Those Times When Autism Sucks

Rough week with Zach. For the kids' birthday, our family and relatives went together on a trampoline for our backyard, and Zach loves it. He's already spent hours on the thing. This is great, because lately, he's been sneaking off without saying anything, taking off to the neighborhood park. It's close by, but aside from not letting us know where he's going, he also has gotten into a bit of trouble there. Things like just peeing wherever he feels like it, discarding his clothes, trying to ride other kids' bikes that are there - and screaming and hitting if they try to take their bike back. Neighbors have been very helpful and understanding, but still - he just can't be doing that stuff. And he's very stealthy at sneaking out.

But so - the trampoline has at least kept him in our backyard longer. A few times, we'll look out, and he's just jumping in his underwear, but we've got a privacy fence, so we don't think it's a big deal. Except...last week when he escaped the backyard (we have the gates locked, but he apparently figured those out, or we forgot to lock them) in his underwear. A neighborhood girl came over and let us know he was in the park in his underwear, and by the time Melissa went over there, she found him walking on the sidewalk and starting to walk out onto the busy street next to the sidewalk. Cars were pulled over and people were honking, shouting at him, but he completely ignored them. Melissa grabbed him and walked him home, and then a police car shows up at our house, because of course, when you see an eight-year old boy walking out into the busy street in his underwear, you know something ain't quite right. 

The policeman was very kind and understanding - he just wanted to make sure Zach was home safe.

95% of the time, Zach is very easy going, very sweet, etc, but sometimes this crap happens, and it scares and depresses the shit out of you.