As I have mentioned before, my three year old has always had a severe case of gastroesophageal reflux disease. It's a common problem but has a whole list of problems that can come along with it. One problem associated with it is something called Sandifer Syndrome. When it happens in public, it attracts quite a bit of unwanted attention....
My father was flying in last night, so my siblings, and all our children made the trip to greet him and take him to dinner. We are all used to his behavior while eating and my family doesn't give it a second thought. But, taking him out to eat is not something I like doing very often. I invited my husband to come along help me, which turned out to be the smartest thing I did all night!
Shortly after the appetizers arrived, my son started shaking. It isn't a small little twitch that might go unnoticed by neighboring tables. He stretches out with an arched back and starts shaking uncontrollably. After a minute of shaking, he spits the food out and becomes quite irritable.
The first time, the food ended up on a spare plate. The second time, I caught it in a napkin. The third time, he was sitting on his father's lap and he caught it in a napkin. But, the fourth time he was sitting on my lap picking the croutons out of my salad and must have got a pice of lettuce with it by mistake. When he spit it out, he spit it right back into my salad!! Regardless of how used to it we are, that is enough to turn my stomach a time or two!! I pushed my plate away, cleaned his face and continued on with the conversation.
This continued throughout the main course until he had finally gotten frustrated enough that he refused to eat.
My husband whispered something to the effect of another lovely night out. Hey, it's not your salad he's spitting in!! He doesn't actually spit, he opens his mouth and lets it fall out so you don't hear him spit. Either way, it's quite disgusting. But, unless you were staring at him already, you probably wouldn't ever notice him doing it. I didn't know anyone sitting at the other tables had noticed it.
But as we got up to leave, I noticed a woman staring at us. And as I looked around, I noticed several people staring at us. I was half way to our car before it occurred to me. They thought we were just continuing to eat while our son was having seizures!! And if they were watching him long enough, they would have noticed him spitting food out!! So, not only were they appalled by such poor parenting, they were disgusted by the chewed up food and it most likely ruined their dinner! I'm sure they didn't have much of an appetite after witnessing something like that.... then I felt bad....really bad.
So, how do you ruin a perfectly good night? Eat at the same restaurant as us!
