PHILADELPHIA — One woman created a post on her family’s blog expressing deep appreciation to a man her and her daughter encountered while on a flight from Philadelphia.
Shanell Mouland, a wife and mother of two girls, wrote a blog post in the form of a letter to someone she addressed as ‘Daddy.’ In her post, Mouland described boarding a plane with her younger three-year-old daughter, Kate, who has autism.
She detailed the common anxieties that typically accompany her when she and Kate visited public places, because often times they encountered strangers who misunderstood and acted intolerant of her daughter’s condition.
Mouland wrote about the many scenarios she worried could occur while on the plane with her daughter, and also the reason she chose to seat her daughter in the middle rather than by the window. She said Kate would more than likely create a disturbance to those around her, by constantly pulling the window shade up and down. However she worried her decision created the opportunity for someone rude and unfriendly to sit next to her three-year-old.
Mouland went on to describe an important looking man she said was carrying a briefcase. The moment the man sat down next to Kate, she immediately began rubbing the man’s jacket due to its soft texture. Instead of shifting uncomfortably in his seat, or giving Mouland a look of disapproval, which she said she would so often receive, the man instead smiled at Kate. She said her daughter then turned to the man and said, “hi, Daddy, that’s my mom.” Then she and the man began conversing about his iPad.
The mother-of-two wrote out her account of the initial conversation between the man and her daughter, and said the man continued interacting with Kate, even playing with her toys when she asked him to. She also pointed out that even though her daughter continued to refer to the man as ‘Daddy,’ he never once corrected her
At the end of the flight, Mouland said her daughter had “reached her limit” and even then the man, although unsuccessful, tried to calm her child.
Throughout the post, Mouland continually thanked the man and described how deeply moved she was by his engagement with her daughter. At the end of the blog, she called the flight a successful one, and once again thanked the man for “putting his papers away and playing turtles” with her little girl.
CLICK HERE to read the Mouland’s blog.
