Autism activist comes to Sutton, hoping to lock away more tragic drownings

SUTTON, Mass — Each year, by one estimate, 1,200 children with autism drown in the United States. This summer, Massachusetts added two fatalities to the count.

Last month, a 4-year-old girl, known only as Eva, drowned in a neighbor’s pool in Sutton after wandering from the family home. In June, 6-year-old Zayan Mayanja drowned in Nabnasset Pond, a short distance from his home.

“And people say, well just teach them how to swim,” said Sheletta Brundidge, an author and autism activist. “Well you can’t teach them how to swim. If you can’t teach them their name, if you can’t teach them the alphabet, if they’re not making eye contact and looking at you, if they don’t follow verbal commands you can’t teach them to swim.”

And Brundidge ought to know. She is the mother of four children. Three have varying levels of autism.

“For a long time I thought God was punishing me,” she said. “I was like, what did I do? Did I steal something? Did I marry the wrong man? What is happening? Jesus... I am sorry, okay? I went to college, I didn’t have my kids until I got married, I pay my taxes -- so how do my kids have autism? Having three kids with autism is hard. It is hard emotionally. It is hard physically. It is hard financially.”

And it’s especially hard when you’re living in a state that has few resources available for children with autism. When Brundidge learned there was a 10-year wait to get services for her children in Texas, she researched other states and found the waiting period in Minnesota was 10 months. She and her family wound up moving there several years ago.

That was a turning point. But so was the time Brundidge visited a friend and saw she had a lock on her front door programmable with a code.

“I said to myself, I wonder if they have these locks for the inside of the house?,” Brundidge remembers.

She had a special reason for needing such locks. Her youngest son, Daniel, had developed a common autistic behavior called elopement -- that is, a propensity, when given the chance to wander away from the house.

“Every chance he gets, whether we are at church or at a grocery store or sitting in our home, he is looking constantly for ways to try to get out of the house,” Brundidge said. “If you accidentally leave the door unlocked or you’re bringing in groceries -- he’s gone. That fast.”

It got to the point that even using the bathroom became an ordeal for Brundidge -- because in those few minutes she was behind a closed door, Daniel would find a way to bolt.

Brundidge didn’t find the interior combination locks at any of the big box home stores, but she did find them on Amazon and ordered four.

“It contains a 6-10 digit code you put in and they can’t get out unless they have that code,” she said.

Brundidge installed the locks on four doors that were escape routes to the outside. She said Daniel tried his best to figure out how to open them, but after two weeks he stopped trying.

“We haven’t had an escape attempt in a very long time,” she said.

Brundidge began telling other parents about the locks -- and then, last June, a child with autism drowned in her home state. She went to the press conference where officials broke the sad news -- and ran into family members of that child. She promised to get them some locks.

“And that’s when God gave me the idea for a door lock giveaway,” she said.

And that’s what brought Brundidge to Sutton on Sunday. The town, still grieving the loss of that four-year-old, accepted her invitation to host a lock giveaway at the police department.

“When I saw the tragedies in New England, I said, I gotta get up there,” she said. “It’s all about bringing love to the community. Sometimes God will turn your misery into a ministry.”

Brundidge’s ministry is known as Spread Love With Locks. It makes no money, solicits no donations, but has received support from such major players as Amazon. When Brundidge used vacation money to purchase 50 locks for giveaway earlier this summer, Amazon matched that number -- and they’ve done that a couple of times.

“After a lot of prayer, I realized that God was giving me a position,” she said. “And that position is not just to help my children, but he knew he could trust me to tell my story and help somebody else.”

The CDC reports that children with autism are 160 times more likely to drown than other kids, because not only do they not understand the harm that can come in bodies of water -- they are drawn to them. Ponds, lakes and pools are sensorially pleasing to kids with autism -- much as trains are.

And that’s why Brundidge hopes to Spread Love With Locks to many spots in the U.S.

“I’m not a non-profit,” she said. “I don’t have a 503c. I like to say I’m just a mama with a mouth... on a mission.”

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