After sadly having our car stolen last weekend an article about autism and understanding crime is very topical for us.

We have been in the position all week of trying to explain what has happened to our daughter.

Concepts like theft, the police and ‘bad people’ have been difficult to breach.

Here is how we have handled it and some of the struggles we’ve had during the process.

What is crime?

One of the biggest challenges we had as a family was trying to explain what crime is and who commits it.

From my daughter’s point of view it’s an alien concept and overall just a very distressing event when she craves predicability.

I’ll touch more on the breaks to routine shortly but in terms of explaining crime here is how we went about it.

Make it relatable

Children are often wrapped in a blanket of naivety where the idea of someone stealing our car is completely abstract.

I explained it to my daughter by giving a demonstration using one of her favourite toys.

Don’t panic, I didn’t torment her but I did take the toy for a short period of time. I was sure to not ask her and I hid it away from her view.

I explained this is what some bad people do, they take your things without asking and don’t give them back.

She seemed to understand, but this demonstration led to my first mistake.

The role of the police

My mistake came from explaining the policies role in the theft process. I used a toy police car and zoomed it around until I found her doll.

I reunited the pair with a happy ending.

But as we know a happy ending is far from guaranteed in the real world.

This return of the property led to my daughter assuming we would get the car back.

“When will the police bring the car back Dad?”.

Added to the confusion was that we barely even heard from the police at all so I had completely over egged their involvement.

The impact of the crime and autism

Anyone who has been a victim of crime can probably attest to it being the little things which make the process awful.

For us the loss of the car was one thing but it was the contents which were probably harder to deal with.

All kinds of my daughters favourite things were in the car ranging from toys on the back seat to her scooter in the trunk/boot.

This was a scooter which she had decorated with stickers just how she liked it.

Also there were her Peppa Pig boots which she adored taken along with all the other possessions.

So therefore we were faced with explaining the fact not only would the car not be returned, but her prizes possessions were long gone.

The breaks to routine were not only from the loss of property but we have since been without a car.

This has meant that the bus has been our mode of transport to get around.

As you can imagine, this change of routine has been hard to adjust to.

For anyone in a similar position I would try and make the changes as fun as possible.

Explain what bus you are getting and ask your child to look out for it coming down the street.

Perhaps give your child the job of handing over the money to the bus driver or task them with finding a seat.

Point being here is that a little bit of autonomy and involvement goes a long way to settling the shock of a break to the routine.

Explaining safety and security

Hindsight is a wonderful tool and following the crime we have been on a course of security improvements.

We’ve added CCTV cameras for example and won’t be keeping our keys so close to the front door.

These measures are to reassure us but also our children because there have been questions about the future.

“Will they take our next car?”

“Will they come back?”

Both pretty hard to answer.

How I have straddled these difficult questions is by explaining that we are going to make them not want to come back.

The easy answer would be to say that they won’t come back but I was conscious of not outright lying.

You will handle these questions in your own way, I’m not sure if I should have made the promises instead.

Summary – Autism and understanding crime

In a reflective mood I am trying to sum up how I could have handled the situation better.

Perhaps on day one replacing all of my daughters possessions out of the car would have been a start.

She was distressed about the car going and then it was just a drip feed of bad news in subsequent days.

I also wouldn’t make any assurances of the police restoring our property, this was foolish looking back.

But to be perfectly honest she has handled the theft better than I may have feared.

Perhaps our special kids are more resilient than we give them credit for.

Any tips or ideas?

We would love to hear from you if you have got any techniques or ideas for our readers to try.

Be sure to leave a comment if any of the above has helped or if you have any ideas we can add to this article.

Also be sure to search for any other articles you might find helpful.

Try for example searching below for topics like ‘meltdown’ or ‘communication’.