How friendly are Autism Friendly Screenings?

[JJoy342]

DS2 is 5 and has a diagnosis of Autism. If DS1 who's 8 is watching a film DS2 will just play with his train set and make some noise but will get up and switch the tv off if the sound starts to bother him. DS1 will just switch it back on and lower the volume. Over the past few weeks DS2 has started paying more attention to what's on the screen and will quietly fidget if he likes what's on the screen and will play with his trains if he doesn't. We've never gone to the cinema as a family, because DS2 has never shown an interest in sitting and watching anything before and with how loud the volume is, and all the people etc it just sounded like a ready made disaster.

But then I came across Autism Friendly Screenings, the light and volume are lowered, and there's apparently a more relaxed atmosphere to noise and fidgeting.

There's a cinema near us that does it once a month. I'm thinking of sending DH and DS1 to give it a go first and see if it would be okay to then try it out as a family, but I was wondering if anyone has experienced an AF screening? and if it's really as good as it sounds ?

I think it depends on your child and what upsets them to be honest. DD is noise phobic and reacts badly to seeing repetitive movement like fidgeting so for us it would be torture

That said we have successfully attended the brilliant early bird programme at the science museum and would recommend that to anyone

DH has been taking DS1 (8) to our local Odeon's AF showings since the day they started, and they love it!

DS actually has no need for things like lowered lighting and sound, and would love to see adverts before the film. But where it's valuable for us is how relaxed it is. DH doesn't have to worry about DS making any noises or standing up occasionally.

Not that he does either of those things very often. He's much too busy troughing a giant bucket of popcorn! And tbh we'll probably start taking him to the normal showings soon as the AF showings have helped transition him so well into the cinema-going experience!

They're great. People come and go all the time without getting tutted. We got "premium" seats the last time he took DS2. Lots of room and DS2 got to look over the wall at the people entering and leaving the auditorium when his mind wandered from the film we were watching.

We had mixed findings with ours.

At first they were great but over time we found that people were taking their NT toddlers to them (we found out that some facebook pages were recommending them for non SN toddlers) which we thought wouldn't be an issue but it ended up with the parents with non SN children staring and tutting whenever a child with Autism started making any noise and stimming.

It made it quite uncomfortable in the end so we stopped going which was a shame.