Autistic boy receives 20,000 birthday cards after mum's plea goes viral

After taking to Facebook to ask strangers to send her teenage son birthday cards, Karen and Ollie are totally in awe of the world's response!

Karen Jones posted to Facebook explaining that her 14-year-old son Ollie, who has autism, loves opening cards, and as his 15th birthday approached he was looking forward to it more than ever. However, as they are a small family and he only has a few friends, she found her son had been writing his own birthday cards - just so he had a few more to open.

Now, a week later, Karen phoned in to This Morning for an interview, where she revealed that Ollie has received an estimated 20,000 birthday cards from people all around the world! To put it into perspective: the Queen gets about 17,000 cards a year for her birthday. Amazing!

In her interview, Karen updated everyone on how Ollie's birthday went.

'He absolutely loved it. He didn't like the film cameras but apart from that, he loved it.

'We went to a friend's, we sat in their hot tub, and he had a selfie-stick saying 'I'm famous! I'm famous!'

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She also revealed that Ollie has had enough of birthday cards for now, saying 'No cards next year, Mum!'

One person from Saudi Arabia sent an Xbox, and someone has even offered the family a holiday.

Ruth and Eamonn then gathered their set audience to sign a card for Ollie.

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Last Wednesday, Karen posted to Facebook hoping to get Ollie a few more birthday cards. In the post she said: 'HELP?? My autistic son is 15 shortly ... hes just told me he loves opening cards to extent he's made himself a couple. We are small family and he has no friends so gets very few.... if you have an old one at back of cupboard maybe you could send it to him?? 53 Rosebery road exmouth ex8 1sq... need be here for Saturday - thank you'

After Ollie showed her the cards he had made for himself, she said she was moved to tears.

Speaking to the Exmouth Express and Echo, she said: 'We are a small family – it's just us two and the dog. Ollie has no friends to the extent where he turned up yesterday morning and showed me he had made some birthday cards for himself.'

It just brought tears to my eyes, I thought 'oh my god', it was a lump in the throat moment'.

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But her plea went viral after she posted it, receiving over 24,000 shares, with people from all over the UK commenting to say his card has been posted.

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Such a lovely story!