Autism and Wandering: The Realities

I decided to do a post about autism and the problem of wandering because I have seen in the last year alone at least five instances of autistic children getting out and wandering off. In these unfortunate cases, each child has been found dead (it literally hurt me to type that word just now). The most high profile case in the news has been about Avonte Oquendo, but there have been others in this last year too. Most of them have been found in bodies of water and each of these kids seemed to be around Braden's age, which is why they're striking a chord with me right now and why I want to tell you a little bit about the problem of "wandering". Many people may wonder why these children didn't know how to swim and why did they go near a body of water if they couldn't swim. Well, we've tried every summer to teach Braden how to swim, but if it's not interesting to him, we lose him. He LOVES playing in the water and is far too interested in that than learning to be safe in the water. We get quite a few strange looks from people at the pool sometimes when our almost eight-year-old (though he looks like he's ten) is still wearing floaties in the pool.

It's a good thing for children to be curious, that is how they learn. By questioning something and then working to find the answer. I spent a lot of time outdoors exploring the world around my home as a child. I was learning all about frogs, lizards, tadpoles, grasshoppers and any other little critter that I came across (I was an adventurer and it was epic). But, I knew there were boundaries, and I certainly pushed them sometimes because I was just that kind of kid, but I always knew how to get home and when I had gone far enough. We've owned a few beagles and one thing that we were always told about a beagle is that they may be a loyal dog, but they will follow their noses wherever it takes them, and many get lost that way. I think autistic kids are similar. They get some idea in their heads and they want to go where it takes them, but they just aren't aware of the dangers because they're too focused on "following the scent".

When Braden was little, we noticed that he had no sense of fear, or danger. He didn't understand that we were his parents and we were in charge of protecting him from harm. He had no separation anxiety when it came to leaving us, he would wander off with anyone who took him by the hand, or he would wander off by himself to explore something, but not realizing that he was putting himself in danger. He was what I called an "escape artist" because if there was a door open, he seemed somehow compelled to go through it. One Sunday at church, when Braden was about two, I went to the nursery to pick him up, but didn't see him, about thirty seconds later, Jeremy came in to pick him up and I panicked. Braden must have slipped out the door in the chaos of all the other parents coming to get their toddlers. In that moment, my heart constricted to the size of a grape and I immediately began running through the halls uselessly calling Braden's name (he still didn't respond to his name) and stopping anyone who knew us asking if they had seen him. When church ends and everyone is in the process of getting all of their children together to go home the church doors are opening and closing constantly, cars going through the parking lot, a very dangerous situation for a small boy who doesn't know a car can kill him. It took us ten minutes to find him. He had decided he wanted to play behind a fake potted tree in one of the lobbies. It was the longest ten minutes of my life. Time stopped and every worst scenario ran through my mind during those ten minutes. I was a total wreck. He did it to us again at the mall one time. He was standing next to Jeremy one second, the next, he was running straight into a department store, we found him hiding in some racks of clothes, but the kid was seriously going to give me a heart attack! So, you people out there who see a parent with a toddler or even an older child in a harness and leash out in public, PLEASE DON'T JUDGE! You have no idea what their circumstances are.

When I think about the possibility of Braden getting out of the house, or away from school and about losing him or Jackson the way these families have lost their special little ones, my heart does the same thing it did that day, and I weep for them just thinking about it. I honestly can't even imagine the grief that is swallowing these poor families. Myself, I've become extremely paranoid about where my kids are at all times because I know that I'm strong, but I know I wouldn't survive that kind of grief. I believe in an afterlife and I know that my family will all be together in the next life, but I can't imagine living the rest of this life without one of my boys. This applies to any parent who has lost a child. I'm just being specific about the risks that apply to my little family because there is a higher probability of something happening when your children go out into the world, not understanding what danger is (no matter how much you try to teach them). They just don't know what the boundaries are, or why they matter.

After Braden was diagnosed with autism, I read a book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It's an odd title, but it's also an odd book (but we specialize in odd in our house). It was written by a man who works with autistic children and it is written from the perspective of an autistic teenager. The author, Mark Haddon, does a pretty good job getting into the head of an autistic teen. This boy is trying to solve the case of a neighbor woman's dog being found gruesomely murdered and left on her lawn. Throughout the duration of the book, he leaves his home in the middle of the night several times, he wanders through his neighborhood and eventually wanders so far that he is picked up by the police and brought back home. Unfortunately, he had one absent parent and the other was burnt out, so there weren't very many people looking out for him. After reading this book, as a mother of a freshly diagnosed child, I was petrified! Looking back, it probably wasn't the best book for me to read right after getting that diagnosis, but in a way, it's helped me to be a lot more alert and aware of the wandering issue. I dreaded (and still do) the day that Braden would be able to get through all of my "security barriers". Right now, we have chains up high on all the exit doors, the backyard gates are padlocked, and we have an alarm system that tells us when a door has been opened, and which door it is. For me, it's still not enough to take that fear away completely. When I meet someone new and invite them over, they probably think I'm crazy, because as soon as they are through the door, I deadbolt and lock the chain immediately. I'm sure some of those scenes from all the scary movies they've watched go through their heads, you know, where they go to see a "friend" and once they're inside, the friend/serial killer locks them in the house to kill them. I always make it a point to explain that my children are escape artists, and must be locked in for their own safety. Then I'm sure they are imagining all those scenes where children are held captive, and never allowed to leave (Flowers in the Attic). Either way I guess I end up seeming like a psycho, but what they don't understand is the constant, unending pressure put on me to keep my kids safe from themselves. I suppose that could drive someone crazy, but so can losing a child.

They have GPS trackers now that you can put on your child's shoe or sew it into an item of clothing, but the problem with that is that they may not be wearing that piece of clothing or even their shoes (and we all know that predators out there will cut that kind of stuff off). As hard as it is, I have to think out every possible scenario and try to counter it somehow (that means thinking the way a predator would). Anyone who has read a John Douglas book knows what I'm talking about. He used to be an FBI profiler (yes, it's a real thing, not just a TV show). Not to get all science fiction on you, but what I really want, is a GPS tracker INSIDE of my kid. I know there are a lot of issues with rights of privacy and people get stuck in a George Orwell novel thinking about putting a tracking device inside of someone, but, think about it, it could be the difference between life and death for a child. For a child with special needs, it means just that, they are different and need certain SPECIAL allowances made in their case to keep them SAFE! I don't know if the technology exists for something like that, but if it does, someone needs to be doing something with it and I would be the first to sign up! Would I be fear free then? No, I would not. Any good parent worries about the safety of their children. My mother routinely makes phone calls to every one of her six children if she hears something on the news like a fatal traffic accident, for example, in the vicinity of where they live or work. She's our mom; she still worries about us even though we're all grown up. So, I will never stop worrying about my children's safety, that's just part of being a mom, I just have a bit of added pressure in my case.

The issue of autism and wandering doesn't only apply to small kids either. Even grown people with autism can wander. It's an issue that never goes away and it plagues me every day of my life. Not just for myself, but I feel the pain for those families whose children (no matter how old) have been lost. We spend so much time and work SO hard to pull them from that world they live in inside themselves to the one we live in and sometimes we succeed, but that world will always be there, trying to make them retreat back to their safe (but unsafe) world.