If you are a parent who has ever experienced your kid losing his shit in an autistic meltdown, I. Love. You. I really do. I feel your pain. I want to hug you. I want to tell you it’s going to be okay. I want to clean up the mess your child makes for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. I want to throw rainbows all over your house and make all your wishes come true.
Autistic Meltdown from an Outsider’s perspective (for those who don’t know).
Your child asks you to blow a balloon for her. You stop what you are doing. You blow it up. You tie it. You hand it to her all excited for her that she has a balloon, and that she is actually excited about the simple things in life like a balloon. She flips the fuck out on you. She throws the balloon. Starts crying. Stomping. Screaming. You are asking, “What! What do you want? What’s wrong? What can I do?” She is not responding with anything coherent. You sort of make out the word “Purple.” You assume she wanted a purple balloon. You think, “Do we have a purple balloon? Maybe I should go buy one. I need a purple balloon…” She never said purple. That’s what you heard. Meanwhile, she’s tipped the bookshelf over with books all over the floor, you know, the ones you just alphabetized. She has dumped a trash can and thrown chicken bones across the room after kicking the trash she poured on the floor. She also has dumped a toy chest. Flipped a chair. Threw the toddler table. Tried to smash in a window with her toddler chair….. Etc. You still have no idea what the fuck just happened.
Then she calms down after a half hour to an hour. She feels really guilty. She wants hugs. She wants to know you still love her. You figure out what happened was you didn’t blow the balloon big enough. You hug her. Tell her you love her. She forgets the whole thing ever happened while you ponder over it for days.
Autistic Meltdown from an Autism Perspective
You are a child. You are tired. You didn’t sleep well last night. All day long, nothing has worked out for you. You didn’t get to watch your favorite show. You didn’t get pancakes like you wanted. Your bowl of cereal wasn’t as big as you wanted. Your siblings keep taking your toys, pushing you, hitting you. On top of it, the sun coming through the window is kind of giving you a headache, plus you stepped on something wet and it feels like slimer from Ghostbusters slimed your foot and it won’t come off. So you find a balloon, and you want to make a pretend hot air balloon. So you go ask mom to blow it up for you, all excited, and mom ties it before you can tell her you need to have it bigger for your hot air balloon. So now she’s ruined it. You can’t blow more air in it once it’s tied. Then you didn’t get pancakes. Your foot feels weird. Your head hurts. Everything is so wrong with your day. You just give up. You can’t take it anymore. You are pissed off, sad, overwhelmed, frustrated, like every emotion at once intensified and you don’t know what the fuck to do with it but scream and throw stuff. You know you don’t want to hurt a person. You know you don’t want to really break something even though you really want to. And that stresses you out on top of it. Trying to control it is making it worse….
Basically, everything you are feeling as a parent experiencing your child’s autistic meltdown, your child is feeling that too. Lost. Out of control. Angry. Scared. Everything at once.
Overload
That’s what it is. Overload. They say senses are heightened with autism, like sight, smell, taste, touch. That’s not the only thing that is heightened. Fatigue for someone on the spectrum is more fatigued. Hunger is more hungry. Sad is more sad. Overwhelmed is more overwhelmed.
It doesn’t help that the mind of autism often gets stuck, like it stutters, and it’s really easy for autism to dwell on something, especially negative things. So something that happened to you early this morning can still be a big deal late in the evening. Most of the time, sleep will clear up most of the little things, like, “I didn’t get my way.” It’s like it reboots the brain. Bigger things usually takes a lot more time, like a great injustice.
On top of it all, the brain doesn’t stop. It keeps going, 24/7, observing every sound, movement, shadow, thing out of place… Imagine Jason Bourne. The autistic mind walking into a restaurant without being tired will tell you inside the restaurant that there are 5 cars in the parking lot, one’s a truck, 3 black, a white, and a grayish tan vehicle, 2 had license plates from the state of Colorado, and one is probably a Marine due to the Devil Dog sticker on the back, and it was parked ironically next to dog shit.
All these factor into a meltdown. It’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back. Meltdowns are NEVER about one thing. They are always about multiple things, sometimes spanning for months.
Most people on the spectrum generally have two reactions to sensory overload. One is shut down. They go into a zombified state, like your severe autism. A non-communicative poker face that won’t move. The other response is meltdown. It’s basically fight or flight, on red bull.
