Today was a very scary day for my husband and I. It was also a day of miracles. We got a phone call from the Layton Police department about noon saying that they had our 16-year-old autistic son, Nathan, over at Walmart and that he had been left there by his school. We were shocked!!! His Special Ed class had taken a class outing to Walmart and had left without him because he had wandered off just as they were leaving. I must thank Walmart at this point. A couple of their associates found Nathan very quickly and took him to their security folks. They called the police and together, they were able to quickly watch their security camera footage and see that he was part of a school group and that he was left. Thank you Walmart & the Layton Police!
The challenge with Nathan is that he is pretty non-verbal when it comes to communicating. Because Nathan is autistic he will only echo back if you ask him a question. They couldn’t get anything out of him so they called a lady from the school district to come over and help. She was familiar with non-verbal folks and asked him to write down his name and his parents names, which he did. Unfortunately he kept giving them our phone number and address in Arkansas. (Sigh! This is something we have worked on since we have moved here to Utah, but obviously something we need to work on some more). Eventually they got his full name and were able to contact us directly. We drove over there really fast, got Nathan (we about cried when we saw him), talked to the folks there, and then brought him home for the day.
It has been a very emotional day for us as parents of a child with autism. We can't tell you how thankful we are for the people who kept him safe and for God and angels (seen and unseen) that kept Nathan calm for 2 hours until we were located--this is a major miracle! We also can't begin to tell you how frustrated we are that this happened to begin with—yes, we’re pretty mad at his teachers for not only leaving him but then for not even noticing that he was missing.
We have already met with the school administrators and teachers and are asking for better processes and execution in keeping track of ALL their Special Ed students on outings. We want to ensure this won’t happen again to any student in our district, state, or nation. It could have been disastrous! We again want to thank God, Walmart, and the Layton Police for their heroic efforts in keeping our Nathan safe and calm.
Perhaps it's no small coincidence that one of Nathan's favorite books is, "The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree." He reads this book just about every day. The last page of the book reads, "Home again. Safe at last." That is how we feel tonight. We are thankful he is, "Home again" and that he is "Safe at last" after a crazy day.
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