One of the movie theaters near us has a special showing of certain movies once every couple of months or so, just for special needs families. They show the movie in one of the theater rooms and it's only for special needs. This means they don't play the movie as loudly, they adjust the lights before the movie, and of course, the kids are welcome to make noise or walk around. This particular theater serves food as well - a must for my children. We took David to see Ratatouille (however it's spelled). He liked it, but didn't make it through the whole movie. It was quite a long one.
We decided to take both James and Grace to see Veggie Tales' The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything this morning. I couldn't wait to see Grace's face when she saw the big screen. During the week I kept preparing her for the movie and saying it was on a big screen. Then later she would come up and say, "Mommy, I want to go 'scream'." It didn't take me long to decipher that that was actually "screen".
Grace's face was priceless when she saw Veggie Tales pop up so huge! She also did really well with the size of the room and the people. She didn't act as nervous as I thought she was going to. She even said, "bye bye" and waved to one of the workers.
They did really, really well during the movie. I think they may have liked the food even more than the movie! James was able to walk around, dance when music came up, and talk to anybody he wanted to.
I met a man sitting next to me with his son and had a very interesting conversation. When I told him we had a family of Fragile X'rs, he proceeded to tell me that he was the first in five generations to NOT have Fragile X! Imagine, someone who actually was familiar with the disorder. He does, however, have a boy with Down Syndrome. He also has a sister who has a 5 year son with Fragile X and CP. This same sister is 47 years old and has a daughter who has her own family! Wow! His story is very interesting.
The first time we went to one of these movies, we didn't really talk to anyone else. We were more preoccupied with how James would do. After today's conversation I decided I was going to do better at meeting other families at these events. I only wish I would have gotten this gentleman's number so that maybe our families could have hooked up at some point.
We had a great time!
2 comments:
That's a neat thing for the theater to do. I don't think we have anything like that near us. We have taken the kids to the drive-in which is fairly close by, kind of a similar experience.
That is very cool! I wonder if there are any theaters in my area who do that?
And, I am glad your kids did well. Neither of mine have been to the theater yet.
It is always nice to meet another family affected by Fragile X.
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