Ordering in a restaurant

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I am curious if any other parents experience this. We go out to eat maybe once a week or so. My 12yo Aspie thinks it's "spooky" to talk to people other than his family and his teachers (if they first ask him a question- he won't initiate with teachers either). He will happily talk his family's ears off

For the past, oh, his whole life, we have been scaffold him to order for himself. Initially, someone would order for him. Then we had it so he *had* to order at least one thing himself. He often did this by pointing to the menu. Then it was order verbally at least one thing, point to others if he wanted. He speaks in a tiny whisper. I'm sure the wait staff hates it, but I'm also sure this isn't the only time they encounter difficulty getting an order. This is a boy who is actually a really good public speaker (if he is speaking on something he knows), and is very high functioning and verbal.

Recently, he actually got up and ran to stand behind me when a waiter asked what he wanted, because the waiter was standing right next to him. That was way beyond his comfort level. He does better when the waiter is standing much further away.

Does anyone else have issues with ordering in a restaurant? And what have you done? I feel strongly that we shouldn't be ordering for him, and he knows what he wants to eat usually (same thing each time)- it's just a matter of him saying it loud enough for the waiter to hear. He speaks loudly and clearly when asked a question in school. The only thing he will say about ordering is that it's "spooky" to talk to strangers.

Yeah, we have issues with this as well. We have been working on it for awhile. He continues to look down at his menu, and he would try to just point to things. Then we got him to vocalize, and he would look down at his menu and say it really quietly. Now he continues to look down at his menu but will be brusque and talk really quickly, but with an audible volume.

At some point I will probably make him a social story on it. It is in my queue of things to do. Currently I prompt him at the time and we talk about improvements later. He will occasionally mock eye-contact but only if I tell him to look at the server at the time of the restaurant visit.

Work in progress

there's a specific kind of social anxiety that is somewhat more common (though still relatively rare) in ASD called selective mutism. This could be a less severe example of that.

Whatever you want to call it, it seems like he's afraid to order at restaurants. A good treatment for most anxiety issues is called graduated exposure and response prevention. If you want him to get over it, you need to get him to practice doing it until it's no longer scary. The response prevention part is also important- sometimes with social anxiety, people engage in "safety behaviors" aimed at making them feel safer in an anxious situation - in this case, your child whispering or pointing is "safer" than speaking in a full voice. So part of an effective exposure is getting him to speak normally and then experiencing the fact that nothing bad happens.

All that is easier said than done, which is where that term, "graduated" comes into play - you try to develop a hierarchy of anxiety provoking situations, and rate things from 0 - 100 in terms of amount of anxiety they produce. Then you work your way slowly up the scale. Starting with the easy stuff (ordering at a familiar restaurant with a familiar waiter using a whisper), then work slowly up to harder stuff (ordering at a new restaurant with a new waiter using a full voice). As you work through the easy stuff, the harder stuff gets easier, so it should never feel overwhelming or impossible to him.

Consider all the possible dimmensions that would make something easier or harder so that you can modify difficulty accordingly. For example, do men or women bother him more? Any other waiter characteristics matter? Do any restaurant characteristics matter? Is it easier or harder if he's hungry, tired, excited, etc?

Once you have a good sense of those, you can make yourself a curriculum to practice with. Ideally moving from one exposure to the next, they should be challenging for him, but not traumatizing. You want him to cope with his anxiety, see that nothing bad happens and then have a neutral or positive experience, so that he learns there's nothing to be scared of. Ideally, you can practice a thing enough so that the concept of doing it changes from frightening to boring. You don't want to do something so hard that he melts down and never talks to the waiter, which just confirms the erroneous belief - "I'm safe because I don't talk to waiters."

You can also add in rewards there to get him motivated to work through this stuff, anything that he loves and is willing to work for is a good choice.

So once again that's graduated (slowly working up) exposure (doing things that are scary) and response prevention (avoiding safety behaviors). Hope that helps!

