Flying can be a stressful experience. From checking your bags to go through security and finally take off and landing, it can really wear on you physically, mentally and emotionally. While many people enjoy flying, travelling and exploring new places, there are plenty of us that hate the whole experience.

For a young autistic boy, his flight was anything but smooth.

Rochel Groner was on a flight from Brussels to New York City on July 14 with her husband when she head the boy start wailing.

"He was crying and just started to shriek. It was clear to me that just from listening, [that] this was a child who didn't have a use of a vocabulary. He was trying to communicate something," the 33 year-old woman told InsideEdition.com.

After a few minutes of hearing the boy's cries on the plane, passengers started to get annoyed with the disturbance on the international flight.

"People are frustrated. People are waking up. It was a day flight, which is always a little harder," Groner said. "The phones [on the plane] just started to ring so I'm getting thoughts in my mind we're going to have an emergency landing. You can see people kind of craning their necks and trying to figure out what's going on and all I'm thinking about is this poor mom; she's probably mortified as it is."

After 15 minutes Rochel could not sit still any longer. That's when she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Continue to the next page to see what she did.

Rochel is not the type of person to make a public display.

"I'm the type of person who would let somebody step on my foot for like a half- hour before I would say something," she says.

It was about an hour and a half into the return flight home when they heard the sounds of distress coming from behind them.

"Finally, I just got out of my seat," Groner said. "I went to the aisle where he was sitting. I just put out my hand. It was surreal. I didn't know what I was doing. There are tears streaming down his face. He put out his hand. I just put him on my lap and just gave him a gentle but firm hug and started to rock him and he was quiet."

The boy who looked to be about 8 was dressed in an African tunic and pants. His mother, who wore Muslim clothing sat beside him.They did not speak English, but they were grateful to spend another hour or two with the woman.

They just sat together doodling on motion sickness bags and that's when the boy began to smile.

"I took another motion sickness bag and I put my hand down and I gave him the pen and together we traced my hand," Groner said. "He started to smile and he looked at me and took his glasses off and put them on his face. All of a sudden, we were friends."

That's when the feeling of relief washed over the cabin and the passengers. Rochel's husband Bentzion Groner snapped a few photos of the special encounter.

"It told me that everybody just wants a hug and to be listened to and if we're willing to do that, we can literally change lives... I was just in awe," he said. "One of the reasons I started snapping pictures to remember that moment."

Groner knew what to do, not from her work as an elementary school teacher, but from experience. She and her husband run Friendship Circle, which pairs teen volunteers with children who have special needs such as autism.

"I kind of felt this responsibility, like, I know what this is, but I'm not sure if anybody else knows what this is," she says. "You cannot fly for eight hours with someone crying, you just can't."

People who have autism dislike enclosed spaces. They need to be in control of what's around them, that's probably why this boy struggled on the long flight.

The boy's identity and condition are unknown.

"Everybody's been on a flight with a screaming child, and this is another way to defuse the situation," Rochel says. "Just ask: is there something I can do? Smile, don't scowl."

Sources: Inside Edition / Charlotte Observer