This mom created a fashionable safety harness to avoid her worst nightmare for her daughter who experiences autism: special needs elopement.

Amy and the Iowa State Fair Queen

In yesterday’s post, guest blogger Amy Stout described her worst nightmare: special needs elopement. She also shared the seeds of the solution that could put her dream to rest forever. A fashionable safety harness. In this post, she explains the process of designing the halter and shows us pictures. Prepare to be impressed!

A Solution for Special Needs Elopement: A Fashionable Safety Harness

I shared my thoughts about a fashionable harness with my mother-in-law who is a wonderful seamstress. While she was, at first, intimidated, she quickly embraced the idea and began to experiment with ways to help me create the ideas that had been forming in my mind.

This is what we came up with. We basically used a jumper pattern and created the harness to look like the top of a jumper – or basically a sleeveless shirt/tank. We used cute, breathable, fabric that could be worn with or without a shirt underneath (we didn’t want it to be uncomfortably hot or thick. We wanted it to be able to be worn underneath a jacket or coat of need be). We also used cute embellishments to enhance the design.

Front View

 

Back View

We decided to have it fasten up the back so Kylie could not easily undo it, and chose to have it snap so it was less noisy than Velcro would have been in public places.

We reinforced the side seems so they would not easily tear – even if Kylie were to pull against it in her eagerness to get somewhere or if she tried to make a run for it. We also had two connection points on each side so the force of the connection was distributed (again, protecting against tearing).

The Harness in Action

This worked fabulously! We found a tiny retractable cord with a pink handle that matched the harness. It was great to be able to give Kylie some run/breathing room while also having the capability of reeling her in/limiting the distance if the situation became crowded or dangerous.

We received so many positive comments about the harness and had many people stop us and ask us where we found it.

Milking the “cow” at the State Fair

How About You?

Have you ever adapted a product to avoid special needs elopement – or even come up with your own design? I’d love to hear about it!

What are your thoughts about a safety harness? Have you ever used one? Did anyone ever approach you in public or judge you for using one? I’d love to hear your experiences, how you responded and how they processed your response.

Part One

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.