Mother says autistic son was placed on wrong bus

As parents isn’t this our greatest fear? 

In Orlando, Fla. – A 5 year old mildly autistic boy was found wet and wandering alone one mile from his home after being placed on the wrong school bus.  The boy’s mother said her son should have been dropped off  at the apartments where she lived, but in fact was dropped off one mile away from their home.  The school district admitted that an error was made, but how it happened remains unclear.   The mother said her two other sons got off the bus at the correct stop, but the youngest son was nowhere to be found. “I mean, you hear so many stories of kids getting abducted, killed. That’s the first thing that crossed my mind — something bad happened,”  mother said. A parent whose daughter normally rides the bus with the boy, said her daughter was with the boy at the Elementary School when school let out, but a school employee put the boy on a different bus. “Just to take him away and put him on another bus, that made no sense whatsoever and my daughter was scared to death,”  according to this parent .  The mother said she called the County Sheriff’s Office and the boy was found about two and a half hours later.  The mother said he was wandering around apartments nearly a mile away.  A resident spotted him and called deputies. “He was drenched from head to toe. Book bag, shoes were wet and (he was) crying,” mother said. The district said the boy’s bus assignment was not properly communicated to him or his mother and the boy got on the bus he was originally assigned to.

It is stories like this that make you cringe.  As parents, we all know it and we all feel it. We have written about it before.    Time and time again. 

LifePROTEKT provides personal location based GPS products that provide the tools to  help prevent wandering.  Every 40 seconds someone’s son or daughter is reported missing, totaling over 800,000 missing children in the United States each year. Whether you are in a crowded shopping mall, amusement park or even a neighborhood park, as a parent, turning around and not seeing your child induces instant panic and a sinking feeling in your stomach.

Here are Back-to-School Child Safety Tips that may help:

There are a few steps parents can take to help shorten the time it takes to locate their child should he or she ever go missing. The first step is to remain as calm as possible and other tips that can help include:

   * Teach your children to look for other moms or dads to ask for help if they ever get separated from you.

    * Practice memorizing last name, address, home phone and cell phone numbers with your children by turning them into a rhyme or pneumonic device so the child can recall it when they are scared.

    * Check around your home in places that would be easy to hide or places where young children might get trapped.

    * Keep a current photograph on hand.

    * Notify local law enforcement and the media and report where they were last seen, what they were wearing and  other key pieces of identifying information.

    * Contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) on their toll-free telephone number:          

       1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).

    * Consider purchasing a LifePROTEKT GPS locator for your child that can notify you if your child leaves home or any pre-defined designated area and allows them to send you an SOS message if they are in danger.

 For more information on protecting your children and securing your own peace of mind please visit www.lifeprotekt.com or call us at 1 800 939 3952.