So we are super, super glad that Iron Man movie is finally here! Rayyan was very excited too and told us that he wants to watch the movie at Downtown East.
Before I go on with my story, let me just explain a bit more about this request in venue. We used to bring Rayyan to Kallang Leisure Park. We love it there because it's not crowded and we were not so stressed when Rayyan became restless and noisy in the cinema.
However, the last time we were there, I realised that Rayyan held on to my hand for a very long time and kept jumping at the very loud sound effects (I then realised that the sound effects there was really loud compared to others). It affected him so much that the next time we wanted to watch a movie there, he refused to go to the cinema and kept shouting that we leave the place.
But we knew that he really wanted to watch the show (we wanted to watch The Croods that time) so we tried to bring him to a different cinema. We went to Downtown East to watch The Croods. He followed us in willingly, no tantrums and all of us enjoyed the show.
For the Iron Man movie, I tried booking tickets at Downtown East but most of the tickets were snapped up so Hubby and I decided to get tickets at Golden Village Tampines Mall instead. Rayyan was having his Brain Gym class then so he wasn't with us when we bought the tickets.
After fetching him from his Brain Gym class, we told him that we were going to watch the movie at Tampines Mall but he refused and kept crying. We tried explaining to him, we tried enticing him with his favourite popcorn, we coaxed him but nothing worked. His tears kept streaming and streaming and it just broke my heart to see him like that. Clearly, that was not a boy out to purposely act difficult or defy us. There was clearly something that was bothering him and he just didn't know how to tell us.
I then told Hubby to just forget about the movie. We were frustrated at first because it meant that $30+ would go down the drain. But seriously, I would rather waste the money then to force my son to do something that he didn't want to.
So the lesson we learnt is to make sure that he is ready to do something or go somewhere before going on to make bookings or arrange anything. We must always, always prepare him for any upcoming activities. Sometimes we just forget that he has autism and he needs certain structures. We forget that he has sensory issues and things that are insignificant to us affect him greatly. That was indeed a valuable lesson learnt...
So that was our Saturday.... Hope yours was much better...
