My family and I live in the capital city of a small southern state. In the spring of 2001 my husband and I were blessed with our second child, a healthy baby boy. By the time he turned two, I started to notice he was not a typical two-year-old.
He liked meddle with anything he could get his hands on. He choked himself and then squealed with delight.
At about age three, he was developing an adventurous side – which he has to this day – and he indulged it at every turn. To do that, he started running away. Most of the time he was just exploring his own boundaries – he’d duck away from us while we were shopping or run ahead in a parking lot. It was always worrisome, but never anything we couldn’t handle. We thought we had everything under control. We thought he understood all of the dangers inherent in separating himself from us. That’s what we thought until…
One night after putting him to bed and thinking he was sound asleep, he slipped out of the house undetected. Thankfully a neighbor brought him back. She said he was wandering around the block and she thought we’d probably like to have him back. We did and we thanked our neighbor profusely, as we ran through a gamut of emotions.
It was impossible to know what to think with so many thoughts and feelings passing through my head and heart at the same time. Relief. Rage. Panic. Peace. Love. Loss. Fear. Forgiveness. Ultimately we just wanted to find out what the hell he was thinking.
His response was just as simple as it was confusing. He said he wanted to see someone down the street. We had just moved into this house and had been in the neighborhood no more than six weeks. We barely knew anyone who lived in the houses surrounding us and he certainly didn’t. Since we were so happy to have him back, we didn’t give his reasoning much thought. He was just a three-year-old-boy after all.
We did however, address his escape quickly. We installed locks well out of his reach on every door leading outside. We also paid even closer attention to his behavior which, by his fifth birthday, became more and more troublesome.
He started doing things that were both destructive and defied explanation. He tore open a five-pound sack of flour from the pantry and scattered it on the furniture and on the floor. He frequently opened the refrigerator for eggs to crack on the kitchen floor. Once, he opened a 25-pound bag of Basmati rice for the sole purpose of spilling it in the kitchen, the living room and our bedroom.
I talked to my pediatrician about my son’s behavior and told him about incidents such as these on several occasions only to be told that my five-year-old was just a “kinetic learner.” I was disappointed to say the least, and left groping for answers. I still knew something was wrong, but no one was able to put a finger on it.
