Unless you have a child with autism. It’s impossible to understand how this happens so often. You are emotional drained , you have to be “on 24/7” what I mean is a lot of autistic kids do not sleep. We went 18 month of HELL with our daughter when she totally stopped sleeping. I’m not joking her brain couldn’t shut down. I don’t know how I lived through that period of time. We found a new dr who rx her a Med used for blood pressure. That lowers her bp forcing her body to finally sleep. That no sleep started at age 3, that’s when she regressed into autism. Now 11 years later she still needs that medication to sleep. She takes a dose so high that it would kill a typical person. But her chemistry isn’t typical she reacts to meds so different.
Anyway I had to lock myself in the bedroom with her at night. She still got out of the bedroom a time or 2 but I woke to catch her. I still sleep with her . She escaped from our house one time we had chains and locks. And her siblings all 7 to 14 yrs older then she was plus her dad and I where home. Yet she some how got out without us noticing. She used a broom handle ( we lAter found out to undo the top chain and hook lock. We had to call the police. It was my worst day of my life . They wouldn’t let us look. But found her in the middle of the busiest intersection in town about 1/2 mile from home. All the cars in all directions thankfully had noticed and stopped so it was quite a traffic jam right at the noon hour. How she came back unarmed is a mystery.
A year later she was at school with 4 adults supervising 6 kids. When they were going inside they realized one was missing. Mine of course. She got out of the fence ran about the length of a football field. There’s a main road that runs to the north of the school. They thought she was inside the school until another child said they sAw a child running towards the Main Street. Except there is a 8 foot drainage ditch that also runs along that street . They found my 5 year old in that ditch which you couldn’t see her unless you went into the ditch it had 4 ft of god knows what kind of crappy water in it. My daughter was covered to the bottom of her pig tails in that crap.
So even at school she was able to escape. Again I don’t know how the child is still alive. I don’t know how long she was there before they found her. Her dr even went to the school to check out the ditch. About 2 yrs later she became really ill. Hospital for 2 weeks. She had a internal parasite in her body. Attacking her liver. They couldn’t figure out how she got it. It’s only really found in 3rd world countries. But her great dr had kept a sample from that ditch water and the rare parasite she had was also found in that sample from 2 years prior. She had been living with it until it took over parts of her body and was detected. For awhile they were talking about a liver transplant.
Point is sorry this got so long. We heAr all the bad parent at fault cases. But there’s so many more we don’t hear about where the parent is diligent . It’s so hard when your baby is non verbal and can’t even tell you something is going on in thier body. I swear my child has a guardian angel she’s just beat the odds to many times. My dad died right before these episodes happened. I swear he had to of been protecting her. I still can’t get over that she didn’t drown. She’s attracted to body’s of wAter but in this case it seems she was prob running and fell in. They found raw sewage in this ditch . I will never judge a parent of a child with autism who is a known eloper. Not until I see prove they did something. I can only imagine what people thought of me. And I’m super over protective. Never thought this would happen to me. Geeze sorry for the book.
