Autism Parent's Worst Nightmare

This is not the care for every autism parent, but I know that it is for many. In fact it has been for us. For a certain number of children with autism, there is a desire to run. Not to run laps for track but to just take off. Unfortunately, some of those children never make it back. There are too many stories of children with autism who have gone missing and then eventually are found dead.

While our daughter is not a runner, our son is. He has taken off many times from our home. Legally, parents are not allowed to lock their doors and so anything can happen during the night. We have tried a number of things to keep him in, once even piling boxes in front of our front door. The only thing that really worked was to get a lock that you had to enter a code to unlock the door. Even now, when Logan visits from his group home and stays overnight, I sleep on the couch so that I'm more aware of where he is during the night.

Once our son opened the door, took off all his clothes and then took off. It was winter and we lived on the water. It could have gone very bad. Thankfully he was found safe. There was another time when he went missing for a number of hours and we really thought we had lost him. I tell the story in this article with ChristianWeek.

I share all this, not to complain, but to let you know that many parents fear they are going to receive that bad news from the police that they found their child's body. It is really any parent's worst nightmare.