Oh God, the restaurants ! !! !

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I sometimes wonder if I will ever find an easy way to deal w/my 6 yr old son in restaurant settings. The shaking his head from side to side rapidly while making ghost sounds and he always is compelled to "explore" the restaurant...my meal is almost always eaten cold by the time I get to it. Also, the looks from other people like I can read there minds and their saying to themselves..... "well she has no controls over her kids" or, "she shouldn't bring her children here if she can't control them", or " what's wrong with that kid ??! !"
It can be such a stressfull event when you are the only one that knows why he's acting the way he is. What am I supposed to do ? Make an annoucement " ATTENTION EVERYONE, if you see my cchild acting abnormally, it's because he has asperger's ".
I needed to vent, thank you, and if you have similar stories and would share your advise on finding ways to deal with the situation, please share.

This is what I replied to someone else who had talked about this ame issue we all seem to dread.

I usually have one trying straighten out the mess on the table, one whining, one trying to get away and one who refuses to eat. Sometimes we take turns chasing down the little guy as he runs through the resturant. And like you I am left sitting alone at the table wondering what everyone around me is thinking. Can you imagine the convesations at the other tables......haha. I carry a stack of cards on autism and when I have people around us who either make the famous comments of, "He just needs a good spanking" or "Can't these parents control thier kid" I throw one on thier table as I leave hoping maybe the next time they will think twice before saying something stupid. This is what the cards say.

WHAT YOU ARE WITNESSING IS A CHILD WITH AUTISM
This child is not a brat,does not need discipline, and I am not a bad parent. Autism is a nuerobiological disorder that makes children behave in ways that most people don't understand.
People with autism are often confused and upset and react in ways socially inappropriate, such as tantrums. Please be patient while I teach my child how to function properly in the community.

Wow, carolgatto, that's an awesome idea to put into a card. EVERYBODY in this situation should use cards like that!

I know, sometimes I wonder why bother going to a restaurant anyway. When he's at home, he's fine, but get him in a setting with lots of noise and hustle and bustle and the asperger traits come out full force. I do feel however that a parent should expose their asperger child to these situations so that the child and the parent can learn to cope w/ the "real world".
I need some of those cards, where'd you get em.

I would love to say that I designed these cards, but no.....I got them online at the Autismlinl web site store. Here is a link to the page ( hope it works)
Autismlink Store

We tried the restaurant thing too and you know what? If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't torture him like that. It's not poor behavior, it's sensory overload, it's not know what's going to happen next, it's knowing that your parents are stressed out and acting differently.
My son didn't change until
1) he gained speech
2)he was exposed to restaurants by an "adaptive life skills" trainer. Essentially, a guy who took him to a family diner without us. He did the same with the grocery store.
I know y'all have different situations, as your kids are Aspies and not "classic autism". That's why I find it odd that older Aspies have such a hard time with restaurants. My son is 7 and has been okay with restaurants for about 2 1/2 years now. We only go to restaurants where we all agree on the food; Mexican, breakfast and fast food. No more of those family chains like Chili's, Applebee's or ethnic food. Waste of time, too loud.
Desensitizing isn't really a sound idea, it doesn't really work unless you are doing other types of sensory training to help your child cope with stimuli.

I must say, that is the coolest freakin thing EVER!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! It really is sad that we have to worry about what people think of our children because people just simply are not educated in any way on it. They instantly imagine Rainman when someone mentions autism, so to see a child acting innappropriately in a restaurant doesn't register anything except for problems in the home or lack of discipline

LOL, I've overheard so many people say so many things about my son, but it usually fizzles out quickly when he has to use the restroom and runs out screaming after going, yelling about how the toilet flushes too loudly. He kind of clears things up for them, lol, even if they don't know what is causing it.

Thanks for the cool link Autism store. Lots of neat teaching aides, etc there too. Thanks, carolgatto.

I don't know if it's an age thing or not, but my son genuinely enjoys going to the restaurants-I can tell he gets overloaded, though, by the time dinner is over he's quiet, staring at nothing while eating dessert. I'm pretty sure it's the constant thought process going while hearing the buzzing of chit chat around the entire time, WHILE trying to focus on eating. I have the same problem and I'm 26, lol. The older I've gotten, the less likely I am to want to go back-it's gotten a lot rougher over time, can't really explain that. Maybe I'm just getting too old to deal with it in my own way, lol.

I'm not sure about the majority of situations, but this is what I've observed in mine as to why my son has such a hard time, and it's getting worse.

We go from time to time just to get him out of the house more-he likes to play with kids and such, but doesn't understand how, and the longer he stays inside, the more frustrated he gets when he does go out. For instance, if we wait longer than 2 weeks to go back to the grocery store, he goes crazy once we get there, lol. It's too much excitement to be going somewhere, it's too much to be looking at all at once, too many people walking around-bumping into us, etc.

