Entertainment

So while I was at my bonspiel on Saturday, the wife took the Monster to go see a movie.

We’ve actually never taken the Monster to the cinema before (as far as I can remember) and this was a regular showing of a film, rather than a sensory-friendly one.  (The wife won preview passes for The Croods.)

She mentioned that he obviously didn’t sit through the whole thing and was very wriggly and whatnot, but I think that was to be expected with a regular feature film.

To date, he’s not sat through a film at our own house, much less anywhere else, and I think part of that is the usual four-or-so year old attention span.  At home, though, he’s not so much a distraction as anything else, since there’s generally no one else to distract.

On the other hand, on Sunday, we were over at the in-laws to watch the play-back of this year’s Purim spiel with some of the adult members of the cast, and… well, let’s just say that the Monster was himself, meaning really unable to sit still and avoid running around and creating a ruckus between banging on the piano, flapping, and just generally making a menace of himself.

We’ve generally been good – in public – about bringing along sufficient bribery to get him to sit semi-still and at least quiet while we’re doing whatever.  (The spiel is a great example – I think I had two drinks and snacks for him, so he’d sit near where I was running the video taping with his grandmother and she could keep him bottled up and quiet.)  It’s when we’re in pseudo-private situations that we let the discipline slip a bit, and those are the situations perhaps where we could be working on reinforcing behaviors we want to see in public.

I’m debating if we’ll try the cinema again later this month – the next sensory movie is on the 16th – if only to also just see how he responds in the environment again, how he compares to other children with Autism who are at the theater, and to try out some ideas on how we can try to reinforce good behavior…

One thought on “Entertainment

  1. Here in SA they have a sensory-friendly film once a week (at Santikos, no less!). I haven’t been, but it’s great that they have films not only for the kids, but also for the PARENTS to watch.

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