Just Another Saturday

What a rollercoaster of a day.  It's been raining quite a bit here this last week and has kept the boys cooped up in the house a little more than they'd like.  To shake things up a bit we decided to take the boys to a movie.  Sudden changes in plans can throw Charlie off so we had plenty of time to prep him.  Everyone was excited.  It was exciting!

We got there on time to fill our popcorn bucket and found our seats just as the previews were starting.   The boys happily munched on popcorn as the movie was rolling.  Everything was going fine.  About a half hour or so into the movie and Charlie was getting restless.  Totally normal for him.  This kid rarely sits still.  But then he leaned over and told me that it was too loud and that he wanted to go somewhere quiet.  HUGE kudos to Charlie for telling us what he was feeling and what he needed to help him.  HUGE!! I first offered to go to the truck to get his noise quieting headphones out of the truck.  He declined.  So out of the theater we marched.

Charlie at first said he wanted to to watch the lights change on the indoor pillars.  Totally fine.  I kept checking in with him to see if he wanted to go back in to the movie, offered to get his headphones again, but he wanted none of it and slowly started into a sensory meltdown.  Nothing to do but to wait it out.  Tyler and the other boys still had about half the movie to finish yet.  

While trying to help Charlie calm down I couldn't help but wonder if he'd do better at a sensory friendly movie.  These are movies that are played with the lights dimmed, not completely off and with the sound lowered a bit.  Usually at sensory friendly movies the social norm of be quiet and sit still is set aside and kiddos who benefit from sensory friendly movies are able to move around and be themselves.  In one of Charlie's quieter moments I asked to speak with the manager (Cinemagic Theater) and inquired about sensory friendly movies.  He said they never have done them, but that he could certainly look into it.  I asked him to please do that because there are many families in the Rochester area that would benefit from it.  I will definitely be following up with him later this week.  Upon some research online, it appears that AMC movie theaters offer sensory friendly movies.  The closest AMC is in the Twin Cities which is an hour and a half away from us.  

Charlie was able to calm down once we were home again.  He was in his own, familiar space and was able to regulate with Sunny in a quiet space.  Plus he got his own bucket of homemade popcorn since he missed out on movie theater popcorn.  We don't like to isolate at home, but man it's instances like these that make staying home look really appealing.  But that's not us.  If we don't try we won't know what we can handle and the boys would miss out on life and Charlie won't learn how to handle different situations.  So try we will.  We'll give it some time and try again some day.