Self care can be a complicated thing when you have autism. From bathing to brushing teeth, combing hair to putting on a shirt, things can get frustrating—fast. That’s why Lauren Thierry, mother to an autistic son, decided to make things easier for thousands of people with her simple, easy to wear clothing line, Independence Day.
The shirts, pants, dresses, and more are reversible, have no zipper, buttons, tags or seams, and come with a built-in domino-sized GPS tracker. The women and minority-run business opened up in 2014, and it’s already gaining a reputation among those with autism, elderly people with dementia, people with cerebral palsy, and those who simply want a no-frills mode of dressing.
Perhaps the most important element of Independence Day clothing for parents is its GPS tracker. After countless stories of children with autism wandering off—most notably the tragic 2013 disappearance and death of Queens’ Devonte Oquendo—keeping tabs on autistic children who may be prone to wandering off is a serious point of concern.
“Anytime I want to know where my child is, I whip out my iPhone, there’s a app right there,” Thierry told The Huffington Post. “Four seconds later, I know exactly where [my son] is. If he’s in a vehicle, I know he’s going either faster than 30 miles an hour or not, and I know exactly where he is at all times.”
An emergency room doctor and fellow mom has been noticing a troubling trend: Many parents are giving their kids something more powerful than bicycles to get around the neighborhood. As a result, she’s seeing more children come into the ER with injuries sustained in e-bike and e-scooter crashes. She recently went online with a plea to parents and young riders.
Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Beach Martin, known online as Dr. Beachgem, posted a video in her scrubs discussing her concerns after seeing so many children come into the hospital with e-bike injuries during the summer months. She’s worried that too many kids and parents don’t understand the proper safety precautions. As a mother herself, she even questions why children are allowed to ride these devices at all.
In the video, the doctor explains that some e-bikes can reach speeds of up to 28 mph. She says that if an e-bike goes any faster than that, it’s technically classified as a motorcycle. At those speeds, she regularly sees children with traumatic injuries and broken bones after hitting bumps, cracks in the road, or other vehicles. Many of them aren’t wearing helmets or protective pads, and some are even riding barefoot, making their injuries even more severe. Martin’s video has gained traction on Reddit and elsewhere online.
E-bikes and e-scooters, examined
Martin isn’t the only professional seeing a growing problem. The American College of Surgeons reports that there are more than 20,000 e-bike-related injuries each year. Meanwhile, a University of California, San Francisco study found that e-bike injuries doubled annually from 2017 to 2022. The same study found that e-scooter injuries increased by 45% each year during the same period.
Before riding an e-bike, it’s important to follow proper safety procedures. Make sure you and your child understand your area’s laws regarding e-bikes, including any minimum age requirements. Always wear a helmet and other protective gear when riding. Consider choosing an e-bike with safety features such as motor-interrupt brake levers and disc brakes. These are just a few of the many safety tips experts recommend.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has similar safety tips for e-scooter riders. Wearing a helmet is one of its top recommendations, along with taking other basic precautions. The agency also recommends checking the brakes before riding and slowing down for bumps, cracks, and other road hazards.
The vast majority of e-scooters and e-bikes are designed for only one rider, so avoid doubling up. Although laws vary by state and locality, wearing more protective gear is always the safer choice. Riders should also review local e-bike and e-scooter laws to make sure they are operating the vehicles safely and legally.
A little research goes a long way toward making sure you and your children can ride safely. It’s also important for parents to understand that many e-bikes and e-scooters can travel at speeds that make them very different from a traditional bicycle. The last thing you want is for you or your child to become another emergency room statistic.
Photo credit: Focus Pixel Art/Moment via Getty Images – At times, feeling personally grateful to someone can feel like a big ask – but there are other forms of gratitude.
There are few greater feelings than the sense of heartfelt gratitude to another human being who has done you a solid. Sincere thanks and reciprocation are part of the glue that binds us in human relationships.
But sometimes you’re just not feeling it. You know that you have benefited from what someone has done for you, but you don’t really feel grateful to them for doing it. Most teenagers go through this period with their parents. Maybe you take your partner or colleague for granted.
For me, 14 years ago, it was my mother-in-law. She had upended her life to move from South Dakota to California to live with my wife and me to assist with childcare after our daughter was born; no other source of childcare fit with our demanding work schedules and my commute. She made a huge sacrifice that transformed our lives, but there were moments when I really struggled to feel grateful.
I’ve found that the hardest part of feeling grateful to someone is the “to” part. It is one thing to be impersonally grateful that something happened and another thing to be personally grateful to someone for doing it. These are not the same.
Both forms of gratitude require seeing something as a benefit. And they both require a humble recognition of how easily things could have been otherwise. When the rain ends a drought, an atheist can feel grateful that the tomatoes will survive. But the atheist isn’t grateful “to” anyone for the rain.
Priests offer prayers to Varuna, the Hindu god of rain, as they stand in the Osman Sagar on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, on July 16, 2013. AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A
Personal gratitude requires more than impersonal gratitude. It is an example of what the philosopher Peter Strawsoncalls a “participant” attitude: an attitude that we have toward people, but not toward things. And a large theme in my work is that participant attitudes such as gratitude involve giving someone credit for what the attitude responds to.
But which benefits we give people credit for is complicated. As philosophers such as Tony Manela have argued, actions motivated primarily by money, self-interest or insecurity don’t merit personal gratitude, even when they benefit you. Actions motivated by love, generosity or concern, on the other hand – or other “pro-social” motives – do.
Sometimes people fail to feel gratitude because they take someone for granted, not noticing how easily they could have done otherwise. This wasn’t my problem with my mother-in-law. It was obvious that she didn’t have to move across the country to live with us.