Do’s and Don’ts During a Meltdown
Don’t nag your kid. Do shut the fuck up. Remember, it’s sensory overload. Adding to it is adding to the stress and frustrations. Keep verbal communications short and to the point, and only for things really important like, “stop trying to break the window.” It’s just there to give boundaries and direction and nothing more.
Remember logic only works before and after the meltdown. If you see one forming, your kid getting worked up, a little anxious, that’s when you talk it out. Ask questions. Help re-direct and reassure. Once in meltdown mode, logic does not exist. Don’t even try it.
Do keep an eye on them. Make sure they are safe. Some will try to jump out a window or something crazy. It’s not that they are suicidal. It’s just that they are out of control. Make sure the people around them are safe too. Step in only when necessary for safety and direction. It does sometimes help to move them to a more comfortable location where there’s not much people around (especially if you get this in public). That usually means picking up a kicking screaming crazy kid, so don’t do it unless you are physically capable of it.
Don’t give in. If you were going to give in, do that before the meltdown. Your kid is going to be in the real world some day, and that world is not forgiving. Do offer it as a reward later. Like if your child wanted a popsicle and you said no, and they threw a fit that landed into a meltdown, you can offer a popsicle for later, for example, “I’ll tell you what? I’ll give you a popsicle at 3:00.”
Don’t make promises you don’t keep. Same with threats. Trust is important. Autism doesn’t respond well to empty promises. If you say, “You can have a popsicle at 3PM,” you damn well better have a popsicle to give them at 3PM precisely. With that, if you say, “Keep screaming and I’m going to turn off the TV,” you better turn off the TV if they keep screaming. Be VERY mindful with what you say. Don’t threaten crazy shit like smack the fuck out of them with a 2×4 that you never intended on doing… This is also important because the autistic mind is very dependent on mentally preparing itself for the next thing. Once it’s prepared for it, it has a hard time moving on until it happens.
Do stay calm. I know you want to freak out with them. If you do, it makes them freak out more. If you have to freak out at all, don’t be aggressive. Dropping to your knees and crying doesn’t usually freak them out. It might shake them out of it for their concern over you. Don’t overdramatize it.
Reduce eye contact. Autism doesn’t make eye contact frequently for a reason. It’s intimidating. Babies and most animals prefer reduced eye contact. Most people need eye contact to focus, and many times, a parent wants eye contact to feel like their kid is listening to them. That’s not so bad with autism when the kid is NOT in meltdown mode, and sometimes necessary because many times they really are not listening to you in the sense that your voice is louder than the other noises in their focus. But once in meltdown mode, it is more threatening in the sense that it adds to the sensory overload. BUT, toward the end of the meltdown, sometimes it’s helpful when conveying LOVE, and only love. Do not use eye contact to convey criticism near a meltdown unless you want another meltdown.
Do reduce Sensory Input. Reduce noise. If you have a lot of things going on at once, turn some things off for a minute. Try to make lighting and temperature as comfortable and soothing as possible.
Do break out the special interest and favorite objects. If your kid has an obsession with anything, now’s the time to use that to your favor. Example. Nephew, 9 or 10ish at the time, threw a meltdown, had a special interest in Pokemon, so I turned the TV on Pokemon (Netflix actually had it). Within 20 minutes, he was sucked into the television.
Don’t insult. Do not focus on the child but the behavior. The kid is not a bad kid. Your kid is a great kid. Your great kid is having a bad moment. In the home health care world, they refer to things like meltdowns as a behavior. That’s the word they use. So and So had 3 behaviors today.
When you see the invite for it, do hug. Some kids respond well to it, and some don’t, but sometimes if your kid doesn’t want hugged while playing, they usually still want it toward the end of a meltdown. A lot of parents miss that opportunity for a hug assuming their kid doesn’t want touched. Sometimes they don’t. You’ll have to look hard for it and maybe try it a couple times to get a feel for it. Autism is like a cat. Affection is on their terms.
It’s also important right after a meltdown to assure your child that you love your child. I know you are thinking, “Hey, I don’t want them to think that behavior is okay, so I must make sure I communicate that.” Remember, everything is heightened with autism, including guilt. Post meltdown guilt is a serious guilt. If you try to take advantage of it in hopes to inspire your child to avoid a meltdown, all you’re going to accomplish with that is to increase the chances of a meltdown because they will try too hard and it will stress them out and contribute to the sensory overload that causes meltdowns. Your best bet is to just tell them you love them and you always will, and that everything is okay now. Let them rest. I will get into how to help stop the meltdowns more, stuff that works better than telling them after a meltdown.
