Mother of child with autism fuming over treatment at Bellevue movie theater

A boy’s first movie theater experience ended early after patrons of a Bellevue movie theater complained that he was being disruptive. The mom is upset, but the theater acted appropriately in my view.

The boy’s mother told KIRO 7 that she thought “Finding Dory” would be a fitting movie experience because her son, who has autism, enjoys the main character, a fish with a disability.

When the movie started the boy became restless because it was dark, his mother explained. He began switching seats and then started rolling on the floor. Though the boy was doing well in his mother’s mind, people around them had complained. And about 30 minutes in she was asked to control her son or leave.

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The boy’s mother, who is just trying to give her son life experiences, is asking for a little sensitivity and compassion.

“I don’t want him to think that just because one situation happened to us we need to hide away,” she told KIRO 7.

I’m sure the management of the theater asked the woman to control her child with respect. But she couldn’t and the two were kicked out.

Maybe the mother didn’t think her child’s behavior was that bad (perhaps, in the context of how he might normally act, he was doing much better). And she is right to ask for compassion and patience: parenting a child living with autism can be very difficult and we should understand the difficulty and maybe even offer some help where appropriate. But, at some point, the patience understandably wears out. There must be a bar that a child (autism or not) cannot pass without any consequence. I guarantee this child was harming the experience for other children and their families watching the movie, and that isn’t fair. At some point, it’s selfish to allow a child to misbehave in public. You’ll get some level of disruption in a kid’s movie; that is unavoidable. But you can go too far and ruin an entire movie for other people.

People should have patience, but if it’s for the entirety of a movie, that’s different.

I feel for the mother and her child and have all the sympathy in the world, but you have to be understanding of how other parents and their children are reacting.

Is that insensitive? No, it’s common sense, courteousness, and a reality.

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