When Sonja Redding got on the Delta Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., she warned the flight attendant that her little boy, five-year-old Xayvior Johnson, can be a little aggressive. The little boy has autism and has even been known to gouge eyeballs. For some reason, he was fine on the trip to Washington, D.C., but on the flight home to Omaha, Nebraska, he started having a meltdown, according to his mom. It didn’t take long for the flight attendant, Amanda Amburgy, to jump into action. The young woman got up from her jump seat and asked if she could hold Xayvior. In short order, she had scooped him up like it was no biggie.
She was carrying the little boy down the plane aisle like it was just an everyday thing. “This hero gave us a bit of sanity back in a chaotic moment,” Redding wrote in a Facebook post. “When they came back, Xayvior was much more calm and he just loved on his new friend so happily!” At that time, the mom didn’t even know the young flight attendant’s name, but she took photos and posted them to Facebook as she expressed her gratitude. As it turns out, Amanda has encountered children with special needs before in her work, and she has a few options. Sometimes a child can be calmed with TV or music, but for this sweet little boy, it took some extra effort.
Amanda said that when Xayvior was unmoved by her offers of earbuds and things like that, she asked him if he would like a tour of the plane and he agreed. As it turns out, the family had been in D.C. visiting the National Institutes of Health to participate in a study to help them learn more about treatments, current research, and potential cures for a rare genetic disorder than both Xayvior and his older sister have. His sister is eight years old.
The children have Methylmalonic acidemia, MMA for short. It’s a genetic disease that can be life-threatening. People who suffer from this have trouble breaking down some amino acids and fatty acids from the food they eat. Redding said that she felt that everyone on the plane seemed to be looking at her annoyed by the little boy’s behavior, or at least that’s how it felt to her. She added that it’s not an issue of a child having no discipline and people don’t always realize that. Watch the video below for Amanda’s reaction.