Beating the challenges of eating out with neurodivergent kids

"Let's go out for a meal for your birthday"

Surely that's a lovely thing to hear, but for me, I'd take a deep breath and think it was something that we had to 'get through'. You see, I was brought up to believe that children should be seen and not heard and had spent my entire childhood trying to live up to this mantra.

Now, I am sufficiently my own person to have decided long ago that I don't actually agree with this maxim, but, and it's a big 'but', it appeared that part of my upbringing had rubbed off on me and I expected my child to behave properly when eating out in public.

I'm cringing now, even writing that. 'Properly' for me, still meant that she shouldn't draw attention to herself (or us as parents) in a negative way and she needed excellent manners as she sat quietly at the table.

You will be very glad to know that I let go of these expectations very quickly and thanks, in part to my Mum! Just listening to the way she talked to my daughter while out made me realise just how ridiculous it was and made me more determined to do things differently.

I was still a stickler for good manners (and I make no apology for that!), but I no longer felt like a failing mother for not enforcing my 2 year old to sit quietly in her high chair. I embraced the 'walk around the car park between courses', the colouring and/or story book and the singing nursery rhymes in public at the drop of a hat. I had a well behaved; normally behaved toddler!

The challenges came as she got older. By the time she was eight or nine I knew she had some quite specific differences in the way she reacted to the world. She had just been diagnosed with dyslexia and in my professional teaching opinion, I was reasonably confident she had ADHD. This meant that I now viewed meals out as something that was important for her to experience and for us as a family to help her develop strategies for, but they often weren't the most enjoyable of occasions.

We had silent meals, where she refused to speak other than 'yes' or 'no' to items on the menu; we had angry meals, where she simply sat and shredded paper napkins through the whole meal and only said mean things; we had indigestion-inducing meals, where we ate so fast that we were home almost before the dog had noticed we'd gone! You never knew what you were going to get, but I knew that we had to do it. It would have been so easy to never go, to avoid the situation, but that wouldn't have helped anyone - especially her.

Over the years, we developed strategies that work for her and we have opened a line of communication so that she can tell us how she is feeling before she goes, rather than an hour after when she finally calms down.

Going out for meals now means:

• Checking in with her before we go and giving her plenty of warning.

• Helping her find an outfit that she feels comfortable in - whatever that looks like for her on that day.

• Giving her time checks throughout the day so she knows how long until we leave.

• If it's somewhere new, looking at the menu online so she can check she will like the food.

• Booking somewhere mid afternoon, or early evening when it will be less busy.

• Agreeing before we leave whether her Dad and I will have coffee, or we can just leave after the food.

• Taking her headphones in the car so she can focus on her own music straight into her head on the journey.

All of these things are in our strategy.  We have built them up over the years and we make it work for us. So when you feel like eating out with neurodivergent kids is just too hard, think about the fact that you are setting them up for life as an adult.  They will have to navigate these things on their own soon enough and we are the ones to guide them to be able to do that. What we do now, directly influences the adult they become and surely that’s our job as a parent – to show them the options, give them strategies for the hard stuff, even if their ‘hard stuff’ is going out for a meal.

Eating out can be messy even when you are well behaved!