Some Autistic children have a tendency to take off. The clinical term is elopement, but they often sneak out of even an attentive parent’s control. I have a daughter with autism and when she was 5 she figured out how to scale the fence in the back yard. It was 6 feet tall. She also doesn’t have an adequate fear of hazards. It is all mitigated with alarms on doors, locked gates, etc. Some parents put trackers on their kids.
Okay I see, but four year olds and other young children that are not autistic also wander away from parents, and I don’t mean just inattentive parents, they have been doing it forever, I still don’t see what it added to the story, sympathy for the child?, for the parents? How much would it have affected the story to leave autism out? I think the message to parents would not have change, be aware because your child may go adventuring it’s what children do, humans of all ages are enthralled by curiosity.