It was seven o’clock on a Friday evening when we had to call the police. No one had come to pick up Aaron that evening. His mom had dropped him off at my child care center Friday morning. She brought him in, signed him in, put his backpack on his hook and had left. All the things she normally did but she did not show up that evening.

We called the hospital where she worked, and she had not shown up for work that day. They had tried all day to reach her. We called all of the contacts on Aaron’s list before we called the police. No one knew where she was. This wasn’t like mom.

While we were waiting for the police to arrive many thoughts passed through my mind. I thought about Aaron’s first day at our facility. He had come to us with the diagnoses of Reactive Attachment Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. We had taken one look at this beautiful child, and our hearts had melted immediately.

Unbeknownst to us, he would become one of our most challenging children and one of our greatest success stories. Aaron was three years old, and one of the smartest little boys to ever enter our doors.