Autistic child boards the wrong bus, gets 'rescued' by stranger who also has child with special needs
A father recently shared a distressing experience of his autistic son getting lost after accidentally boarding the wrong bus. And that it was thanks to two kind Samaritans that he and his wife managed to track the boy safely.
In his shocking yet heartwarming Facebook post — that has now gone viral, with over 800 likes and 93 comments — the father shared the exact chronology of the unfortunate event.
On Thursday (April 1), Bob Lee and his wife were supervising their son, who was learning to take the bus by himself. They waited for bus service 183 at the stop before the one their son was supposed to board at.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned when their son boarded 188 instead of his stipulated 183 and headed in the opposite direction of his destination.
The couple chased after the bus with Lee using a bicycle and his wife switching to a car to find their son. His wife did manage to catch up with the bus after a few minutes and started calling out: “I’m looking for my son, he has autism!”
The bus captain then told her: “The boy who talks to himself? He alighted at the polyclinic.”
Afterwards, Lee took a cab to the designated bus stop only to find that his son was nowhere around. Still panicked, Lee started to shout his son’s name. But instead of finding his son, he attracted the attention of a Malay father with a child.
After asking whether he was looking for his son, the man informed him: “My wife brought him to (the) police station. Don’t worry, my son’s also ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), we will help you.”
Heaving a sigh of relief, Lee also felt reassured that the man’s wife had come to the aid of his lost son. Lee was grateful for the kind family after finding out his son was found safe and unharmed, he shared.
“I’m so grateful that (my son) has met a kind Samaritan,” wrote Lee.
Aidil Ismail, the man whose wife helped Lee’s lost son, also uploaded a post about the incident on Facebook and wrote: “So proud of my wife! She did everything she could to reunite this lovely autistic teen back to his parents when he had lost his way.”
His wife, Dhiya Liyana, also commented below Lee’s post praising their son with how he handled the situation despite being lost. She had noticed the teen looking around and calling out: "Mummy, Mummy where’s Mummy(?)”.
She also wrote: “He was so good in calming himself by asking me to count backwards with him! Brave boy.”
Lee ended his post by writing: “It takes a village to raise a child.”
The two families have also shared that they have become friends after the encounter.
Lee’s post garnered a lot of attention from the public, with many leaving supportive words under his post. Many shared the family’s relief.
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More praised Lee’s son for being brave enough to approach a stranger for help and were overall thankful that the teen managed to find his way back to his parents.
Hopefully, this encourages more people to try and find ways to help a missing child when encountered with a similar occurrence.
This article was first published in theAsianparent.
