The disassembled abandoned cake - autism eating out and about

We were having a family day out at a well known visitor attraction. Nothing too exciting or expensive but a day out that involved catching a train, a little walk and a wander about. Apart from a bit of jumping and squealing the kids were having a good day.  And overall I'd say it was a good day... unless you were the disassembled abandoned cake.  And it's the cake that makes me wonder how can I do the right thing?

Like many of our days out, the weather wasn't perfect.  It was bright but a bit cold which I suppose is nothing unusual for this time of year.  As a family we tend to find things quieter when it's a bit cold or a bit wet.  We're the people driving to the theme park if it looks like it might rain for a bit.

Quieter usually means a bit more space and less crowds and this works well when two of your three kids has autism.  Everything was going well on our day out and then not long before we thought we'd leave, Jane declared that she was really hungry.

Honestly, I don't know where she puts it.  It's 2pm and she hasn't been to loo yet.  She's had a cartoon of juice and two bags of Sun Bites, plus a bit more.  Thanks to Jane's 'starvation' as she called it, the remaining food in the rucksack would no longer be enough to last the kids all the way home. We were at an outdoor-ish attraction and as we were all be getting a bit cold (me in particular - I always feel it) I head to one of two eatery type places we past earlier.

As I walked up to the glass door and peered inside I felt a bit of a sinking feeling.  We usually time meals when we are out to avoid key meal times (eating at 2 or 3pm instead of 1pm for example).  But as it was cold and the other eatery had mostly outdoor space, this one was... well heaving.   There were people moving all over the place and I couldn't see a spare 'two seat' table never mind space for our five.

I scanned round through the glass towards the self serve food area.   Wrapped sandwiches, hot meals,  'No chance,' I smirk to myself.  Then I noted a large cake type section with only few people there.

"Ok, that's a possibility," says I to the other half nodding in it's general direction.  And we headed in.

Our first issue was the clotted cream.

Yes it's delicious, but it also looks a lot like ice-cream when it's in large catering tubs.

I'd been holding David in my arms since we approached the glass doors and now inside he was leaning erratically, and mostly towards the scones and clotted cream.

"Want cake?" I asked him.

"Creeee," he said while excitedly signing 'ice-cream'.

He was definitely a bit miffed that I'd denied him what he thought was ice-cream.  But I managed to convince him to look at cakes.  The trouble is that cakes come in all shapes and sizes,  colours and tastes. People with autism can like sameness, it makes my boys feel safe.

So while Jane spotted a cupcake that looked like a giant pink and yellow flower (great that will really fill her up thinks me) it takes the boys a while to absorb what's in front of them.  Too many options are scary. The wrong options aren't great either.

I spotted something that looked like a Victoria Sponge Cake.  That could work for David and I pointed it to him.  He went to grab it.  As the place was self service, I lowered his hand and got the cake slice. I separated one of the (not very big) slices and popped it on a plate. David eyed it suspiciously - he was just tall enough for his nose to pop above the counter.

Meanwhile Anthony, our other autistic son, had made his choice.  He'd done an excellent job of falling back onto a default.  If he's not sure - he'll look for something made of chocolate. And so a large chocolate muffin sat next to a beautiful flower like cupcake on the tray.... next to the Victoria Sponge look a like.

David was staring at the cake.  It looked like he wanted to touch the cream filling on the sponge cake. That's when I saw a bit of the filling at the pointy end of the slice wasn't there.  It looked like it might have got dragged out when another piece had been removed off the original cake. It wasn't right... it was broken.

David started to cry and tried to scrape the rest of the cream filling out of the cake.

"It's ok, no cream?" I said, and grabbed the cake slice again. David watched as I carefully cut down both sides of the icing filling and removed it in one long piece and sat it down to the side. I shoved the two pieces of cake back together.

"Can I have the slice?" a voice asked.

I turned to see a boy about nine or ten years old.  I handed him the cake slice.  He took a slice of the same cake and put it onto a plate.  He carefully put the cake slice back down and skipped back to his mother who was waiting in the growing queue at the checkout. How perfectly normal that is for some families.

It was then that David noticed there was also the finest layer of jam inside his cake too.

He started to wave his hand "nah nah nah" (that translates to 'no no no' in David).

How can I describe to you what it must be like for David to see and think he has to eat a 'wrong' cake? In his upset he started to poke and pick out the chocolate chips on top of Anthony's muffin. "Hey," screamed Anthony.

"Anthony, calm down..." (breath, Ann, just breath)

I picked David back up as he was now trying to touch lots of cakes, toppings etc and I looked at my husband.

"If this doesn't go wrong in the next few minutes it will happen in the queue or at the table."

"Ok, let's leave" he shrugged.

I looked over towards the till area.  Only one of the two tills was open, the other was behind a no entry door.  The queue of people with trays for the till looked like a swarm.

"What about the cakes?" I said.

As I looked back over at him I saw he was also looking at the queue.  I didn't even have any cash.

"Leave them."

My husband picked up Jane who started crying... "but what about my flower cake?"

And as we went back out the glass doors, I saw an employee appear with a new cake for the cake table and look at the mess we'd left behind.  The disassembled and abandoned cake.

A few minutes later we were the only people sat at the freezing cold outside food stall happily eating the only things they were serving (thank goodness that included brownie).  I was so relieved things hadn't escalated into a meltdown I'd even forgotten to use our discount code for the food.

This small cake event had little impact on our day.  It was a good day.  We had no meltdowns, few tears, we had fun wandering about and looking at the attraction.  David skipped his way around town. We all safely got back on the train and treated ourselves to a cab from the station - where the three kids fell sleep across the back seat together.

But when David woke me in the middle of the night, as he does every night, I found myself feeling guilty about the disassembled cake. About not having paid for the food (I think I saw a tag by the disassembled cake which said £3.25 a slice!), about the mess we'd made.  And I wondered what I could have done differently.  Effectively every incident is one I can learn from.  Adapt to make things better.

I mean it's effectively stealing right?  Or damaging property? It's easy to think one of us could have gone back in to the cafe and paid.  We once paid for 13 ice-lollies at an attraction booth until we unwrapped one that was the right shape for David.  But going back into the cafe to pay for the cakes is not something we would have found possible yet. David can't take the 'family unit' being broken up when we are out.  He goes into instant meltdown.  We've only just managed to be able to go to the toilet separately when we are out (don't try and fit five into a disabled loo if you don't have too).

Looking back it was either the 'it's too busy' or 'there's no ice-cream' moments that I should have listened to better.  Turned away at that point. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So I'll try not to get too hung up on the disassembled cake incident. Chances are the employee cleared the mess away and that was that.   If we go again, we can be a bit more prepared, and I'll remember that I need to pay for an extra couple of cakes.  But I'm afraid, conscience, short of sending the place a completely random cheque (I have no idea if I even still have a cheque book??), that's the best I can do right now. That can give my gorgeous boy a hug, no one really gets how well he coped when his world seemed to be collapsing.

What do you think?