Has Your Child Ever Had a Public Meltdown?
What do you do when you get stares and glares?
My fifth child was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD when he was four years old. He is my fourth boy and fourth child on the Autsim specctrum. At that point I dreaded going on outings because one of my four boys would inevitably have a meltdown.
I talked to a friend about something I could do that would indicate my child had Autism–especially when we were in the midst of an overwhelm. I had heard of handing out explanation cards, but that seemed to require me to take my attention away from my child in the midst of his crisis. My friend had successfully used Autism t-shirts for her son. I seriously considered that. However, with four boys on the spectrum (and several of them being close in age which sometimes made telling clothing apart tricky) it seemed to me like it would be a lot of laundry and a lot of t-shirts I’d have to buy or make for vacation.
I also wanted it to be an item I could keep in my car or diaper bag and pull out if we had a necessary, but unplanned excursion. (Those are the kind that prompt the most meltdowns).
I thought about creating vests out of lightweight material, but as I asked random customers what material might work best for an Autism vest, another crafter on the fabric store suggested hats to me. This made total sense to me since I usually make sure we have hats for any outings anyway. Hats are a definite must for the Florida sun anyway, and the likelihood of having to wash them every day was low. I checked out the store and they both painters caps and plain baseball caps.
Autism Hat Tutorial
Fabric
I found this awesome puzzle piece flannel in the fabric store. Multi-colored puzzle pieces are a symbol for Autism, so this was perfect for my needs.
Cutting
I used my silhouette cameo with a fabric blade and iron-on interfacing. Flannel is thicker, so I found the canvas setting worked well. I used a downloaded Mickey head and turned it into a cut file using my silhouette software. I cut three from the fabric. You can’t really see two cut Mickeys with this photo, but they were there.
To iron on the Mickey head, I needed to support the inside of the ball cap. I first used a wadded up pair of jeans I was repairing. It didn’t give enough support. Then I used a folded towel which worked much better.
Words
I looked high and low to find the right scale letters for my hats. I also bought a fabric paint pen. The fabric paint pen didn’t give me the look I wanted, and I was lucky enough to find what I needed at Hobby Lobby. They are JOY brand Baby Monogram Letters and Numbers. Unfortunately I can’t find that particular brand anymore, but you could use other brands with larger letters to just spell AUTISM if you wanted.
I laid out the letters first on the hat (which was a bit tricky), then figuring out where the T needed to be more or less centered, I started ironing down letters. I found it easiest to keep working in one direction with the letters since the iron had heated up the fabric and made the glue on the letters start to warm up a little.
By the way, the dark spot you see above the Mickey head in the picture below? It was wet there where I had wiped away the fabric paint. The fabric paint really didn’t work as well, though I don’t have a picture to prove it to you.
The finished blue cap.
For the record, the painters cap really didn’t have enough room to use any letters, so I left it plain.
The white baseball cap with a bit more embellishment.
How Well Did They Work?
I was overall pleased with the end result. I had the kids wear the caps to the Disney and instead of glares, I got smiles and patience. Acroboy (my fourth son) wore his cap and sat front and center at Turtle Talk With Crush and he was chosen to talk to Crush. (Boy! Was he excited!). I’m not sure if it was because of the hat or where he had chosen to sit, but he was thrilled none-the-less.
I think the hats also were a blessing when Acroboy was lost for a few minutes. He thought he knew which direction we were headed and ran off…in the wrong direction. He found a parent with kids (like we’ve trained the kids to do), and all of them were talking to a Cast Member when we located Acroboy. The hat let the Cast Member and kind parent know we had some special needs.
The hats of course got dirty, and we lost one of the letters I hadn’t ironed down enough. When we got home I washed them in a sweater bag (the mesh kind that sometimes they hold nylons and other things too). I figured if any more letters came off in the wash, they would end up in the bag.
See the clean, but damaged hat?
I then ironed the letters back on to the hat, and they look as good as new!
I’m happy this worked out so well.
We used these hats for years before we lost the painters cap. The baseball caps are distinctive enough we’ve been able to find them again when we’ve lost them. Now that my oldest boys are teenagers we don’t use them as much, but Acroboy still does. They still help us get more smiles and patience.
I hope these hats help you have more successful outings. Good luck and see you in the parks!
For other packing ideas check out my packing post and sign up for my newsletters.
Join the newsletter
Subscribe to get our latest content by email.