One of the things that concerned us after our son Adam was diagnosed with autism, was what we would be able to do as a family — how we would incorporate him into the things we wanted to do while respecting and taking into consideration the things that were difficult for him to tollerate. I had always promised him we would do our best to meet him half way if he trusted us enough to do the same and I also promised him that we would show him how much fun things in our world could be and how much we wanted him to experience as much as he could with us by his side.

My husband and I made a list of all the things we wanted to do as a family, from simple things like going to the movies to more complicated things like going to amusement parks and concerts. Then we made a list of the things that seemed to be too difficult for him to handle and what behavior he used to communicate his discomfort to us. While we didn’t want to cause Adam any unnecessary stress, we couldn’t keep him in the house every day nor was it fair to his younger brother or us to just forgo having new experiences, creating new memories or introducing them to the things we loved to do.

The first thing on the list that we tried was going to a restaurant. We’d been to fast food restaurants occasionally and as Adam got older it was getting harder and harder for him to be there without crying, screeching, squirming his way down to the floor to lie on his side, or curl up under the table.

If we couldn’t handle being at a fast food restaurant with the noise and the lights and smells, how could we handle a sit down restaurant where we would have to wait longer for the meal to arrive? We aren’t fans of fast food eating and we thought the way to teach the kids how to be at a restaurant was to start with box-store chain restaurants where we could order something that was not wrapped in paper with greasy fries served in a paper holder. But how could we do this with Adam?

His support worker, his father and I, occasionally with the help of his little brother, Logan would mimic going to a restaurant in the playroom where they sat at the toddler table. I had a radio playing quietly in the background, I made simple picture enhanced, menus for Karen, our support worker (and impromptu waitress) to give to the boys and their dad, Tom, prepared the meals in our kitchen, rang a bell when the orders were up and Karen delivered them to the table.

We practiced and practiced “The Restaurant” game every day for about two months and still I was wasn’t certain it would go well. I wanted to set Adam and our family up for success so… I put my thinking cap back on and called our local Montana’s on Sarcee Trail in Calgary and asked to speak to the manager.

I explained to her that we liked eating out once in a while and wanted to bring our family for a meal, however, we had a twist — we had to accommodate Adam’s autism so that we could not just eat out together but get him used to the atmosphere of the restaurant. She asked me what I had in mind and I told her that I was looking to eat during their quietest time of day. I told her that we would need a booth to seat him between my husband and myself, a booster seat for our other son Logan and I asked if we could pre-order our meal because Adam struggled with waiting.

I was fully prepared for her to tell me that she could not accommodate us — after all it was a busy restaurant of a popular chain and I was looking to have all this happen on the weekend. However, she was very kind and told me that it would be her honor to help us have this family experience. She sent a menu to our house and suggested we aim for the coming Saturday at two pm, since that was their quietest time. She told me she would turn off all the TV’s but the one at the bar that could not be seen from our booth and she would give us a designated waiter who would see to it that all our requests and needs were handled and that our order was ready to be served shortly after we arrived.

Just as I had asked, we had a booth and a booster seat. Adam and Logan were shown the menus and they pointed out what they wanted which was always the same — chicken tenders, fries and fruit and raw veggies on the side and it was brought to us within five minutes of us being seated. At that hour, there really was no noise in the restaurant and Adam was able to sit in his seat between Tom and me and eat his food, never once slithering all the way to the floor and trying to run away from the table. He never cried; never screamed. He ate, he coloured on the brownpaper “tablecloth” they spread on the table at Montana’s and just like our waiter, he learned to write his name upside down.

By the fourth or fifth month of us doing this, Beno, our designated waiter (who later became one of Adam’s support workers), worked with us to tweak the restaurant plan. We started going every other Saturday as usual but at one-thirty, then at one-fifteen, then one pm and worked our way to dining at noon. We introduced the restaurant ambient noise gradually, allowing Adam to listen to music wearing his ear buds whenever the noise got to be too much (something he still does at twenty-five). We increased colouring time by having the food come eight then ten minutes after we’d been seated and then pushed it to fifteen minutes and before we knew it, he was able to wait on the food to be prepared and then brought to the table. Adam learned to be in a restaurant setting so well, that our monthly visit to Montana’s became a twice monthly visit — one Saturday a month after swimming lessons and the other after dad came home from work on a Friday night.

Yes, that’s right, after eight months of learning to eat out at a restaurant, we were able to go out to Montana’s for a family dinner.

There were no more meltdowns, no more trying to lie on the floor or crawl away from the table — there was only sitting, eating, colouring, listening to music and even attempts at speaking.

Our sons have long moved out of our home — yep, we are empty nesters now — and we occasionally go for dinner with one or both of them when their schedules permit. We go to all sorts of restaurants and sometimes, Adam, who has his favourite spots, will dine without his earbuds and will chat with us, while other times he’ll wear them and listen to music or watch a video on his phone to drown out the background noise.

What’s important is that he has learned to cope with the things that can be disturbing to him in public settings. He has learned what he can do or use to keep himself comfortable in public spaces. What’s beautiful, is that he is spending time with us and sharing a meal and sometimes I take his presence in a restaurant with us for granted, because it’s just an ordinary thing for him to do now.

And when I do think about it, it seems like it was just yesterday that I’d call in our order and make our usual two-o’clock reservation, party of four. Who knew that our local Montana’s on Sarcee Trail in Calgary would be so accommodating and play such a significant part in preparing our son for what is to so many, just a meal at a restaurant.

But for our family, it was much more than that.

That kind gesture of a restaurant manager and a young waiter, not only taught Adam how to gradually adapt to a busy place like a restaurant, it gave us a chance to be a typical family, doing typical things and spending time together making memories. That gesture of kindness added so much to our family life but most of all, it helped shape Adam’s life and for that I will forever be grateful to the manager there in 2002–2003 and to Beno (who is probably forty years old now) wherever he may be. You changed our lives by helping us have typical family experiences and you helped shape Adam’s. And though I wish I could say it more eloquently — thank you. Thank you for giving us so much more than you could ever know.