What would you do and how would you expect others to react?

[Freckle]

Have come over to the special needs board for a bit of clarification. I don't have any SN children (and I have tried to include SN in my talk board, but it won't let me).

I went out for the day last week with my 3 boys and my sister and her son. At lunchtime we went to a Pizza Hut for lunch. Whilst standing in the queue waiting to be seated, another couple entered behind us with their son (possibly aged 10/11). The boy was very noisy and it soon became clear to me that he was probably quite severely autistic (in as far as I know what that is). His father struggled to control him physically - he'd elbowed me and cannoned into me about 4 times. The mother apologised but I said it didn't matter.

They were seated quite quickly as it probably seemed the best thing to do because the child clearly was struggling with queueing. Throughout all this he was screaming and trying to get away from his dad. He continued screaming once they were seated.

As it turned out, we had to leave because they couldn't accommodate a party of 6 (it was quite busy), but my sister said that at least 3 other parties followed us out, complaining at the behaviour of the child.

My query is, if you have a child behaving like this (and I appreciate that he cannot help it), would you have carried on trying to have your meal out? The mother looked very distressed and the father was desperately trying to physically control the boy. Also, how would you have expected (or liked perhaps) other people to have reacted?

If they had been able to accommodate us, I would have stayed and had our meal (although my sister said that she wouldn't have done so), but clearly others were not prepared to do that.

I can understand the family wanting to have a normal day out, but I'm not sure any of them was enjoying the experience and it was probably made worse by other people leaving the restaurant because of their son's actions.

Hi Freckle,

Yes i would have done the same as them and stayed and had our meal, My DD sounds very much like the boy that you discribed however she is just 5 and is very small for her age so the only looks we really get are the same that you get when any toddler has a tantrum. We get these meltdowns everytime we have to queue for something its like metal torchure for my DD.

As for other people reactions personally i prefer it if people just carry on with their own thing tbh.

I do appriciate that for familys with NT kids the effort that these outing take may seem like its just not worth it, but for us its not always like this and if we didnt make the effort we would just end up house bound.

I don't understand why it would bother people enough to leave. You don't exactly go to Pizza Hut for a romantic intimate meal do you?

Our DS behaves like this. It's become so bad that most of the time we don't bother with trying to eat out. or even go out. But sometimes we feel brave and try it.

Other people's reactions are the worse part of the whole experience. After all, we are quite used to DS throwing food and punching us in the face.

My wish would be that people just ignore the bad stuff DS is doing, value their NT children and think "there but for the grace of God..". But of course most of them glare and judge. It makes me feel worthless and useless as a mother and incredibly depressed. DH too. But worse still for DD (age 8) who gets very cross at people's reactions and always says "WHY can't they be understanding?". The main reason we try to go out "like a normal family" is for her.

DS (who may be autistic, going to be assessed) used to be an absolute nightmare to take anywhere. He would lie in the street, make a huge fuss in shops and restaurants (still does sometimes), but on the whole he is much better at coping now because (I believe) we persisted in taking him to these places.

I don't think anyone went there for a romantic meal. After all, they were mainly families. The noise the boy was making was all-consuming though - non-stop screaming which would have made conversation anywhere else in the restaurant almost impossible. I felt very sorry for the parents, although I suspect sympathy was not what they would have wanted.

I can understand the other families too, though. If you have possibly a rare day out with your children, you want to be able to have a nice conversation, which was really impossible. Although I would have stayed and tried to continue as we had planned, a few years ago I probably wouldn't have. It's only since reading about your experiences with SN children that I have come to appreciate what you deal with and how you would like others to behave. Most of the families in that restaurant probably have no idea and I suspect thought the boy was just terribly badly behaved.

Also, my children were asking what was wrong with him (they at least didn't just assume it was bad behaviour) and I tried to explain that he was autistic and then realised that I don't actually know how to explain that.

Fio, I hope you don't think that I have suggested anything else. I was impressed that they persisted in going for their meal out. I would probably have given up and gone home, but then I'm a wimp.

S'OK.

Anyone know how I can get SN threads to show in my active conversations? I haven't excluded it in my list of ignored topics but it just doesn't show up.

This kind of illustrates something that I feel needs to be addressed ASAP in our society.

Not entirely sure how to put it tho.

Why do we all not know more about SN ? Why don't we all know how to respond to a situation like this ? Why do we even have to think about how to respond ? With so many SN and so many children and adults with SN, why do we not all know about eachother and how others live.

I am rambling...

I agree with Theodoresmummy that if you can face it you have to persist. The only way any child NT or SN, is going to learn how to behave in public is by going out and practicing it. My NT child can be just as much of a pain in his own way from time to time but I wouldn't keep him indoors and I wouldn't expect any SN child to kept indoors either.

I like to think I would have stayed too and would probably have felt, there but for the grace of God, but I really don't know how I would have felt before DS1 was diagnosed with AS. Having said that, you don't go to Pizza Hut for a quiet intimate meal so you can't complain too much if a child is noisy. Par for the course in there.

