Being the parent of a child with autism, any time that anything is in the news about Autism that is any bit 'negative' (i.e: Michael Savage, etc) it seems that my email is barraged by every person who has remotely met me. "have you read this?".. "saw this and thought of you"... etc. Now, let me begin by saying that I am not complaining. I do truly appreciate that others think of me and many times I haven't seen the latest since I am behind on email, my TV has only been tuned to the same children's programming, our newspapers get thrown away unread, etc. So please, if you've ever sent me a 'Fw' about autism, don't stop. I appreciate you.
The reason I'm writing this is because the past few days I've been following (after receiving an email about it and actually catching a glimpse of it on the news) the story of Alex Irvin. It does seem like more than ever we hear about kids with Autism who are getting out and getting lost, wandering. The scenario is one of my biggest fears and nightmares. My son HAS gotten out before, and thankfully recovered before he wandered off of our property. It scares the absolute crap out of me to think about either of my children getting lost from me, but in particular for my son. We've enrolled him in a special program run by the Sherrif's department called Project Lifesaver and he wears a special tracking device on his wrist to locate him. Part of the "deal" is that a police officer comes and changes out the battery and wristband once a month. How ironic it was that today happened to be the first Monday of the Month - our battery day, after this weekend's news of Alex Irvins disappearance and 3 days later his recovery. Today, I'm hugging my little boy (and little girl) 100 times over and promising to do my best to keep them both safe. I'm so very thankful for Officer Vinny who takes the time out of his busy day each month to help us keep our Alex and kids like him safer.
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On a related note, I want to share an article that I wrote on another site - on this same topic:
Project Lifesaver & Keeping your Child with Autism Safe
And an excellent resource written by my friend, Bonnie Sayers published at her Bella site:
Safety Issues/Resources
2 comments:
Thanks for adding the link to my site. I read about many of the missing thru autism vox and the others in my google alerts.
The other day I started following missingchildren on twitter and thought they need a site about those missing with autism, some are adults so would hate to limit it to children.
I agree Bonnie - I think about it often. So very scary :(
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