Managing danger. How do you teach dc (LD/ASD)to respect fire without getting burnt?

[magso]

Ds (9) is facinated by fire. He wants to touch and poke it with sticks continually. It scares me witless. (We had a week in a burns unit when ds started his cup throwing stage as a tot- and hot drinks were banned from our house for years - he understands hot drinks now). I will not use a fire when it is just ds and I however cold it is (as chief cook/cleaner I cannot always be within grabbing distance). ( We have background CH) Dh feels we cannot protect ds for ever and ds should learn so has started to light a fire on cold w/e. Ds is only allowed near the fire with daddy. In theory! Yesturday I came home to find a nice fire and a rather sad ds with his hand in a bucket of cold water! He must have crept right next to the fire (when dh was out of the room) and was hit by a spark. I suspect he was poking the fire. His hand has blistered but no worse ( skin intact).

So will he learn from this painful experience? I am not sure he will learn. He can repeat the same error over and over. Do I ban open fires or try and make accesss harder by buying a second guard perhaps with a very fine mesh? Or will ds eventually loose interest? Ds understands rules but he is not always good at remembering them!
My method all along has been to Ds proof the house, and be extra vigilent out of it.
How do others manage?

I would buy a second guard. If ds1 leans against a hot radiator he seems to take longer than I would expect to respond to it.

We have an open fire, but I won't use it with ds1 around. (our CH is fine though so we don't need to).

I'd get the fireguard and attach a great bifg no symbol to it.

we have c and a fir but th fire never goes on for sfety reasons. we're very strict about ds's not touching it any tiime thogh as my mum uses herswhich is te same.

if you are anywhere near Liverpool, I have a fireguard that we don't need that you are welcome to (we just use the CH).

yes good idea about putting a visual reminder on the guard.

Thanks all! TC thanks for the guard offer but am not in NW.
JJ yes I think ds is slower to notice painful stimuli too although he does notice pain now much more normally. Good idea Peachy to put a 'no' sign on the guard - I think I will get a second outer guard. I may expand my burns kit, and get a fireblanket too (we have small extinguisher)! Going into overprotective mode I know!!
I wonder if the firebrigade could give ds a talk - I know they visit his school sometimes.

Update. Ds had removed most of the dressing and made it all worse by the time he got home from school so I took him to paed A&E! Ds told the dr he was sat on the settee (as he is supposed to not go near the fire unless helping daddy) so a deliberate calculated fib - never heard that before - progress I suppose!! I guess he thought the Dr would be cross if he told the truth (what ever that is!)
The new bandage looks very brave so ds is pleased and hopefully it will stay on.
We have settled on no open fires thankfully - so I can breath again!! However we are spending christmas in family house with an open fire so will take a 'no' sign with me!

You know I was only thinking about this (experiencial learning and danger) the other day.

Our elderly neighbour died recently and the house was unoccupied for sometime, which eventually lead to a problem with mice.

DH put a few traps down in a room normally not accessible by DS1, however a few days later DH had to do something in this room and DS1 went in with him, as soon as he saw the two traps he immediately picked them up and with a loud 'SNAP' had a mouse trap on each hand hanging off his fingers.

DS1 has a high pain threshold but definately felt them and was a little startled, anyways DH took them off and put them back telling DS1 'no touching' and thinking it would be fine 'once bitten, twice shy'.

What happened? Well you guessed it, DS1 immediately went over and picked them leading to exactly the same result as previously.

DH sorted him out and put them down again and couldn't believe his eyes as DS1 made it clear he was intent on exploring them further, leading to DH abandoning what he had to do and taking them both out of the room.

Although when relaying the story to me, I admit to having a little chuckle as I couldn't help but imagine both DH and DS1 as characters from the Lee Evans movie 'mousehunt'. It is scary to realise that without the ability to learn from his own experiences DS1 is going to have the potential to repeatedly put himself into harmful situations, even within our carefully risk assessed home environment.

I haven't though of anyway of improving this yet and as with so many things, I am hoping that it will get better as he gets older, but I would be interested in anything that has worked for others.

As an aside, DS1 has completely destroyed the coal effect gas fire we have in the living room despite the large fire guard.

Being found on several occasions looking like a chimney sweep and with bits of the fake coals around his chops.

It is now completely unusuable (not much left to it tbh) and we are waiting for it to be condemed with the next Landlord gas inspection.

Thank heavens for carpet shampooers (is that a word?) and central heating eh? (although saying that DS1 did rip the radiator off his wall in his bedroom a while back, no heating appliance is safe!)

Ds used to try eating coal too! Our old fire guard was huge and fixed to the wall/floor and was designed to protect LO from banging heads on the grate, getting near a radiator. For Ds its function was to prevent accesss to the dirty chimney!
It is odd and scary how Dcs with ASD do not learn (correctly) from experience! Ds has odd fears! He was for a while terrified of baths presumably because he was put in a chilly one after a cup throwing incident he became fearful of the innocent bath ( perhaps the point at which the pain from the hot liqid became apparent) not the scald worthy hot tea! He will not eat crusts - I suspect he tasted a mouldy piece of duck bread in the past and attributed the taste to belonging to crusts not to old bread! Its as if the basic mechanism fof understanding cause and effect has a faulty connection somewhere!