, or worse – turned on his webcam and watched! Ironically, it was my son that found a Remote Access Permission setting in the Control Panel and disabled it. We believe that stopped “Him”.

However, with all the items Justin downloads on a regular basis, this (or worse!) could happen again.

So how do you protect a child that figured out how to write custom code and change online video games, film his screen while walking through his tutorial process and post how-to videos on YouTube by himself?

The FBI website has some great general Internet Safety Tips for Kids. To simplify for children with Autism, I created this:

 

How about you? What safety tools do you have in place for your children? Share by commenting below or posting to the SOA Facebook page!