Today we planned a trip to the movies… something that can be hit or miss depending on the day…

If you’re a parent of a child with autism then you completely understand what I’m saying!

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much planning… how much you talk about it…Or how many times you watch the preview to the movie….

Sometimes… autism has a DIFFERENT plan…

But I’m here to tell you IT’S OK!!

At first I thought it was his anxiety…He kept asking for home.. (breaks my heart) So we waited a few minutes and tried to get him excited about the movie because he LOVED the first 2! We were seeing How To Train A Dragon 3..

But shortly into the movie and realizing no matter what I said or did he just was not happy.. he wasn’t smiling, he was restless and he was definitely not enjoying himself..

My mother inlaw and I both tried again to get him to cheer up but it wasn’t doing anything… so I asked him if he’d like to take a break and come back.. he said yes so out we went!

After just a few short minutes of being out of the movie theater, he was happy!

We walked around! We played silly faces on my phone!We made friends with a sweet little girl who knew sign language! We played games! We sang to music on my phone!

And of course we had to watch a few Dino videos on YouTube!

Was this how I planned the movies?

Nope.

Was this how I wanted our family to enjoy the movies? … with my husband watching the movie with the rest of our family and me in the hallway with bubba?

Nope.

But you know what !!!??? It’s not about ME!

It’s about making sure HE is happy and that HE is enjoying what we are doing too!

He said “ loud “and covered his ears when we were in the hallway. (And that’s with his noise cancelling head phones on). I said “is it too loud in there for you?” He said yes. I asked him if he wanted to go back in and he said no. I also offered to take him into another movie so we walked around looking at another movie he might like and he also said no to that one.

He said “ no movie” and I said OK.

So yes, we went to the movies and Ethan and I did not watch a movie…. BUT we had some amazing Mommy and Bubba time laughing, walking around and playing!

He was smiling and he was HAPPY!

And that makes this mama’s heart full.