I stood on the tarmac behind him.

He was wearing beige cargo pants and a top not dissimilar in colour.

His hair was gelled enough that it didn’t move despite the wind whipping a frenzy around him.

As the people in front of him shuffled forward, his fingers wrapped even more tightly around his suitcase handle.

Rather than roll it, he spun it in a 360 degree turn beside him, propelling it forward and nearly crashing his face into the backside of the passenger in front of him.

This was my four-year-old son.

And I was terrified of what he was about to do…

(13 months earlier…)

He didn’t roll his suitcase back then.

Not yet three, he was carried across the tarmac by his daddy.

I carried his baby sister, while their nine-year-old brother trailed along behind me.

Our toddler started squirming in his father’s arms, the first stirrings of protest.

He wanted to get down and head back.

Dad held him firmly.

By the time we were on the stairs up to the plane he’d started screaming.

I smiled tightly at the flight attendant’s practised grin as she took our boarding passes.

“Someone’s not excited about the plane,” she said, patting my son on the shoulder, which just made his scream louder.

Once we found our seats (row 25, I’ll never forget) my eldest passed me the bags to put up in the overhead lockers.

I fussed about getting out drink bottles and books, textas and toys, unable to bring myself to look into my husband’s panicked eyes.

Oldest sat with youngest on his knee and, with nothing left to do, I turned to our hysterical son.

His face was dark red, relentless noise and air flying out of his mouth, pointing toward the rear door through which we’d boarded.

My husband slipped into the seats across the aisle from the rest of us and plopped our son down.

He stood on the seat, fists tight, not stopping for breath.

Passengers began to shift uncomfortably.

Some tut-tutted him gently.

One thrust a bunch of keys at him.

Another blocked her ears.

“You’re going to need to get his seatbelt on soon,” a flight attendant said, smiling gently as she fluttered by.

No shit sherlock.

“We’re trying,” I managed, through gritted teeth.

My husband and I had been both trying to gently bend our son in half, hoping that once he was at least clipped in, we could turn our attention to quietening him down.

But we’d been here before.

This wasn’t a tantrum.

He wasn’t a kid that could simply be consoled.

Or distracted.

Or disciplined.

The doors of the plane were now closed.

Everyone, except our little boy, was sat.

The pressure was on.

My husband held his wrists as I tried to pull his legs out.

Each physical coercion took his volume up a notch.

He wriggled.

He writhed.

He refused.

We were officially in delay and passengers were shaking their heads or sighing loudly.

Even the ones politely pretending nothing was happening added to my anxiety.

We knew it was no good.

This kid’s distress could outlast a full season of Play School.

“I’m going to take him off,” my husband said, defeated.

I looked at him, something unspoken passing between us, then nodded.

We knew it was the only option.

And so my husband took down my son’s little Lightning McQueen suitcase and carried it and him to the door and down the stairs (which had to be driven back in by the way).

I felt shaky, vomity.

My eldest sat crying, holding his oblivious baby sister.

“You didn’t need to do that,” said a passenger, the one who’d had her ears blocked.

“He would have settled down,” threw in another.

I smiled, heavily masking my own distress, and said: “You don’t know my son.”

After that, the flight to Melbourne was uneventful.

My husband took our son to his grandparents then flew on to join us for a weekend of, well, recuperating.

(13 months later…)

Back to the tarmac with my beige-donned now four-year-old.

This trip was to Queensland and we were nervous as hell.

But my son didn’t squirm.

Or scream.

There was no protest on the tarmac.

I’d brought ear defenders in case it had been the noise last time but he absolutely refused to wear them.

Why would he?

There was no problem here.

He excitedly jumped into his seat and clipped in his seatbelt, eager to get into the sky (and on to the iPad).

It would be easy to suggest that he was just having a bad day, a toddler moment, that earlier plane trip.

Maybe he was.

But getting off a plane just before take off is one of many radical things we’ve had to do as parents to manage his distress.

We didn’t find out he was autistic for another six years.

And I didn’t even hear of PDA for another year after that.

When I did, we had to change everything.

Just as a PDAer would expect!