Half Of Children With Autism Wander, Study Says

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Well, that's another piece of the puzzle that fits for me. I wandered off for the first time when I was 3 years old. My mother found me wandering around the railway station. Somehow I had managed to cross a very busy road.

Another time was quite dramatic for my parents. We were on holiday in the dunes, a national park with a lot of wildlife. I remember spotting a pheasant and began to follow it, completely oblivious of anything else. Next thing I knew there were policemen with dogs all around me. I'd been lost for 4 hours and was 10 kilometers away from where we were camping.

I have never wandered off, but my 10-year-old brother does, I always have to keep an eye on him. If we're waiting in line or something, he can't go more than about 7mins without wondering off somewhere. I don't know where he could've gotten to if I didn't watch him all the time. I'm only 15, and have been doing this for years. Even before either of us were diagnosed.

I did a lot of wandering when I was very little. I'd always wander into the school yard that was just behind where I lived. My dad ended up building a fence so I couldn't wander anymore. I stopped wandering, the day that I walked up to the ice cream truck when I was 5. I got a good lecture from my mum, and I could tell that she wasn't too happy.

It's a wonder we survive childhood.

We had a small lake by the house that would freeze over in the winter with ice usually six inches or so thick.

One very cold day I took a hatchet out there and chopped a big hole in the ice. I then found that I couldn't pull the floe of ice out of the hole and so I stepped on it to push it under the ice. I went down into the lake and back up through the hole in the ice. Fortunately, there was no current to push me away from the hole.

I got out, walked to the house, and sat down in front of the gas stove in the living room and stayed there until I warmed up and dried out. Oddly enough, nobody asked me how I got so wet.

I wandered a lot as a kid, usually in toy stores, malls, or movie theaters. My parents always found me though. I just wanted to run and explore these places, climb on things and what not.

I used to do that as a kid, but mainly from horseback. Sometimes alone and sometimes with a neighbor kid and my younger brother.

One time on a bicycle, I took off during a blizzard to see my cousins who lived three miles away in a straight line. I decided to cut some of the distance by going across a field. Because of the snow, I had to push/carry the bicycle for the half mile until I got to the road. Once I got to the road, I changed my mind about going to my cousins and went the long way around to get home. In the two miles back by road in knee deep snow, I only saw one vehicle -- some neighbors out checking on their cattle.

My family could be fierce, so I think I was too afraid of getting in trouble to wander off too much. I got lost in a store only once, that I recall. I was also a timid kid, so there was probably only so far that I'd go - unless there's stuff I'm just not remembering, which is possible. I'll have to think about it more. But I did have lots of time to myself, both in the house and outdoors in our neighborhood, so maybe my playing alone was the equivalent, and it just wasn't recognized as wandering. I even forgot about a birthday party and went playing in amongst the goldenrod stems, making forts by bending the tops down and twisting them together. I remembered the party when I got to the place where I could see through the glass sliding door from the goldenrods and discovered my friend had a bunch of other kids over. I decided it was too late to do anything about it and went back to playing.

I tried to avoid school from a fairly early age, having learned to hate it, but I had no good way to do that other than getting sick and making a big deal out of it. I also tried to run away from home a couple of times in junior high school. Escaping into the neighborhood was no longer enough. I couldn't get anything remotely like enough time alone in general, no matter how much time I spent by myself, and I was too tall for the goldenrod forts. But the threat of being designated as delinquent cured me of more of that runaway behavior. I never wanted to be cast as a wrong-doer and a bad kid.

In my 20s, when gas was still cheap, I sometimes would drive way out at night and back again, escaping my apartment, even though I lived alone. When I no longer had a car, it put an end to that. But I still walked around town and through parks. I even walked all the way to the airport once. To this day, I sometimes still have the urge to just drive and drive... but now it's too expensive. Sometimes I feel like I have nowhere to go and that I could scream and scream helplessly and nobody would ever hear me. But if I really did that, instead of being ignored or unheard, I'd probably freak people out and get into trouble. Besides, I'd hurt my throat anyway. My outburst shrieks when I'm having a hard time at home, by myself, cause me a sore throat. Life can be frustrating, and sometimes I miss my goldenrod forts. That's why I need my living room tent - the one I make over the couch with the blanket.

I wandered a lot as a kid.....away from the school-yard, the classroom, the movie theatre during a movie etc. Apparently at school I would take off my coat ,leave it in the middle of the field (when we were supposed to be playing soccer baseball) and wander off of the field.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 08 Oct 2012, 3:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wandered as a child. I think my first time was before I turned two, and this was the reason my parents put a chain lock on the front door.

I disappeared for most of a day when I was five or six, which lead to all kinds of consequences.

I used to wander off a lot. I know my parents would get p****ed off at my aunt, because she would follow me and not tell anyone. She still doesn't understand why to this day.

The police were (at least almost) called at one point. I liked to hide in clothing racks in stores. That's where I was. I was about seven.

Several years later (I was 10-12), I had "wandered off" from a pool pavilion to one of those pool recliners. I was maybe only a few feet away, but my dad came over hyperventilating that "We almost called the police!". I think the police were mentioned, but nobody was going to call them for a while.

I still tend to wander to this day, because of my impulsivity and distractibility.

Yup, I was a wanderer growing up. My parents lost me at an egg festival when I was 5/6, the police found me, or I found them. Got lost once at a museum when I was a kid, my dad cracked my ass for that one.

Perhaps this is why I've always loved Franz Schubert's music; He was a wanderer himself -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR8_n-B8qu0

Yeah....my mom would be livid if I had disappeared for a whole day....I don't know what she'd do! She kept pretty good tabs on me though........she'd follow me the second I strayed from a festival crowd or movie theatre and the teachers ran after me at school too. I got yelled at a lot and reprimanded and my dad would spank but I'd do it again because in the moment I never considered the consequences at all....... impulsiveness I guess.......................

Police were involved, as well as mug shots.

I didn't really understand what was going on, but apparently my parents and the police had this whole theory.

I wandered, because once I started moving one direction, I had to keep going to look around eberry corner and go just a little farther, then just a little farther, then just a little farther.

My other reason for running off, which only applied in preschool, was that I wanted to eggscape the premises, because I hated preschool. It was loud and chaotic and distressing for me.

Wow...I've never had the police called in and mug shots taken...that must have been traumatic at 5 or 6. What kind of theory did they have for why a 5 or 6 year old would disappear? You probably had a perfectly logical "kid reason"...like it was too noisy so you wanted to get away from the noise or you saw a cute chipmunk running off and wanted to follow it, and then just started wandering.

Yeah those were my reasons...usually the escaping one though. Preschool was actually okay, it was gym time in elementary school when I would get overwhelmed and wader off a lot and at lunch time (because the lunch room was really noisy and had too may smells). Although in kindergarten and preschool I'd wander off during "circle time" but only to a corner of the classroom and start stimming.....I liked preschool but I guess I didn't want to sit still with everybody.