People who have experience with autism, what is your general opinion about taking an autistic child to meetings? I know there are different severity levels of autism. Doesn't autism generally entail extreme difficulty being in group situations?
Like you say, it all just depends on the individual, and the patience of the parent. I only took my son to one meeting once when I was visiting family, and it wasn't too bad, we just sat in the back room and didn't worry too much about any noise he made. You tend to grow thick skin about what people think. I just brought tons of stuff to keep his attention and then went walking outside with him about every half hour.
There can be problems in group situations, but it's all so variable it's really hard to comment on. Ryan didn't ever really relate to other children, and preferred to play on his own, but it wasn't like we couldn't go out in public with him or anything. In fact, we considered it part of his therapy to go eat at resteraunts regularly to help him get use to noise when he was really young. (And also I didn't have to cook dinner that way, added bonus) We'd go shopping with him several times a week and even go see movies. When he was really young we would have to modify how we did these things compared to other people, but I think because we always kept doing this stuff, even if we had bad experiences, now we can do these things regularly without any problems at all, expect the random bump in the road.
I'm not sure what the point is, especially relating to this sad story. I do know that one of the biggest challenges facing families that include those with disabilities is learning to carry on with life. It's so important to not allow yourself to hide away just because it's hard to be in public spaces. I guess that's where the thick skin comes in. Like I said before, I don't agree with this families religion, but I do admire the fact that they carried on with life and kept doing the things they always did, although I'm sure they did them a little differently.
And Blues Brother- This is for you-