SAULT STE. MARIE - A Sault Ste. Marie man has pulled his kids out of an independent, not-for-profit daycare facility at the former Etienne Brule school after his three-year-old son was found eating a random pill he had discovered on the playground.
Brent Robinson says staff at The Orchard Children’s Centre found his son, Brent Laframboise, with a partially chewed pill in his mouth at approximately 3:30 p.m. last Friday. But instead of seeking immediate medical attention, staff greeted the child’s father and informed him of what had transpired when he arrived to pick up his son about half an hour later.
Laframboise lives with autism and is non-verbal. He also lives with pica — or an appetite for non-food items — which can be somewhat common in people living with autism or other developmental disabilities.
“Why the f— didn’t you call 9-1-1? If you know it’s a pill, get an ambulance there — because if my son would have overdosed because of something he found on the ground, at least they had NARCAN or whatever they could do to save his life,” said Robinson. “They didn’t do anything.”
Robinson took his son to Sault Area Hospital, where he was treated with activated charcoal as a precautionary measure in the event he had ingested something toxic on the playground. Staff at the downtown daycare facility also provided Robinson with a plastic bag containing another pill that was found near his son, which was subsequently forked over to hospital staff for analysis.
“We lucked out — it wasn’t something dangerous, apparently. But we still don’t know what that pill was,” he said. “The second pill that they gave us, it wasn’t the one he had in his mouth. We still don’t know what it is. We just know that he’s alive, and he’s healthy.”
Robinson was still fuming about the way his son’s situation was handled by daycare staff when reached by SooToday Monday.
“My child could have been dead,” he said. “That’s the scary part — we could be sitting at a funeral right now, or making the arrangements for it. That’s how serious it is, and it’s scary.”
Valeria Aramburu, a senior staff member at The Orchard, declined to comment on the incident, citing privacy concerns.
“I’m going to have to hang up,” she told SooToday. “I know that your place is to collect information, and you are twisting words just for me to be able to give you some information. But I’m not going to.”
But unlike Aramburu, Robinson says he has no intention of keeping quiet about the incident or how it was handled by daycare staff.
“I want this to be heard, and I want everybody to know about it,” he said.