The fear that overtakes a parent when a child wanders away is easily compounded when that child has an autism-spectrum disorder. A new study shows that such behavior occurs more often than in other kids, and the hazards can be significant.
In a sample of 1,200 children with autism, 49% had wandered, bolted or "eloped" at least once after age 4; 26% went missing long enough to cause concern. Only 13% of 1,076 siblings without autism had ever wandered off at or after age 4, when such behavior typically becomes less common, finds the study in today's Pediatrics. Among children with autism who went missing, 65% had close calls with traffic; 24% were in danger of drowning.
"Elopement is one of the very few problems in autism that is life-threatening," says study author Paul Law, a pediatrician and director of the Interactive Autism Network Project (ianproject.com), a national autism database headquartered at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. "It is probably one of the leading, if not the leading, causes of death in children with autism."
Among other study findings:
Elopement attempts peaked at age 5 for kids with autism.
From 4 to 7, 46% of kids with autism bolted, vs. 11% of siblings. From 8 to 11, 27% did; from 12-17, 12% did.
Children who wandered had more severe autism symptoms and had lower intellectual and communications scores than those who did not.
The places kids bolted from most were their home or another's (74%), stores (40%) and schools (29%).
The risks associated with her daughter's elopement behavior led Alison Singer of Scarsdale, N.Y., to install alarms on every door in her house. From ages 5 to 10, Jodie, now 15, would try to leave in the middle of the night in search of things, from the Chinese restaurant that served her favorite egg rolls to a book she read at a neighbor's two years before.
"It just got into her head that she wanted it, and she'd head out to get it," says Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, one of several groups that funded the study.
The federal government recently created a medical diagnostic code for wandering as a condition of autism, an important first step in efforts to get preventive services, says Singer.
49%
of 1,200 kids with autism wandered away.
13%
of 1,076 siblings without autism did.
Source: Pediatrics
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