…my 7 year-old had the police called on him. Yes, you read that correctly. Our 7 year-old non-verbal autistic child had the police called on him by our lovely neighbors. Now, I’m not the type of person who feels that they need to justify their child’s behaviors (I used to, but now do not), but in this instance, I will explain.
When house hunting in 2021, we ran into these particular neighbors (we will call them Mr. and Mrs. Greenthumb for the time being), and before we settled on the home, we introduced ourselves and explained to them that we had two small children, one having autism. Their backyard was an open concept and it opened right up to our fenced in backyard. Our current fence is a 4 foot slab fence with thick wiring in between the slabs. Any of our neighbors can see into our fence and yard, with limited privacy. The first few months in our new home, we had no issues with any of the neighbors and even received a very warm welcoming to the neighborhood by everyone, including the Greenthumbs.
Around Christmas, the Greenthumbs turn their entire home into a winter wonderland, including several large blow up decorations, a Santa on their roof, and lots and lots of Christmas lights. The first Christmas in the new house, they placed Christmas light on the opposite side of our fence, so the lights were hanging on their side. This was problematic because Greyson was able to grab the lights off of the fence and attempted to pull them down/eat them. We discussed not having the lights on our fence for his safety, and they arranged for a different way to string the lights up without them being on the fence. No problem, not a big deal. Once Spring rolled around (Spring 2022), Greyson was tossing items over the fence, into the neighbor’s yards and over the side of our deck, into our side yard. He was getting quite excessive while throwing items, but I always made an effort to go into the neighbor’s yards to pick up the items that had been tossed over.
In early summer 2022, Mr. Greenthumb and Derek had a confrontation regarding an item that Greyson threw into their yard and broke a lawn pathway light. We offered to pay to replace the broken light, but they did not take us up on that offer. Instead, I was called down to the fence, where I received a reprimanding from Mrs. Greenthumb regarding Greyson throwing items, Derek taking “selfies” on his phone and nobody paying attention to him. This was accompanied by her explaining to me that this was her and her husband’s “forever home” and they “didn’t sign up to have an autistic child” as their neighbor. Mrs. Greenthumb also informed me that they were looking into building a privacy fence, so Greyson wouldn’t have an opportunity to throw items into their lawn and “break their property” or “injure their dog”.
Over the next couple of weeks, Greyson had done fairly well keeping toys in the house and us keeping items out of the yard for him to toss. The Greenthumb’s 6 ft. privacy fence went up in the fall, and Greyson was unable to throw items over the fence. Coincidentally, Mrs. Greenthumb threw a dog toy over the fence and into our yard accidentally, and was extremely kind when she came to our door to ask me to throw the toy back over the fence. She made small-talk and asked how Greyson was, etc. and even made a joke about her being the one who is throwing items over the fence now. Har Har.
Fast forward to this summer. The heat/humidity has been high and because overheating is a trigger for Greyson’s seizures, we have kept him inside a lot of the time. We recently began allowing him to go outside more and have even allowed the ipad or juice to go out with him when he goes, as long as more than 1 person is outside with him. Well this past Friday, I had a local police officer at my door, stating that the Greenthumbs came into the station and made a complaint about Greyson “throwing items such as apples, trash, toys, etc.” into their yard, and that he was a safety risk to their dog. Considering that he has had a nurse and an RBT with him anytime he is outside, I was a bit skeptical about his ability to physically throw something over the 6 ft. fence. Regardless, the police officer was extremely kind and understanding, and even saw Greyson hanging from the window, yelling. He saw that we clearly have our hands full and I was home alone with him at the time. I basically gave the officer my phone number for future complaints, since I’m sure there will be, and explained to him that Greyson has several behavioral and medical people who work with him daily, but he is so fast and hard to keep up with. He was extremely understanding and kind about the situation, but WHO GOES TO THE POLICE ABOUT A 7 YEAR-OLD NON-VERBAL AUTISTIC CHILD?! Especially considering that they know how severely disabled he is, it seemed like a low blow to not even discuss their concerns with us and go directly to the police.
Derek and I talked to a woman back in October at a Trunk-or-Treat event about her non-verbal autistic pre-teen, who has neighbors that also have issues with her and her child. She explained that she has tried everything and has several people working with him, too, but the neighbors constantly are complaining about her child being vocally loud and stimming. Considering these children rely on several individuals to work with them on a daily basis to do simple tasks, I feel that they definitely wouldn’t understand being scolded for their behaviors.
The following video is one that Derek found online when a neighbor (with no children), gives his opinion to his local police about an autistic child in his neighborhood.
I don’t write this post to call the Greenthumbs out, or to hate on the fact that they called the police on our non-verbal disabled child. I write this post to bring awareness to the lack of education that our country provides to people, limiting majority of the population’s ability to empathize and show compassion for these individuals and their families. It also shows that if an individual is not willing to try to understand or care, they will never put themselves in the shoes of the person with autism, or their family members. I will remain optimistic that our future generations will receive proper education about intellectual disabilities, autism and mental health issues, and hopefully realize that these are not taboo topics to hide from discussing.
La Vie De Autism 
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