Wampum

Only More So

by Dwight Meredith

Sometimes, when asked what it is like to parent an autistic child, I reply that it is exactly like parenting a typical child only more so.

Many kids are picky eaters. Their parents worry about whether or not the kid’s diet includes sufficient vegetables and other healthy foods. Parents of autistic kids have the same concern only more so.

Many parents worry that their kids watch too much television. POA’s have the same concern only more so.

Parents of young children often have difficulty finding a restaurant that provides a friendly environment for the kids as well as cuisine suitable for adult tastes. Parents of autistic kids have the same problem, only more so.

Keeping kids safe is another example showing that parenting an autistic child is just like parenting a typical child only more so. It is every parent’s nightmare that their child will dash out into traffic or get lost. With autistic kids, the danger is more severe. Many autistic kids simply have no judgment. Recently, an autistic sixteen year old Fairfax, Virginia boy strayed from his house, wandered to the Washington beltway and simply laid down in traffic. He was hit by multiple vehicles and died from his injuries.

Our eight year old son, Bobby, has no judgment when it comes to traffic. If allowed, he will walk in the middle of a busy street paying no attention to cars whatsoever.

As might be expected, we take great care to ensure that Bobby is always supervised. He is not allowed to play in the cu de sac or even in our fenced back yard without an adult present. He is far too likely to wander off and get lost or walk into traffic.

That brings us to the subject of neighbors. No one gets to make an informed choice about neighbors. One chooses the neighborhood and hopes for the best. One hopes for neighbors who are friendly, trustworthy, helpful and, occasionally, tolerant. So it is for the parents of an autistic child, only more so.

We have lost Bobby twice. On both occasions, good neighbors came to our rescue.

The first time, several years ago now, Bobby learned to turn the knob opening the dead bolt lock on the front door. He escaped and headed to the playground located at the church next door.

Fortunately, Bobby left the front door wide open, alerting us to the fact that something was amiss. I went searching and quickly located him. He had only been gone about 10 minutes when I found him. A neighbor had seen him, barefoot and half dressed in December, and was in the process of escorting him home when I found him.

I thanked our neighbor, took Bobby home and then had two errands to run. First, I stopped by Home Depot to purchase dead bolt locks that require a key to open from both the inside and outside. Second, I stopped off at the bakery to get a cake for our neighbor’s desert.

The keyed dead bolt locked work well. Last year, however, I screwed up. A house up the street had a new “for sale” sign and I walked to get a copy of the brochure (I was curious as to the asking price). As I was only going less than a block, I failed to lock the door behind me. I walked back engrossed in the brochure and failed to see that Bobby had slipped out behind me.

I returned to my study assuming that Bobby was downstairs with Deb. Deb assumed that Bobby was upstairs with me. It was not until almost an hour later that I went downstairs for a cup of coffee, did not hear Bobby, and asked where he was. A brief search of the house confirmed our fears.

I sent my older son to the church playground to look for Bobby. Deb took a car to drive our neighborhood. I took off on foot through the woods behind our house. I found no trace of Bobby.

Emerging from the woods, I saw Deb’s car. Neither she nor our older son had found Bobby. With the bitter taste of fear and adrenaline in our mouths, we got back in the car and drove around the neighborhood searching. After about 45 minutes of searching, we had found no trace. Fear was quickly turning to panic.

I then noticed a police car patrolling out neighborhood. I flagged him down and reported that our son was missing.

“Is he autistic?” the officer asked. With a sigh of relief, I said “yes.” “Follow me,” the officer replied.

The officer took us to a house about half a mile from our home. A neighbor had seen Bobby walking in the middle of the street, spoke to him, and when Bobby did not respond, knew that something was wrong. After looking for a parent and finding none, the neighbor, who we did not know, took Bobby home with him and called the police.

After huge sighs of relief and profuse thanks to cops and the neighbor, we finally got Bobby safely home. It was only later that night that Deb remarked that Bobby had been handed over without any identification or other proof that we were his parents.

The neighbor, having had Bobby for the better part of an hour, was understandably happy to turn him over to us. The police, apparently, were operating under the assumption that even if we were kidnappers, after a couple of hours caring for a full spectrum autistic child, we would send a note to the real parents offering to pay ransom if they would take Bobby back.

On both occasions we had been saved by good neighbors. Not everyone is so lucky as to have neighbors as kind and helpful as ours.

A family in Quincy, Mass. has twin autistic eleven year olds. They also have the misfortune of having Eleanor Pimentel as a neighbor.

According to the Boston Globe, the attorney general the attorney general’s office has filed a complaint against Mr. Pimentel seeking to prevent her from harassing on the autistic kids.

Ms. Pimentel lived across the back yard fence from the family with the autistic twins. She would yell profanities at the more severely autistic twin as he played in his own back yard. The Boston Globe reports that Ms. Pimentel would also frighten the boy:

Each morning, as a Quincy mother and her severely autistic 11-year-old son waited for a school van, a neighbor walked past with a barking dog, knowing it frightened the boy and made him shriek and wet his pants, according to the attorney general's office.

The harassment did not end there.

One time, the state alleges, Eleanor Pimentel, 41, blocked the boy from boarding the van, calling him a "retard" and telling his mother she was "sick of that animal bringing down her property values." …

In one incident while the boy and his mother were waiting for the van in front of their house, the complaint said, Pimentel came up with her dog, called the boy names, and said, "This is what animals do," before allowing her dog to defecate in the family's yard.

The more Pimentel yelled, the more her dog barked, and the more out of control the boy became, the complaint said.

In the interview, the boy's mother said she first contacted Quincy police on Aug. 13, reporting that Pimentel had blocked her son from boarding the school van. After finally getting the boy on the van, the mother said, Pimentel followed her into the entrance of the family's house, and she quickly closed and locked the door before Pimentel could fully get inside.

According to the complaint, Pimentel then screamed through the door, with the dog at her side, "This is not over!"

The following day, according to the complaint, a Quincy police officer visited Pimentel and told her not to walk her dog in front of the boy's house, but she argued with the officer, who tried to lead her away. Pimentel then left the police officer and approached the van where the boy's mother was talking with the driver.

Pimentel yelled and threatened to dump bags of dog feces she was holding on the family's yard. The boy's mother requested help from the police officer, who escorted Pimentel to her home "quite agitated, and seemingly on the verge of becoming violent," according to the complaint.

I do not know what would have happened if Bobby had encountered a neighbor like Ms. Pimentel on either occasion on which he “escaped.” We were very lucky and eternally grateful that our neighbors acted like, well, like good neighbors.

All families dread having a neighbor like Ms. Pimentel. Parents of autistics kids are the same, only more so.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at October 30, 2003 08:54 PM | TrackBack