Meltdowns vs tantrums in Autism
I want to talk about the two different types of behaviour and need when you deal with a child on the spectrum. One is the common area of tantrums that you are used to dealing with and these can be stressful to handle in and of themselves at the best of times.
The other one of course is meltdowns. Now this is when the child loses control and cannot be comforted or respond to you in any way. You just have to ride the storm and wait until things are calmer. Of course it would be fantastic if you could prevent the meltdown happening, but situations arise that are unusual or unexpected.
On Sunday, when Johnathan saw another activity with his homework, he totally lost it and had a massive meltdown. You see, the more things he has to do, the worse it is for him. I have been trying to get him to just focus on the ONE thing he is working from. Bur we know he finds more than one thing difficult to do and if there are more than one thing for homework, he thinks it will take him all day.
You know the crazy thing? I messaged the teacher to let her know I had given Johnathan permission to do his writing work on the ipad because he finds it hard to write - he had got every question perfect, as usual!
There are two, well, maybe more, factors at play here - or should I say more? Anyway, one is the number of activities, another is the surprise feature of it, another is the time it would take (five minutes in reality). And the last, and possibly the greatest factor was that it was asking for persona; information - not really private. You know, name, date of birth, what do you like, what are your hobbies - do you have a nickname. Now we probably wouldn’t turn a hair at this all, but Johnathan had a meltdown over it because everything was knocked out of shape in his own head.
Now I’m not saying I handled it the best way possible. But it isn’t the same as you saying no to your child when you are at the checkout because they want sweets and it’s near their tea time and you just want to get them home. They may respond by going into a tantrum and lying on the floor kicking and screaming. And that’s a tantrum, NOT a meltdown.
When the child or adult with autism has a meltdown, you have to be sure everyone is safe. Because they are not necessarily thinking logically at that time. Hang on. Let me rephrase that. ANY person in a meltdown is not thinking logically. That went out of the window a few minutes or seconds before. Now they may shout and scream and throw themselves around like a temper tantrum, but it is not.
Yesterday I can’t say I dealt with Johnathan’s meltdown very well. He needed me and my lap wasn’t open to him at the time because of Maisie and the plushies he had handed to me. Next time I need to be sure to redirect him. Get him to do breathing exercises and cuddle some of his plushies or get some jazz music on for him to listen to. Or put his nebula light on for him to watch- or all of those things at once…Thing is I know it won’t work straight away - it never does. That’s why the child needs comfort. They need something to enable them to calm down. And if you can appeal to as many senses as you can (in the particular way they have) it really helps them.