A Mommy Story

Everyone has that one tale about kids acting up in a restaurant, right? Often the tale is of another family, and how you couldn’t focus on eating when some little monster was walking up to your table and reaching for your food, throwing things across the restaurant, or just screeching loud enough to be heard at the Olive Garden across the street. But sometimes the stories are of our own kids, too – times when we wish we never would have gone out to eat that day.

Last fall we were invited out for Dim Sum at a local Chinese restaurant with relatives from Aaron’s family. Aaron and I both worried about how Cordy would react there, especially in light of her recent autism diagnosis. She had been so distant the previous day, and back then she really didn’t handle new experiences well, especially if they involved a lot of new sensory input. (She still doesn’t handle them well, but it’s so much better now.) We feared what might happen, but decided we couldn’t spend our lives trying to avoid the epic meltdown.

The restaurant was packed, with tables close together and no windows in the room. It had a claustrophobic feel for me, so I couldn’t imagine how it felt for Cordy. It was fairly loud, with TV screens on the walls showing Chinese TV, and lots of servers moving from table to table, pushing little dim sum carts. We were shown to an enormous round table, and Aaron and I guided Cordy to the seat against the wall, with us on either side of her to keep her corralled in.

As the food began arriving, we realized that there was nothing that Cordy could recognize. In a familiar setting, we can sometimes convince her to try new foods. In a new setting, though, it’s practically impossible. I pulled out the few snacks we had in the diaper bag, but those were soon exhausted, and Cordy got very upset that she was hungry but couldn’t find any food. Meanwhile, my father-in-law was snapping pictures at the table, and I think the flash from the camera was further provoking Cordy. Normally she could handle each influencing factor, but in a strange location and all at once, it was sending her into sensory overload.

Cordy started out restless, standing next to her seat, then back in her seat, and then letting her head drift backwards so she stared at the ceiling. She whined for milk, pulled on Aaron’s sleeve, and looked more and more out of it. (She wasn’t tired, though.) Actually, Aaron’s dad took a picture of her during this time, right before she snapped:

See how zoned out she was? Her pupils were huge, she had a vacant stare, and her mouth hung open. She was about 10 seconds away from full blown meltdown.

Eventually, she couldn’t take it any longer. She slipped under the table, rolling around underneath for a few minutes, crawled to the other side, and then threw herself into the walkway, screaming. A server was trying to push her cart through the narrow pass, but Cordy proved an unmovable roadblock, writhing and screaming and partially rolling under other people’s tables.

Heads at other tables snapped around to see what the commotion was, and some of our family tried to talk Cordy into coming back to her seat. Aaron and I jumped up, asking family members to please not help (not that we didn’t want their help, but when she’s like this, all the people crowding around her only makes her more upset). Being an old pro at dealing with this behavior, I scooped her up and carried her out to the quiet of the lobby while she fought me and tried to break free, forcing deep, primeval screams out of herself that echoed off the walls.

I’m sure people thought she was possessed as she screamed and wailed and growled for over ten minutes. Her eyes continued to have that vacant stare in them, pupils dilated and glassy, almost like a seizure. I held her tight to prevent her from seriously hurting herself by banging her head onto things or scratching or biting herself. She cried out, “I need to go home! I need a waffle! I need my jacket!” – she didn’t really want any of those things, but during meltdowns she would commonly ask for anything that popped into her head. People were staring as they walked by, and I felt the redness of embarrassment burning my face. But I held on and waited for this fit to pass, while Aaron spoke with family and explained why they shouldn’t get too close at the moment.

Finally it was over. Her eyes looked less distant, the screaming stopped, and she quietly sniffled and wiped away her tears. “Go to the car?” she asked in a feeble voice. “Yes, we can go home now,” I replied, and I carried her out of the restaurant. She quickly fell asleep in the car and slept for over two hours, worn out by the experience. I wanted to do the same.

After that dining experience, I began to wonder if we would ever go out to eat again. During her screaming fit, everyone in the restaurant was looking at us, and I could see that look of Why can’t they control their kid? in the eyes of several people. (Along with the What are they doing to that poor child? look from others.) I felt like the worst mother in the world.

However, we do still eat out, and we haven’t had a major dinner meltdown since that incident. Part of it is due to Cordy’s behavior improving after being in therapy. But we also try to plan the details of dining out now. We make sure Cordy is well-rested, we go at a time when restaurants are less busy, we bring back-up food options for her in case she doesn’t recognize any food, we bring crayons and paper so she can color while we wait for food, and we also spend a lot of time talking to her about where we’re going, what to expect, and what we expect from her. Making sure nothing surprises her goes a long way towards a better experience eating out.

And while I know we’ll probably be “that family” again someday, I hope it’ll never be that severe ever again.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a blog blast sweepstakes sponsored by Burger King Corp. You have until Sunday night to enter your post about being “that family” while eating out.