Wandering is a nightmare and that nightmare happened to
little Mikaela Lynch and her family this week. I will start this blog by saying
my thoughts and heartache is with the family and the pain they are going
through we can’t even imagine.
If you
follow this blog you know I used to live in Montana on 5 acres in the Kootenai
National Forrest. I owned 5 acres but the actual area was endless miles of
forest a child could have been lost in. People need to understand how quickly
something like this can happen because for this family it happening in the
blink of an eye. My home was one story near a river and my neighbors had a
pond, two very clear dangers. One day I took my son outside to pull some weeds in
the front yard. There was a single car garage attached to my home to give you
an idea of distance. I was at one end of the single car garage and my son was
just at the corner of the other end. I looked down pulled two weeds and when I
looked back he was no longer standing there. I got up and walked towards where
he was but when I rounded the corner he was gone. I continued to walk and
yelled his name hoping he would stop moving but when I went around the next
corner he was nowhere to be seen. My heart stopped and the panic hit. I ran
down the back side of the house screaming his name and still could not see him
or hear him. I ran across the yard for fear he had decided to run over the
neighbor’s pond, something he was always drawn to and still not one glimpse of
him.
At that
moment I didn’t know if I should run in the house to get the phone and call 911
or keep screaming. If I went inside I might miss a glimpse of him or some clue
as to where he was. I was scared to
death my son had vanished into the woods and I had lost him. The entire event was
not even 5 minutes but I knew he would not come back or respond he would just
keep going towards whatever it was he was focused on. My voice was nothing
compared to the distractions that mountain provided. I froze for a moment and
God bless my black lab for walking over to one of our sheds because that was
when I noticed the door was cracked just a bit. I ran over and when I opened
the door there was my son standing silent spinning a bike tire. He heard me
screaming over and over but it didn’t matter because he was fixated on the
tire. I was lucky because the dangers that property gave us where endless and
if he ever wandered up into that mountain I feared the worst.
If I
can’t see my son I will constantly say “where is Phillip?” to others and it’s
not because I am smothering my child or won’t give him space. It’s because if he
goes and is focused the dangers are irrelevant. Water is the number one danger
for autistic children. Group that with wandering, silence, the desire to investigate
and tragedy is a very real fear. Anyone who thinks a child can’t disappear this
easily is mistaken. It happens quickly and as quick as looking away to pull two
weeds. Children with autism often focus
on one thing at a time with intense interest. If something is in the street
that grabs this focus, cars are totally irrelevant. Distance from a parent or
sibling is totally irrelevant. Common dangers are totally irrelevant and many
times it’s the danger itself that is the focus. In our case fire is a big one because
the way fire moves outweighs the heat and its ability to burn my son. The movement
of water and how water is never boring to play with outweighs it ability to
take a life.
Anyone
who blames or lacks understanding for the pain and heartache Mikaela Lynch’s
family is feeling needs to read this. My heart is with them as all of our
hearts should be.
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