Restaurants

Eating at restaurants with young children is challenging.

Eating at restaurants with young children and autism thrown into the mix is even more challenging.

I'm not even talking about five star restaurants with eight courses and cloth napkins. I'm talking fast food places with play areas, sit down places where you wait for your food with a number on the table, and occaisionally the restaurants where you're waited on. 

Ever since Caleb was very young, it was always a struggle to eat out. Just like typical families, we've had to entertain him as a toddler with crayons, his favorite toy, singing, you name it. But it was always more than just entertaining him, it was managing his behaviors so he wouldn't have a meltdown in public.

For a while we stuck with the same few places to eat, where we knew he'd do well, and then we'd branch out and hope for the best. As a general rule of thumb when it comes to being an autism parent, if you find something that works, you stick with it! Yet in the same breath, that luck you had with that one thing can be gone as quickly as it came.

I won't list every restaurant that does/n't work for us, but here are a few of our experiences.

A while ago we'd go regularly to Chick-fil-A. He really loved the food, the people were very kind, the atmosphere of the dining room was nice. But somehow he almost always leaves crying. The playplace is inside, enclosed, and pretty sound proof, which means all the sound is inside, bombarding his senses. There's one set of steps to climb, one slide, and no place for him to escape. He wants to be in there, he wants to play, but it's all just too overwhelming, and like I said, he leaves crying, and so while we love it, Chick-fil-A is on our only-if-they-request-it list. 

I must say we've had pretty good luck at Island's. It took a while for him to understand the social part of a sit-down restaurant; a stranger will great us when we walk in, will lead us to a table, then we sit and another stranger {usually with a more assertive voice} will talk to us and see us a few more times before they bring us our food. "She doesn't want to say hi to me!! She doesn't want to be right back!!" were frequent phrases from Caleb's mouth when he was working through understanding all of this. Somehow Island's always works for him. Could it be the amazing fries and ranch? His delicious Cool Breeze smoothie? The flat screens playing videos of surfers catching waves? Whatever the reason, he does well there so we're sticking to it {although he's recently turned down suggestions of going there for no apparent reason}.

Let's talk about one place that doesn't work. Ever. BJ's Pizza. Never works. We keep trying it and we have the same result. Crazytown. We hardly allow the iPad on restaurant adventures, but we use it every time at BJ's. It's dark, the ceilings are high, the sound echos. We're almost always sat at a round booth, so Caleb jumps around, lays down, puts his feet in the air, kicks the table. I'm pretty sure he's uncomfortable and doesn't like having to look directly at his little sister. And I don't think he's too fonde of the food. Bummer.

When TJ was in Afghanistan I established a couple of places on my own. Rubio's is a favorite. We always order the same thing and must sit outside on the patio; it gives them room to roam. In N Out has always been a favorite. Always. You can find us there every Sunday, after church, outside at the same table. Don't even suggest eating inside. Don't even. It all comes back to when he was little; the outside edges of In N Out are brick, which reminded Caleb of an episode of Olivia where she pushes on a brick wall to find a secret passage. So to this day, he wants to eat outside to "look for a secret passage." And furthermore, don't even suggest eating anywhere besides In N Out after church. Don't even.

Caleb and I had a date recently at Mimi's Cafe which apparently "looks like the hotel" {he's referring to the Grand Californian; dark wood, windows, bricks}. It was his first time there and he did great. He followed the curve of the booth with his hand and the corner of his eye, and he studied the paintings of Parisian street corners, naming them Ellis and Brookhurst. I told Caleb that I wanted him to tell the waiter our dessert order, and when the server "Mr. Miguel" came to take it, he said, "Mr. Miguel, I want some dessert." And in his thick Spanish accent, Miguel asked "Okay, what you want?" Caleb replied without prompt, "Um uh a brownie Sunday." Success, my friends.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

If you're dining out and you suspect an autism family it too, give them a freaking pat on the back, they deserve it.