Autistic boy’s mum pens open letter to footy spectator for ‘looks of disgust’
A Perth mother of an autistic boy has written an emotional open letter to a spectator who ruined the family’s outing to the footy.
Avid West Coast Eagles fan Liz Jay Bee took her four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son to Friday’s clash against Richmond as a birthday treat to herself because she “wanted some family time”.
“To the lady and her daughter sitting in seats 9 and 10 in section 142,” Ms Bee began.
The mother explained her daughter was an avid Eagles fan but her son “doesn’t ‘get’ football” so he brought along his iPad.
“He likes the outdoor and the fresh air,” she wrote, and said she didn’t want him to feel left out of a family outing after being sick and cooped up at home the previous week.
She wrote that her son had accidentally spilled “a bit” of lemonade on a woman sitting next to him, which made the spectator cause a scene.
Ms Bee said her son was wet, while the other woman had “a bit of lemonade” on her jumper.
“I apologised profusely, saying ‘I’m so sorry, he’s still learning to drink out of a bottle with a straw’ and all you could do was mumble (under your breath but I still heard it) ‘f**k sake, f**king hell’,” she wrote.
The agitated spectator exchanged seats with her daughter, so she could move away from the boy, who Ms Bee said has “sensory issues” and was frequently rolling his sleeves up and down due to the sticky lemonade.
“He grazed your daughter a couple of times, and she jumped" with “looks of disgust" on her face.
“She looked as though she didn’t want to touch him in case she ‘caught what my little boy has’,” Ms Bee wrote.
The mother said the woman made her feel so embarrassed for her special needs boy that she took the kids home at three-quarter time and she and her daughter missed watching their “beloved” Eagles win the game.
“I was so embarrassed by the behavior of you and your daughter and I felt so ashamed for wanting to take my son out anywhere that I figured we’d just leave,” she wrote.
The mother said she initially wrote the letter as part of her personal blog, usually read by about 20 friends.
But the post soon went viral, achieving more than 20,000 views in the first 24 hours and making news headlines.
Ms Bee said the public response was mostly supportive, but she received some comments questioning why she took her autistic son to the footy.
The mother replied saying she paid for her tickets just like everyone else, and thanked the stranger sitting on the other side, who helped entertain her daughter while she tended to her son after his lemonade spill.
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