I'm Tired

We hear of child abductions all the time, and there isn't anything that scares parents more.

The stats indicate that more than 350,000 family abductions occur in the United States each year, amounting to nearly 1,000 per day! In Canada the stats are lower, but scary nevertheless.

My son was born in 1976, and even back then there was so much in the news about child abductions. The Six Million Dollar Man television series was then very popular. The lead character, Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors was a bionic man. I was so crazy over this show that I had a T-shirt made for my son Steven, complete with the caption "Six Million Dollar Baby" written on the back. He wore it outside until I found out that the easiest way for a child to be abducted was to broadcast his name all over his clothing. All the predator had to do was call the child by her/his name, and the child would think s/he was a friend of the family, and would likely to go willingly with the stranger.

I did have a scary episode when Steven was three years old. We were shopping in a large department store. My husband, Tony, and I went in one direction to look for the articles we wanted, and my grandmother and Bob, her husband, went in another. We all agreed to meet at a designated point when we were finished.

Tony and I thought Steven was with my grandmother. But when we returned to the rendezvous site, Steven wasn't with them. My grandmother thought Steven was with us. Fear grabbed me by the throat. It was a big department store. Bob told us to go off in different directions and look for Steven. I was so scared. I thought the worst. I was so blinded by fear and tears that I could hardly see my way around.

I found Steven in the bedding department, sound asleep in the middle of the bed. When I asked him why he had left Bob like that, he said, "Mommy I'm tired!"

I would love to say it was the end of the story, but it was not. For the next three years, we had trouble with Steven wandering away. The minute you took your eyes off him for even a second he was gone. I didn't know what I was going to do to get that child to stay close by. Some people suggested a child harness, but he was already six years old. I never liked those things anyhow.

I actually have television to thank for stopping Steven from roaming out of sight.

By that time I was divorced, so it was only the two of us at home. One night he woke up with a tummy ache and wanted to lie on the couch and watch television with me. The TV movie I was watching was about Adam Walsh, a six-year-old boy who made the headlines after he was abducted and killed. Hearing the screams coming from the TV, Steven asked what was going on.

I explained the story to him. It was the six-year-old boy, Adam Walsh, he identified with. That made the difference for him. All the years of his family trying to get him to understand that he had to stay close to mommy or which ever adult he was with did not change a thing. It was this little boy, Adam Walsh, who was the same age, who was able to get through to him.

After the movie I asked him if he was OK. He said it would never happen to him, because he would always stay by mommy. I asked him if he wanted a snack or something to drink and he answered, "No Mommy. I am going back to bed now, I'm tired."

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