How to help prevent meltdowns
Communication and Social Skills
Skills are the most important component of reducing meltdowns. At a young age, autistic people struggle with communication, mainly speech. As they get older, they struggle with communication in the form of organizing information and sorting out relevant details from irrelevant details. Social skills later become an issue. Anytime a person of the spectrum is struggling with these things, they will have more frequent meltdowns because it’s frustrating.
Don’t be fooled if they are talking. It’s possible they don’t quite understand what they are saying or struggle organizing information in a way to communicate what they are trying to convey. Repeating questions or phrases is a sign this is going on, and if it is, it’s possibly the reason they don’t seem to “listen” when you tell them what to do. They often struggle with directions. .
For communication skills, speech therapy and whatever else they offer is helpful. Get your kid to use his words. Studies have shown with hyperlexia (all of which get an autism diagnosis), as a child improves his language and communication, the negative behaviors of autism go away on their own. There’s truth to that. A lot of the meltdown issues are a result of your child’s communication frustration. Back to the balloon example. Had my child informed me as I was blowing the balloon that she wanted a big balloon for a certain game she made up, I could have easily blew it up to the size she wanted before tying it.
For social skills, there’s occupational therapy, but if you attempt to study human behavior and sociology like its a science, autism will learn. You can do exercises like role playing where you make up social scenarios and practice (like you probably once did to prepare yourself for your first job interview). You can also do real-world exercises by going in public, and pretending to be something you are not, or trying to invoke a behavior from strangers. The whole point would be to create scenarios the child observes and point out the parts you are trying to work on.
Find the Meltdown Triggers
With most kids on the spectrum, there are some known triggers. With my daughter, the blanky can cause a meltdown. That’s her comfort device. If she wants it and you won’t help her get it, she flips out. With known triggers, avoid making them triggers. In the case above, I kept track of that blanket better than I did my cell phone. That’s the easy part. The hard part is the unknown stuff. Figuring it out, especially if they aren’t communicating well.
Sleep and hunger are a big deal. If your kid is tired, or worse, hyper-tired (ADHD looking stuff), expect meltdowns. Hunger is a big deal just the same. Make sure your kid is eating healthy and getting enough food.
Expression
Drawing their emotions out is a beautiful way to let them express. Music instruments are awesome too. Some express in sports. The main thing is, give them healthy outlets to express their feelings throughout the day, and then look for it and approach it. My daughter draws. I never let the kids use coloring books. I always gave them paper or canvas, blank. Yes I have a lot of scribbles, but they are now learning to draw. My daughter will often hand me pictures of stick figures with frowns. That’s when I know something is bothering her. We talk about it. Sometimes the talks go no where, like I never figure out why she’s sad. Other times, she tells me. Trying to talk about it when she needs to is very helpful in her overall moods.
Discussion
If your kid is old enough to talk about things, talk about it. Bullies at school and awkward social situations are usually a pretty big variable into the meltdown cocktail. Talking about it also shows your child that you are interested in their life, and you care about the injustices happening to them, and sometimes, that’s all they need, even if the problem doesn’t get solved.
Alone Time
My daughter will often go into a little fort she made or a small kid tent we have to prevent the meltdown, just to escape. It’s awesome. A small place that is their place where nobody can bug them. Autism needs their alone time. It’s usually their place to clear out their minds and find their center. Respect it. Provide a place for it.
Set the Example
A lot of our children’s behaviors are learned behaviors. The more you control your emotions, the more your kids will theirs. Remember the beginning of the cartoon 101 Dalmatians movie where all the dogs look like their owners?
In a sense, your kids are that way. 90% of parenting is setting the example. Everything else either handles temporary phases or amuses you while you wait through it. End result, kids end up a lot like their parents, or the exact opposite if they hate you.
Avoid the Authoritative Parenting
It doesn’t work on autism. You need to be one of those parents, the ones who read up on psychology and offers options to their kids, and “spoils” their kids. The nurturing parent who respects their kid goes further with autism than the authoritative parent who belittles their kid. The reasoning is autism doesn’t understand the age gap. They expect to be treated like adults. They expect the same respect from you that you expect from them. That will NEVER go away. You can’t undo that wiring with a million Pavlov dogs. And only you know where you fall on that parenting spectrum, and neither are bad parenting, it’s just one is more effective than the other when it comes to autism. A lot of people don’t like that part. The important thing is to respect your kid.