So we try to go out and eat once a week just for a change of scenery. He enjoys going-I'm sure he doesn't enjoy all of it, just as I don't, but it is nice to get out once in a while. We try to get him out so he doesn't wind up a hermit like me, lol.

Ugh, my thoughts are all goofy this morning-did that make any sense?

I have a mix of them,lol. My oldest is dx'd aspie, but the other two are HFA an ASD so we get alot of different reactions to a resturant . My aspie cannot stand the mess that the table becomes as you wait for them to clear away salad plates or appetizer plates in between course, he also cannot tolerate the different sounds and smells very well, and the fact that he is in a room full of people that he doesn't know just makes him want to run. The other two are like in overload central....too many lights, sounds, smells, people.....too much to look at without touching. Then there is the whole keep your volume down thing, niether of them can and then when someone looks at them they get freaked out. They also have extreme difficulty with making a decision on what to eat. These two usually end up in meltdown mode if we are too long and do most of their eating in the car on the way home. I admit we do not do the restaraunt thing too much because we feel it isn't very nice for them.

The grocery store presents similar reactions in them all as well, except is usaully worse for my little guy because people want to touch him and say how cute he is. I have to play blocker through the aisles,lol. He must be kept in the cart where I can hug him close when it all gets too much, if he is down he will try and run away.

I want one of those adaptive life skill strainers, that sounds wonderful. How long did it take to show that it was working? At what age did they start doing this ? Did this person come from a private therapy place or from a state service?

Disclaimer: I'm having a hard time with my connection or maybe it's the server here. I keep having to exit the window and start over.


Adaptive life skills: This is kind of dumb story. In California, there are "regional centers" that dispense state-funded, state-sponsored services for people with developmental disability. They help get your kid diagnosed, assess his needs and then try to provide services for those needs. One of the things we "needed" was life skills training for him. This was a roundabout way of asking for help with his tantrums, social skills and potty training. But they didn't have any expertise in any of those areas, they were used to "he'll get taken out of the house and thrown in juvey/group home/foster family" emergency situations. They considered Pop really "high functioning" for their level of care. But wanting to collect money, they provided these glorified babysitters and called them life skills trainers, to watch him while we went out. The first guy would bring his laptop and play games with my son, then took him to a restaurant once and the grocery store once.
It was just the act of going to a restaurant with an unrelated person that adjusted Pop's perception of being there. I had seen it before when we went to this place with my parents*, he was an "angel". We probably had developed a negative habit as a family and my son felt that he was expected to put on the same show every time.


*my parents are really like strangers to my son, hence the reaction to eating with them.

hmmm... I don't know if it has to do with habits of the family. My son has a pattern. When he goes somewhere with people he's not around all the time, he's absolutely perfect Same when he starts at any new place (going from preschool to kindergarten). Once he's around someone for a really long time and gets used to them and their routine, he gets comfortable, he starts acting "normal"-the way I see him all the time. My mom probably will never see the "true" Zack as she lives 2 hours away from me

My son does the same thing, and autism "experts" act shocked every time. I don't mean that your family is actively doing anything wrong, just that y'all have become used to each other's voices and expectations. You go into a restaurant and you perform the same way each time.

Oh, another thing that happens at the restaurant is once he's done eating all the while taking detours from his plate to check out other areas of the restaurant, he will begin trying to lay down in my lap like I'm a comfy couch, close his eyes and pretend snore....that's happened more than one ocassion. It's even more obvious to me know that I'm writting this that these are all sensory overload reactions. It would be nice though if there was some way to help him through this.
By the way, he does great grocery shopping with me. No problems....perhaps because it's a familiar place.

When I saw this thread I was happy to see our family is not alone!
Not happy that all of us have had to go through this, but my son has THE hardest time at restauraunts-we rarely go.

The servers at the resturaunts take such a beating from my son. He sreams at them when they bring ketchup to the table, when they ask him if he wants milk (he has dairy allergy), if they do not have honey for his chicken.
Sheer meltdowns.

He also "hums" very loudly as he eats.
Has for as long as I can remember.

carolgatto-Thanks for those cards..I need then not for the on lookers but the severs. They are perfect!

Lots of interesting stuff here. I do wonder if we fall into the routine and I believe we do sometimes, but not always. We have been working on alot of public behavior stuff with all of them lately so I think we are doing some things differently now, but not really any big changes. HMMM, are we really doing so much different or are we still in the same mind set.......I honestly don't know? This is hard......not fair,lol.

I have been using the cards with the servers as sort of a primer to questions I ask them so I can figure out behavior. After they read the card I ask them to kind of honestly rate how my kids were compared to others they have served ( of course when the kids are already out the door) and this helps me understand what is my perception and what it is really like. Maybe this is the key to breaking that mindset and getting out of the routine. I mean sometimes I feel like OMG they were awful and then the server tells me they were not too bad and then I can take a step back and think, "ok, they did alright, it's me who is having the problem today,lol."