By Jenifer Goodwin
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, March 24 (HealthDay News) -- Many parents know that heart-stopping feeling of being at the park or the mall, and suddenly losing track of their child. For the parents of autistic children, those concerns can be even more intense.
Though wandering is often associated with Alzheimer's, autism experts say a tendency to wander is an under-recognized, and harrowing, facet of the neurodevelopmental disorder.
Autistic children who've wandered off may not realize they're lost, so it never occurs to them to ask for help finding their way home, said Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for Autism Speaks. Some may realize they're lost but won't -- or can't -- ask for help because of the speech and social difficulties that come with disorder. Others may even hide or run if approached by a police officer or someone else trying to help.
And while typical toddlers tend to grow out of wandering and learn that it's important to tell mom or dad where they're going, autistic children's wandering may persist into adulthood.
Carol Christiaanse, a mother of two from Westport, Conn., has been there. Her son, Matthew, is now 25 and has an autism spectrum disorder called "pervasive development disorder-not otherwise specified."
When Matthew was 4, Christiaanse and her family went to a fall festival at the local high school. She turned her back momentarily, and when she turned back, Matthew was gone. There were police at the festival, who said they'd make an announcement over the loudspeakers.
"They were trying to be helpful and they said, 'Don't worry. When he hears his name, he'll identify himself to someone'," Christiaanse recalled. "I said, 'No, he won't. He doesn't respond to his name.'"
A half hour later, a groundskeeper found Matthew headed down the road towards the neighboring town.
Another time, Christiaanse's daughter found Matthew walking down the yellow line in the middle of a twisty country road. Then there was the time Carol was taking a shower, came downstairs and found Matthew gone. She frantically searched the house, the yard and the neighborhood, and was getting ready to call the police when she saw her son walking down her street, a man driving slowly next to him in his car.
"The man knew something was wrong with Matthew, but he was too afraid of being considered a kidnapper to put him in his car and drive him home," she said.
Today, Matthew is 25 and living at a home with other adults with disabilities. One cold, rainy night, Matthew left the facility without telling anyone, planning to walk 12 miles to see his friend in another town. A police officer found him shivering on the steps of an office building, 3 miles from home.
"It scared me to death," Christiaanse said. "We feel lucky and blessed that he might have a guardian angel looking after him -- all of these things could have ended really disastrously."
Autism experts don't really know why people with autism have a tendency to wander. Christiaanse believes it's related to the problems in making social connections -- it simply doesn't occur to her son to let someone know that he's headed out.
Another characteristic of autism is having obsessive interests, Dawson said. "A child might have an obsession with street signs, so they'll leave home intending on going back to see a street sign that they saw earlier in the day," she explained.
And some cases have ended in tragedy. In July, Mason Medlam, a 5-year-old Kansas boy with autism, drowned in a pond near the family's home. The family knew the child wandered and had a fascination with water, his mother testified during a meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee in October in Bethesda, Maryland.
"I was hyper-vigilant with him. I knew he had absolutely no concept of danger. I knew he was a runner, and I knew he would be attracted to the most awful of dangers if we didn't always know where he was," his mother, Sheila Medlam, said.
They had installed multiple locks on every door, and his mom slept next to Mason at night because she feared he would try to leave.
"I was terrified that he would wake up in the night and somehow find a way out of the house and be lost to me forever," she said. "I couldn't take him to a babysitter's house because there weren't any that had taken the precautions we had. How many child-care providers are willing to add multiple locks to their doors and take on such a risk as a child who wanders at the first opportunity?"
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