Get to Know Autism
Find people who have it and read their long stories about it. The more you understand autism, the easier your logic works to your favor. Really, it’s like taking those little things you experience and feel and barely pay any attention to and understanding it’s a little more amplified for autism. Observe your kid. We all know our kids, but your kid is sending clues.
Be a CEO
As the parent, you are CEO of your house. Constantly do little autism business meetings with yourself. Set goals. Make a plan. Implement plan. Monitor results. What’s working? What’s not working? Is it really working? Is it really not working or do you need to give it more time?
Listen to Your Heart
Moms have this thing called instinct and intuition. They know their kids better than anyone else. Nobody else is as qualified on the subject of your child than you and your child. Give it an honest go though between what sounds easier for you and your wants vs what’s better for your child and his needs. Even moms with the best of intentions get those screwed up a little. It’s okay if you do, but give it an honest effort.
Otherwise, more often than not, your instinct will disagree with the millions of voices surrounding you. You are probably reading this right now looking more for reassurance to something you feel as opposed to looking for answers. Go with your instinct. If you are wrong, you and your kid will take the fall. If others are wrong, you and your kid will take the fall.
Allergies
Not all of autism is allergy induced, but certain allergies in some people appear like autism. If your child who is on the spectrum also has a food allergy, I can see (as a mother of a kid on the spectrum and a kid with food allergies) some of the negative autism things to be worse, especially the meltdowns. Avoiding the allergen would probably improve behavior.
Diet
I know food has triggered some meltdowns for a lot of people. There’s a stomach bacteria that isn’t present in anyone who doesn’t have autism, but it is only present in SOME of the autistic people of the study. I don’t know if I have it, but I have noticed that those in my family on the spectrum have some diet preferences, and I think that’s why.
I love cream, but too much cream and sugar gives me a tummy ache. Prebiotics and Probiotics also give me a tummy ache, so I avoid yogurt. My daughter avoids foods that also makes her sick historically, like “white icing,” blue is ok in her mind (really it’s too much sugar). My nephew flip flops. Sometimes he loves a food, and sometimes he swears it’s making him sick. The deal is, some foods probably do make us sick because of that bacteria or some other reason, but we don’t know what they are.
Depending on the age of the child, experience and maturity affect their perception of food. But one thing you can count on is the body’s natural reaction to crave foods it needs (like you crave peanut butter if you are in need of protein), and to get a little sick at the idea of foods that are harmful to you. If you respect your autistic kids’ wishes with food, things go smoother. They have their reasoning, and most of the time, it’s very valid reasoning.
Check out my post on Spanking or Starving my Picky Eater
After School
Most kids come home from school as if their teacher spoon fed them sugar and chased it down with Mountain Dew. That’s because they are sick and tired of thinking, and they’ve been sitting still all day following stupid rules. Physical energy has been building up all day, but mental energy is at the day’s low. On top of it, they’ve been waiting all day to let loose. You can only fake being perfect for so long before you have to unleash your negative feelings somewhere. Work and school is the place you don’t unleash negative feelings. This is amplified with autism, and is often the trigger behind meltdowns.
What helps with the after-school chaos of emotions is to first feed your kid a snack. I usually drive thru somewhere on my way home from school if I don’t have a snack at home. The schools don’t feed kids well, and lunch just isn’t big enough for many of them.
Then, when I get home, the days I let the kids play outside for 20 minutes before coming in the house, they fare better for the rest of the evening. There was a good year with my oldest where that was almost routine.
Definitely, try to avoid scheduling anything after school where you expect the kids to sit quietly for a long period of time. That’s not going to happen, and you will go crazy trying. I’ve had days where I had a migraine and I NEEDED treatment, and I dragged the kids right to the doctor. They would be crazy in the waiting room, and I just tell people, “After School Hyper. There is no stopping it. Sorry, but I need meds.” To me, the hyperactivity of a child after school is expected as much as tears for every vaccination shot, but most people don’t understand that. In my world, they just kiss my ass. Check out my post on how to handle evil glares from strangers in public when your kids are behaving like children.
I hope you find this advice useful or at least informative. Sorry I didn’t get too entertaining outside the occasional potty word. I definitely hope for your sake and your child’s that things get better and progress, like I’m sending good juju through this blog your way. May you and your child be blessed.
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