Saturday night at the movies....

In 2011 a genius idea was piloted.

It was identified that although people with autism enjoyed going to the cinema, there tend to be some sensory issues that they experienced that probably does not fit in with the usual cinema rules. Several examples of this is that some people with autism find it hard to sit down for the length of a film and would need to stand up to walk around for a while before returning to their seat or squeal/scream and flap with excitement. I've known many times of parents and carers leaving as little as 15 minuites into the film due to tuts and general noises of dispproval from fellow cinema goers *sigh with sad face*
This sort of behaviour tends not to bode well with the majority of neuro-typical people in the cinema so on the back of this, Autism Friendly Screenings were born! Hooray!

Dimensions are the genius's behind this and currently 150 cinemas across the country participate in autism friendly screenings. *I salute them*

So the difference with the autism friendly are:

*the lights are on low
*the volume is turned down (great for noise sensitive people like DS)
*there are no trailers so we go straight onto the film - yay!
*We can take our own food and drink

and the beauty one is:

*you can move around as freely as you like!  - this is a important one for DS as he thoroughly enjoys the cinema experience , he cannot sit in the same seat for the duration of a film. After a while he will get up, walk around then sit on the floor of the aisle with his drink watching the film.

The autism friendlys are shown once a month - always a Sunday and the next one is today!

I'm packing our rucksack with spare clothes, drinks and snacks as we speak!

P.S I have signed up to Dimensions alerts so I always get a email reminding me of the next autism friendly screening at my local cinema, as lets face it - autism Mums have enough going on in our heads to remember absolutely everything!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!