The irony is that the child probably would have coped better with a smaller, quieter and less stimulating restaurant with no queuing although any unusal behaviour would have been amplified for the other diners.

I admire the child's parents for trying.

Message withdrawn

Actually the irony for me was that we did go to another restaurant, frequented by office-type bods and my sister and I spent most of our time trying to keep our boys quiet! Well, relatively quiet. I thought the food would keep them quiet but it was a Mexican restaurant and some of the food was hotter than they'd bargained for .

TheosMummmy, the answer to your questions is that the habits of the past, when disabled people were ALL hidden away in institutions, (and slightly further back, when many were killed at birth) produced generation upon generation of people who didn't want to see them, couldn't deal with looking upon "that which was not normal" and so brought their children up to think this way. Even if they were not indoctrinated with this mindset, that still didn't actually get to see any disabled people s never got used to doing so. Disabled people, particularly those with learning disabilities, were largely invisible.

Many middle aged to older people still don't want to see them at least those who are lucky enough to never have been touched by disability in their own family and so their children (people maybe our age) think the same.

It will take a long time and many battles for inclusive ways of thinking to permeate society as a whole. It's in its infancy really.

I very rarely go out for a meal with ds1. Last time we went to McD's Ds1 behaved exactly as you've described. Screamed, headbutted windows, crawled on the floor (he's 8 although he was probably 7 then- the problem was that we had to wait for our chips- waiting is a skill we are working on) yes we did stay and have our meal. A) he has to learn B) he has siblings who wanted to go there and C) I figure that other people have to put up with it for 5 minutes and if they can't manage that then I can't be arsed to worry about it.

I tell people to stop staring now as well.If I can cordinate talking to someone at the same time as dealing with ds1. Which I can't always.

So if children growing up today are to learn about disabilities and their effect, how do we teach them? I'm not aware of any disabled children in my children's schools - at least not anything visible or even noticeable to other children (slight learning difficulties only). So, if they don't come into contact with children with SN other than in situations such as I described in the restaurant, how do we get them to understand? How do we explain?

Yurt, yes you're right about the 5 minutes thing. Sometimes I want to stand and yell at the top of my voice "STOP FCKING GLARING! YOU ARE BEING EXPECTED TO PUT UP WITH THIS BEHAVIOUR FOR MAYBE HALF AN HOUR.... WE HAVE TO PUT UP WITH IT DAILY... FOR* LIFE! SO PISS THE HELL OFF AND THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS!"

(not that I'm irrational or anything!)

I don't know what ages your boys are, Freckle, mine are 8, 6 and 3 and two of them have SN dx's (DS1's very mild, DS3's more severe). There are several children with disabilities at their school.

I think you just have to explain it in the same way as you explain anything else in this life - bit by bit, in increments, in accordance with the child's understanding and experience.

And I'm very shocked about people leaving the restaurant.

ALL schools are required by law to adhere to the Inclusion Policy Freckle. Which means that if a severely disabled child's parents applied for him or her to attend your children's school, then that school is obliged to produce the appropriate facilities, staff and environment to make that possible. Of course that doesn't happen because inclusion, as I said, is still in it's infancy and schools just aren't geared up for it.. and few parents would insist on sending their disabled child to a school that was blatantly unsuitable anyway; they back down and look elsewhere.

But unless there are some changes in the law (perhaps taking us backwards re inclusion although that is up for serious debate as we speak), schools will be becoming more inclusive and more disabled children will be incorporated into mainstream. It's happening all the time; it has to; they are closing so many special schools down.

Tbh I think that some people just seem to have an inability to distinguish between bad behaviour by an nt child, and behaviour that is brought on because of a child?s sn. It?s as if they are unable to make the distinction. In fact I would even go so far as to say that there are people that think that autism/ADHD are just a label to excuse children?s bad behaviour. I know my mil certainly holds that view .

I think that in most instances, people are uninformed/aware of disability because they don?t have to be. If you?ve never had any dealings with disability then it?s probably easy to have a nimby attitude towards it, an ?oh so sad for that child/the parents, but why do they feel the need to eat in the restaurant where I?m trying to have a quiet meal with my children? attitude.

And because of those attitudes, the parents of severely disabled children who exhibit challenging behaviours feel increasingly isolated and so continue to stay away from public places resulting in the public never being educated/learning to be more tolerant.

I certainly would have stayed

We cleared a cafe in town last month within 15 minutes of sitting down, with DD and DS (SN) at the table. It was packed when we went it; ours was the only spare table. 20 minutes later we were the only people in there. They couldn't have all been leaving in those 20 mins.

DS was screaming/roaring/growling/hitting out because he doesn't understand about waiting while the food cooks and was melting down with each plate that was brought out which wasn't his.

It's sad because we used to go there all the time. The staff are still very nice to us. Shame about the customers.

In Great Yarmouth we went in a lovely fish and chip restaurant in the summer; the staff clocked our needs within 2 minutes and brought DS some chips to keep him happy until all our meals were done! Such a small thing but I could have cried with gratitude.