Emile brings up a good point about it possibly being a phobia. That did not occur to me, but that is a possible explanation. In our case it is that my son by default tunes out strangers and he has to acclimate to people to properly tune them in. It is hard work for him, and so he tries not to do it b/c it is exhausting on a certain level.

NT people intrinsically tune out irrelevant stimuli like white noise and visual stimuli that is not part of a central focus. With NT people, they tend to focus on people as part of the central action. Autistic people may focus on other things that are more interesting or treat all data as equally useful. In my son's case any stimuli coming from an unknown person is intrinsically less interesting and relevant to to him than almost anything else.

It took him awhile to even tune into stimuli coming from me, and I am a SAHM and was around him all the time. Then slightly later he acclimated to stimuli coming from his dad. When he went to school, he learned that stimuli from teachers and to a lesser extent other children was important to pay attention to.

I have directed him to interact with wait staff and cashiers for a couple of years or so. (I have him buy little things) in order to get acclimated to other people whose stimuli he needs to tune into. We are at the point where he knows he has to pay attention to when we are first in line at a cashier or when the server comes to take his order. This is not an easy thing for him, and he wants to rush it. In his case I don't think there is actual anxiety. It is more like that he finds it difficult and uncomfortable to do, and tries to rush through it. I suppose there is a fine line between discomfort and fear, but I think we are on the discomfort side of that line.

Anyway, the point of my meandering ramble is that you should try to figure out what side of that line "spooky" is. Scaffolded practice will help, I think, in either case, but the reassurances and prompting would probably need to be different, if that makes sense.

Edited for literacy

^I agree, either you are building a skill-set through practice or you're overcoming anxiety through exposure. Both will involve doing more or less the same things.

I experienced the same issue as a child. For me, I found the idea of someone "serving" me very embarrassing and confusing. They were adults, but they were supposed to do what I wanted, and that made me feel very uncomfortable and sad for them.
I did not start ordering food for myself or talking to businesses on the phone until I was well into my twenties. I still don't order from drive-throughs.

Not with my kids, but my husband has that problem. He has an anxiety disorder, especially social...not diagnosed with AS but has some AS traits (I wouldn't go so far as to say he definitely has it- I think he's borderline closer to not). He finds ordering at restaurants and talking on the phone extremely difficult to do, but can't explain why. I think it's partly due to the noise level in the restaurant- if it's very loud, he is anxious about them not hearing him and asking him to repeat it, and that anxiety causes him to speak more quietly...creating a feedback loop, unfortunately. Some days he is too anxious to talk coherently on the phone to me , and I'm usually his "completely safe person" (person he can talk to without feeling anxious at all). I guess I'm just offering understanding but no advice...sorry.

I used to be so nervous ordering in a restaurant. I am not sure why I was so nervous. All I had to do was tell them what I wanted. I was just shy and my mom used to make me order my own food and she would help me with it. It was also hard to speak louder as I ordered because that was how shy I was. But I got over it when I kept on doing it and I am glad I was given a push.

Thanks for all the great feedback. One thing that's interesting is that I never think of this as a possible anxiety-provoking experience, and I never really think of him as an anxious kid, but some of the professionals he's worked with see some anxiety. Some great suggestions and food for thoughts- thank you!

I never went to a full-service sit-down restaurant until I was 10 or 11, although I've been to places like fast food, diners with counter service, and ice cream shops when I was little. On those occasions, I'd tell my parents or grandparents what I wanted, and they'd place the order for me. My first time eating at a sit-down restaurant was so unpleasant, that my whole family agreed to never talk about that evening again. (Reasons being my messiness at the table, and my parents not wanting to order a second soda for me when I finished the first one too quickly.) We didn't dine out together again for two years. It's probably for the best; I was so shy at that time, that talking to anyone other than my family or my teachers was very difficult. By the time family dinners in restaurants became more frequent (toward my high school years), my shyness subsided enough to make talking to the waitstaff an OK thing.