But it was hard to avoid noticing that she had always wanted to live in California. Sometimes it is hard to feel grateful because of how we interpret someone’s motives. They could have done otherwise, but we don’t think their action was really “about us.”
Bad motives are easy to find
Sometimes ungenerous motives can help people to be generous. Your child’s kindergarten teacher isn’t a volunteer. They may be a naturally generous person – but still, they probably wouldn’t be working with your child on spelling, arithmetic and handling adversity if they weren’t getting a paycheck.
It’s still appropriate to be grateful to them. Their financial incentive to show up for work enables their generosity, rather than competing with it.
Your child’s teacher might be generous, but their job enables them to act on that generosity every day. svetikd/E+ via Getty Images
Elementary school teachers are not alone. After all, people’s decisions are often driven by many factors: some that merit gratitude and others that don’t. So if you go looking for selfish motives, you are bound to find some.
Take your partner, for example. They do something that benefits you: buying you flowers, filling your tank with gas or finally taking their turn to wash the dishes. They are partly motivated by generosity, love or communal spirit. But, as in any close relationship, sometimes they may be hoping to get something out of it: reciprocation, maybe, or getting you off their back.
It matters which of these you interpret as their “true” motive: Seeing it one way opens you up to gratitude, while the other precludes it.
What are ‘true’ motives?
The distinction between someone’s “true” motive and the other motives that enable it looks like the distinction between causes and enabling conditions. For example, when you drop a wine glass, the fragility of the glass enables the drop to cause the break, but it isn’t itself a cause of the break – the drop is.
In the case of the falling glass, there’s a clear, objective answer to what caused the break and what merely enabled it. But I believe that relating to people is deeply different than understanding physical things.
The key question in whether to be grateful to someone isn’t about which motives count as “causes.” It is about which cause we need to bring into focus in order to see the other person more clearly for who they are.
See it their way
In other words, it’s at least partly a matter of perspective. If someone does you a favor, but you know they’re hoping for something in return, you can see that as their “true” motive. But you don’t have to see it that way. Instead, you could see that motive as the condition they need for their generosity to thrive.
Shifting perspectives isn’t easy. When you’re doubting someone’s motives, their lack of generosity can feel obvious. But it helps to remember that people tend to believe they’re acting generously. If you want to respond with gratitude, try seeing them as they see themselves.
What if that doesn’t work?
Well, the next best thing to being grateful to someone is being grateful for them. Starting there is a good way to remind yourself of why you value this relations
The ways in which Americans connect vary widely by state. A range of factors contribute to a place’s overall character, but the time residents spend socializing, volunteering and helping people outside their own homes can shape how friendly it feels.
SmartAsset analyzed the 50 states by the number of minutes per day residents spend on these three “friendly activities,” using time and action as measures of how communities connect. The results offer a behavioral snapshot of where residents spend the most time engaging with others in their communities.
Key Findings
The Mountain West leads the rankings. Montana (No. 1), Utah (No. 2), and Wyoming (No. 3) took the top spots in the study, with residents of Montana averaging a nation-leading 95 minutes per day socializing, volunteering and helping others.
Mountaineers are the most likely to help others. Although West Virginia ranked No. 24 overall, its residents spent more time than any others providing unpaid help to people outside their own homes, about 30 minutes per day.
Rankings challenge some stereotypes. Despite its reputation for “Minnesota Nice,” Minnesota ranked No. 11, just outside the top 10. Washington, home to Seattle and its “Seattle Freeze” reputation, ranked No. 10.
Three Northeast states in the top 20. Although residents of Northeastern states are not always seen as especially warm by outsiders, three states in the region made the top 20: Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maryland.
The 20 Friendliest States
Montana
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 43.36
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 35.62
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 15.89
Utah
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 38.24
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 32.46
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 20.95
Wyoming
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 35.57
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 40.49
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 7.07
Oregon
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 53.74
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 14.85
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 12.36
Illinois
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 32.37
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 14.12
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 28.43
Rhode Island
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 52.15
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 5.33
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 17.35
Nebraska
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 39.3
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 11.08
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 24.06
North Dakota
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 35.5
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 24.61
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 12.88
Missouri
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 43.44
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 16.05
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 11.86
Washington
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 30.59
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 24.04
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 14.92
Minnesota
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 30.33
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 11.75
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 25.18
Massachusetts
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 35.38
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 9.63
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 20.91
Wisconsin
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 36.51
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 8.46
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 20.86
Colorado
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 27.08
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 16.82
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 20.31
Maryland
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 26.05
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 25.72
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 12.39
Michigan
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 38.9
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 11.21
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 12.98
Tennessee
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 33.82
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 9.45
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 19.53
South Dakota
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 41.61
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 0.21
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 20.61
Hawaii
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 26.3
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 14.84
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 20.98
Virginia
Average Minutes Spent Socializing (daily): 38.96
Average Minutes Spent Volunteering (daily): 10.92
Average Minutes Spent Helping Others (daily): 11.97
Methodology
This study uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, extracted from IPUMS, over the most recent available four-year period. For each state, SmartAsset calculated the average daily minutes residents spent socializing, volunteering, and helping people outside the household. Those three measures were then equally weighted and summed to produce a total time value used to rank the states. Source data providers are not affiliated with, and do not endorse or sponsor, this study or its findings.
Citation: Sarah M. Flood, Liana C. Sayer, Daniel Backman and Annie Chen. American Time Use Survey Data Extract Builder: Version 3.3 dataset. College Park, MD: University of Maryland and Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D060.V3.3
