Book Um Danno

Miles has had some post traumatic stress and anxiety surrounding fire and police officers and their vehicles. He had a few unfortunate and hands on encounters with them during a few of his supervised visits with his bio-mom. In recent months, he has cried and panicked whenever he saw a person in uniform or saw their vehicles. He was always afraid that, "the fire house was coming to get him!".

I did a little research and decided to call someone over at Gilbert Police Headquarters. They usually don't do tours for children under 6. After I explained our unique situation, they were more than helpful in arranging a positive, age appropriate encounter with uniformed officers and their vehicles. My hope was that if Miles could befriend a police officer, it would give him a new, more healthy point of reference.

We talked about it for days before our little field trip. When we arrived, I put the big boys in the double stroller and wheeled them into lobby. It was not at all like you see on TV. It was actually quite pretty, with awards and pictures on the walls, a flat panel TV broadcasting CNN, and not a criminal in sight. Miles saw a uniformed officer exiting the building, and immediately started to panic. He started saying, "I need ah be all done now. Mommy, I need ah go home now". I assured him that he was fine and that we were going to have fun. He was very hesitant, but reluctantly went along.

After waiting in the lobby for several minutes, a police dept. spokesperson came walking down the hall with a male and female officer. The officers were in uniform which freaked Miles out a little bit. He did warm up a bit when he was that they came bearing gifts. The officers knelt down and handed Miles and Aidan each a stuffed animal. They also gave them each Junior Officer badges, coloring books and fingerprint kits. Aidan was thrilled, but Miles didn't really want to make eye contact or get too close. I did talk him into posing for a picture though.

The officers led us out to the garage. This is where they keep all of their squad cars and motorcycles. The boys were super excited when they saw the kennels that the police dogs live in. They looked just like the kennels in our garage. The dogs were all out working, but they got to see their blankets and chew toys. We made our way to a squad car and Miles hopped in the driver's seat and started trying everything out and pushing all of the buttons on the computer. Aidan hopped in the passenger's side and joined in too. They had a lot of fun pretending. Once I got them back in the stroller, the officers turned on the lights and for a brief moment, turned on the siren. Miles had been wearing quite a serious face the whole time, but the minute those sirens came on, he lit right up. He was giggling with excitement.

We said good-bye to the officers and began walking back to the lobby. Just then Miles spotted an alligator, more commonly referred to as and elevator. The GPD spokeswoman was kind enough to take us for a ride up to the second floor and then back down. Miles was ecstatic.

Although Miles maintained quite a poker face while we were there, he has been excitedly telling everyone about his trip to the police station.