YippySkippy's comment is interesting. It also felt odd for me to be telling an adult what I wanted, although I somehow learned to compartmentalize. More often than not, I just pointed to the menu, and said "this, please", like an immigrant or tourist who doesn't speak English. The waitstaff probably assumed just that, and took it in stride. Come to think of it, it's not too different from the PECS method---it means Picture Exchange Communication System---that autistic children use. Unfortunately, I was still too shy to speak to the servers directly, outside the scripted "this, please" initial food order, so I had to rely on the kindness of my family to relay special requests for me.

But I digress. I don't know what to suggest, to be honest. I have very little experience eating in restaurants as a child. (Baskin Robbins or McDonald's don't count.) Perhaps you can script out situations, or adopt a PECS-style method, like I did without realizing it. Or maybe you can rehearse it at home; for a more convincing scenario, have a family friend or a neighbor, rather than yourself, play the waiter.

I'm 23 and I still have this problem. When talking to strangers my voice naturally drops a few decibels and they typically have no idea what I'm saying. Leaves me feeling ashamed, to the extent that I wish I hadn't gone.

We've had this trouble and haven't totally solved it yet, but things are a LOT better. I think part of it is that it is actually a very complex social interaction that has many steps, and my son sometimes stumbles on these steps, which contribute to his anxiety and "small voice."

We've ordered for him when he's asked us to, and prepped him to order for himself - which he does now if prepared; and I'm realizing we did it much as was described here, except I would pre-script what he was supposed to say and prompt him when he was supposed to say it (you know, a teach-prompt-fade kind of thing.)

For instance, the waiter goes around the table and typically solicits your order with eye contact - so figuring out when it was his turn was difficult for DS. (sometimes they gesture with the pen or pencil if your child can't make eye contact.) Then, you have to wait until the waiter says something like "and what will you be having" or some other phrase that indicates he's done writing the previous order and is ready for the next one. You also have to be aware of what system the waiter is using to take orders around the table: are they going in a circle? Are they taking kid's orders first, or adults first? Lots of nonverbal cues that the rest of us take for granted. Then, when you say your order, you have to do it the right way: Say what you want, but space each item out in case there is a series of choices, which the waiter will prompt you for by leaning in slightly, making eye contact, or gesturing with a pen (e.g. salad dressing, sides, etc.) then you have to listen to the verbal choices and pick one on the fly without time to consider it. You have to remember to order your drink, which is separate from your meal, and probably also requires you to choose from a verbal list. Then, after it's all done, the waiter will move their eye contact to the next person and you have to know when you're finished and to say "thank you."

It's really quite complicated, and almost all of it depends on nonverbal communication - no wonder it's anxiety-provoking.

momsparky - I like that you added all those extra supports in there. You could continue to fade those by turning it into a social story, or some sort of visual reminder of the different steps (which you've mapped out well). You could even make a worksheet so he writes down what he wants before-hand and doesn't have to worry about remembering it.

I've sat in at restaurants during school trips for a life skills class, and the waiters are typically very accommodating if you give them some notice and go when the restaurant is not crowded. They'll even do things like separate checks for every person at the table (which is nice if you want to practice that part of the restaurant script). Whatever your goals are, it may be worth it to mention it to the waiter ahead of time, and tell him/her that your kid is anxious about ordering, so if s/he wouldn't mind taking it slow, that would be very helpful. Then tip accordingly.

Good point about all the steps involved and how many rely on understanding unspoken/nonverbal "rules" and cues.

I was talking with my son last night to try to get a better handle on how anxiety provoking this was on the scale (for example, not as much as asking how much something costs in a store, but more than asking the teacher a question, etc) and also got to the idea (with prompting) that it's spooky in part because the waiter might not understand what he wants and ask him additional questions.

This thread is really helpful to me, thanks!

LOL, reminds me of a recent dinner conversation with DS:

"Please don't ask me questions about how my day went."
"Why not?"
"Because when I answer then you ask more questions and I have to answer those and explain, and then more questions, and you never understand me the first time!"