07/22/2026
This is how we lost our precious little girl exactly one year ago today. Despite every effort, the paramedics were unable to bring her back.
This is also why we created the MyRobi Foundation. It feels almost impossible to explain the coincidence of this exact post appearing in our feeds today, on the anniversary of her passing.
Our mission is to raise urgent awareness about the very real dangers surrounding autism, wandering, and water. There was so much I did not know or fully understand before we lost Nairobi. Now, it has become my life’s purpose to do everything possible to make sure another parent does not have to live with the pain our family carries every single day.
All I ask is that you please share our posts as we continue this mission, especially the ones concerning autism, water safety, wandering, and accidental drowning. The statistics are staggering, and these tragedies happen far more often than most people realize.
Our daughter was the tenth child we learned of who drowned in connection with a Bestway above-ground pool. Incredibly, the Amazon recall notice reached our inbox on the same day she drowned. We did not see it until after she was gone.
Because I have not yet shared every detail of Nairobi’s death publicly, her case has not been included in those numbers. In time, I will make sure her story is counted and that her voice becomes part of this urgent conversation.
Thank you to everyone who has supported our family and the MyRobi Foundation. Every share could reach a parent, grandparent, caregiver, teacher, neighbor, or community member who needs to see this information.
It may help save a child’s life.
Hopefully, we are not too late.
A million and a half of you saw the post about the harness.
This is the part I didn't tell you.
That's my son Emmett. He's three years old in that picture. We had deadbolts on the front door, mounted high, way up out of his reach, because he was a runner and we knew it.
He got out anyway.
For weeks I could not work out how. So one day I hung back, and I watched.
He pushed the couch across the hardwood floor. It slid without making a sound. He climbed up. He unlocked every deadbolt, one at a time. And then he pushed the couch back exactly where it had been, so we would never know he'd been there.
Three years old. Start to finish, under a minute.
So the next time somebody tells you a kid only wanders because his parents weren't watching, I want you to look at this photo. I had the locks. I was watching. And my little boy engineered his way past every bit of it, and covered his tracks on the way out.
That is not a bad parent. That is autism, and a kid on a mission.
Nearly half of autistic kids will try to bolt from a safe place at least once. Drowning is the number one cause of death for our children. And half of us were never handed a single word of guidance about any of it.
That's why the harness. That's why the alarms. That's why I stopped caring what the woman in the parking lot thinks.
You are not careless. You are outmatched by a brain that never stops solving the puzzle, and you are not alone in it.
Later today I'm posting the plan. The actual steps, in the order that matters, because half of us were never given one.
What's the most creative thing your kid has ever figured out how to do? Tell me below. I'll go first. This.
I wrote about the hard, invisible parts of all of this in my book, So Your Child Was Just Diagnosed with Autism, out December 29 from Fair Winds Press. https://theautismdad.com/book
