Starting to Wander - How to Nip this in the Bud...

[ohsewcrafty]

Charlie has begun to wander away and/or hide in public/social settings and I'm terrified. He was never a wanderer and stayed by our sides surprisingly well for his age, no less his diagnosis. Last weekend, we went to a birthday party at a bowling alley - I was nervous, but with his headphones on he did well. Though he enjoyed himself, the atmosphere grated on him and by the end he was showing signs of being done. At one point, I turned around and he was GONE. I looked around our area and he was nowhere in sight. After basically alerting the entire place, we found him all the way at the end of the lanes hiding behind a ball stand. This weekend at the grocery store, he silently wandered away and ended up all the way near the front doors. Since he wasn't crying for us, no one even stopped him - he was quietly playing with the lotto machine buttons.

I don't know what to do. I consider myself pretty vigilant, but apparently not enough? When I talk to him about it, he doesn't seem to understand the issue. I try to show I'm concerned, but not angry. I think he does it to avoid the situation we're in at that time.

[Deleted]

How old is he?

[ohsewcrafty]

Nov 22, 2016 9:44:51 GMT -5 @clarypax said:

How old is he?

He just turned 6 on Halloween.

[mrsbuttinski]

It depends.

Elopement comes from basically 2 antecedents- escaping from something or being drawn to something.

It sounds as if, in this instance, he was escaping a situation that was too intense for him to easily cope- the combination of being "on" socially in a sensory challenging space was probably too much for his skill set at this age. If this is going to be his MO going forward, you might want to designate a minder who will not be distracted by anything else to keep an eye out for him and remove him before he bolts. It might be useful to build a sensory break into the day before he becomes overwhelmed and needs to leave.

If this is more about impulsively seeking out an interest or curiosity, a Social Story about not wandering off should help. Make it a rule. Medication for ADHD might be appropriate at this age as well since this behavior can have tragic consequences.

You have my sympathy. DS was rarely one to "escape"- I can think of only one instance where he went all first scene in the movie "Witness" to avoid the hornet infestation in the playground mulch as a new student at the public school. Feet up in a boys room stall. The school nurse called me to see if he'd come home. WTAF? They did find him 20 minutes later during which time I aged 20 years. I had to shut down their nonsense about an irrational fear of bees- when 13 kids out of 119 have been to the nurse with stings, irrational no longer applies.

Most of the time DS wandered it was to go check out something he wanted to know more about. He always came back, but I swear 3/4 of the white hair on my head was from this. I still have to remind him to touch base on occasion though he's much better.

His cub scout pack used to do a haunted hike in the small swath of woods between our houses and the school. They'd take the kids in, Tigers first and so on, with the older boy scouts staging age appropriate scary scenes. The year DS was a wolf he disappeared and all manner of horrific scenarios played in our heads during the 20 minutes we looked for him. I thought his den leader was going to have a stroke. The next year, he did it again only this time we were a mix of scared and annoyed. By the time he was a Webelos I, we chatted about what a beast he was being while we waited for him to come out of the woods on his own. That last year, I told his den leader he knew the way home and that he didn't need to worry about him turning up. At his Eagle COH, guys got up and told at least half a dozen tails of DS not being where he was supposed to be- lost on an orienteering course, playing Halo at a friend's house near the park, shooting rifles when he was supposed to be cooking. It was a theme.

www.autismnj.org/document.doc?id=994

[numbbears]

That's terrifying. DS is pretty sneaky, too. He hasn't managed to escape from us yet, but I can see it being a problem in the future. Hope you can figure something out.