Regardless even a family restaurant is not a place to take a child who cannot conform to manners so as to not cause a disturbance. For whatever reason,
Get a babysitter or head to Chucky Cheese
And yeah, I adopted and raised a SN child of this age who could not control his behaviors in public,
so we only went where we could train him in manners and self control over time and not disturb others experiences. For over 2 years we went nowhere we couldn't keep him in a shopping cart. Big dates to Home Depot for hot dogs,
I also raised a SN child whose disability is very similar to Childhood Apraxia of Speech. (My child has multifaceted dyslexia on the severe end of the spectrum.) Unlike turrets syndrome, severe forms of autism, and ADD/ADHD, children with CAS and dyslexia are not known for outbursts or anti-sociable behavior attributable to the disability. If this child was behaving inappropriately, the likely cause was bad parenting, by parents who are unwilling or reluctant to discipline their child, because the SN child has already “suffered enough.” That’s a big mistake.
With that background, we brought our children to sit-down restaurants at an early age, and while there were a few occasions when one of us parents had to depart with a misbehaving child in the middle of the meal (mostly due to our non-SN child), it only happened a few times because even SN child learn to behave appropriately with consistent parenting and discipline. Nevertheless, we always had respect for the other customers and to mitigate the chances that our children would disrupt their meal we took our kids to restaurants late morning or late afternoon between the breakfast-lunch rush and lunch-diner rush. In addition, we took them to child friendly places like Greek dinners, local family-friendly Italian restaurants, Bugaboo Creek, and Outback.
What’s missing from the articles about this particular incident is the time of day and the specific behavior that the complaining diner found offensive. Let’s face it: There are certain grouchy, unhappy, and perpetually miserable people who are unwilling to tolerate even the slightest inconvenience or disruption to their lives. (While I would like to think this is a mostly liberal characteristic, after reading the comments for this post, intolerance crosses the political spectrum.) For all we know, this person could have been one of these constant complainers, who would probably complain in a maternity ward that there are too many crying babies.
Lastly, under the Americans with Disabilities Act — a flawed and expensive law that liberals pushed to fruition — Outback has a legal obligation to make reasonable accommodations for disabled people. Assuming the behavior in question is the result of the child’s disability, then asking the family to leave is both wrong and illegal. A reasonable accommodation in this particular situation would have been to relocate the complaining party and offer to buy them desert or a drink.