I have had an awful week and would be grateful for any thoughts or opinions, sorry this is long.
I have 4 year old DS (severe ASD, virtually non verbal, limited comprehension) on home ABA program, and DD (NT) who is at primary school. I am having terrible problems doing the school run, and have been since DD started at this school in January. Basically I need to take DS with me on the school run as DH starts work at 7am. The actual journey is fine, despite being about 40 minutes drive each way, but he just goes into complete meltdown when it comes to dropping DD off. He just doesn't want to bother getting out of the car to walk her into school so twice a day I have to drag him from the car kicking and screaming and literally drag him to school and back. He refuses to walk and dramatically throws himself on the floor, screams and cries and won't hold my hand and has at times vomited with the stress of it all, and this process takes about 15 mins each time.
The last week has been absolutely awful because, despite being virtually non verbal, he has suddenly learnt to scream the word "help", which he does all the way to the car and back, and yesterday he managed to pull my tshirt up so our audience got a great shot of my grey bra and flabby gut. I just sobbed for ages when I got home.
Anyway, last week DS was sick and contagious so when I got to school, I left him locked in the car with his ipad, ran DD into school and ran back to the car. I did that again at the end of the day (DD's teacher kindly had DD ready and waiting at the school gate for me). It meant DS and the car were out of sight for 3 or 4 minutes. He was happy and there was no stress, in fact his behaviour for the whole day was improved.
Would it be really bad to continue doing this? Is there ever any justification for leaving a child alone? I would previously have said no, without a doubt but it has been nearly six months now and the constant stress of this is starting to destroy me. BTW DS has very limited comprehension so there is no reasoning with him or rewarding him etc.
DH says I am not to leave him in the car as DS "needs to learn", everyone else agrees with DH.