When I close my eyes to go to sleep, all I can see is my
baby, trapped in freezing cold mud up to his chest, scared, and crying. And I
wonder what he was thinking.
He’s fine now. Back to normal a day later, definitely a
little more clingy and snuggly than usual. But he can’t tell me what he is
thinking or feeling, because he is autistic and mostly non-verbal. I can’t know
what scars are in his head or his heart, but I can imagine, and it leaves me
feeling like the wind has been knocked out of me.
Kaden is 9 years old. He’s a determined little dude, and he
always has been. When he wants to do something, he will figure out a way to do
it. And on Saturday, I guess he wanted to take a trip into the wetlands behind
our house.
I had just arrived in New York City by train to spend the
night with some college girlfriends when I got the call from my kids’
babysitter. Kaden was missing. They’d been playing in our fenced-in backyard,
and our sitter had run inside to check on my older son and use the restroom.
She was inside for about 2 minutes. When she returned, Kaden was gone.
Kaden plays in the backyard by himself all the time. It is
completely fenced in, with three different exit gates that are usually kept
locked. Every now and again, he has managed to escape out of one of the front
gates, but he’s never gone far and we’ve found him quickly. He usually just
wants to play in the front yard. Sometimes he will even come back into the
house through another door.
I will also mention here that he has escaped out the front
door and the garage before, usually when we are in the bathroom. He is quick
and he is sneaky when he wants to do something that he knows he shouldn’t do.
And as I said before, he is determined. But he has never tried to escape out the
back gate towards the woods or into the wetlands.
We trust our sitter implicitly. She is a young adult woman
who has worked with us for years and accompanied us on vacations. She loves our
boys fiercely and is very protective of them. She is attentive, caring, and
understands the challenges of caring for an autistic child. My boys love her,
and she is amazingly patient and calm.
So when she called me in New York, I didn’t panic at first.
I told her to check the house carefully, including closets, as well as the immediate
surrounding areas in our neighborhood. I reassured her that he never goes far.
At first, I didn’t think about the back gate. I forgot the
landscapers had cleared the area behind the fence earlier in the week. I forgot
that I had never checked to see if that gate was locked after the landscapers
left. Kaden has never shown any interest in going into those woods behind our
house.
When she didn’t find him immediately, panic started to set
in. I instructed her to call 911. I felt helpless, sitting 2 hours away, unable
to search, unable to do anything but pray and cry and wait with one of my
girlfriends, who did her best to keep me calm.
My husband Chris headed home from work to join the police in
their search. He is the one who heard Kaden’s yells first, who found his shoes
in the mud, who alerted the officers to my baby’s location. He was in touch
with me constantly, keeping me posted on what was happening with the rescue. He
was the one who sent me the photo of Kaden sitting in the bathtub, covered in
mud. He was the one who tried to keep me as calm as possible, not telling me
just how scary it was, not sharing the details of the real peril of the
situation. Not telling me at first that Kaden was naked when they found him,
despite being fully clothed and in a coat when he was in the back yard.
Chris told me to stay put in New York. He told me there was
nothing I could do, that Kaden was fine. They took him by ambulance to the ER,
where he was treated for mild hypothermia. His temperature rose quickly and he
was released without much medical intervention. Chris kept me updated with
frequent calls, texts, and photos, telling me each time to stay where I was. So
I did, though with some hesitation.
I kick myself now for not coming home right away. Not that I
could have done anything, or that my return would have changed the outcome in
any way. But it would have made me feel better, maybe? Would I feel less
overcome with guilt and worry and sadness today if I’d immediately hopped on
the next train home? I can’t say now.
But this is a feel-good story with a happy ending, so the
media is all over it. We had news vans camped out in front of our house all day
yesterday. We chose not to speak to reporters immediately, but to first talk to
the police and discuss with them how to best publicly express our extreme
gratitude for their quick response and heroic efforts.
But in this high tech age, news gets out quickly and
everyone has an opinion. In the past 24 hours I’ve read comments from strangers
who have called for us to be investigated for negligence and called us “dumbass
parents”. One of our neighbors released our child’s name to the press without
our permission.
I would ask that anyone who would like to criticize first
take a few moments to understand what it is like to parent or care for an
autistic child, a child who cannot express his needs, wants, or emotions the
way a typical 9 year old can. I would ask that you spend the day with my son,
who looks like a typical 9-year old, but functions more like a preschooler and
requires near-constant vigilance. I ask that you understand that my son has
managed to get past almost every safety measure we’ve employed, and often waits
until we are in the bathroom to attempt to escape. I ask you to consider that
we are all human, and every one of us makes mistakes, despite our best efforts
to be good parents.
If you would first walk a mile in my shoes, you may then
criticize all you want. I may not hear you. I’m going to be thanking God, my
son’s guardian angels, my husband, and the police and emergency responders for
bringing my son home safely to us.