We’ve probably all been there. Doing the weekly shop and you see a kid having the mother of all tantrums. Sitting on the floor in the middle of aisle 6… shouting and screaming… refusing to do as they are told whilst a frantic parent desperately tries to reason with them, hoping they will stop and their embarrassment will end. Before we had kids I would likely have rolled my eyes and muttered something about “little shit”, “bad parenting” and “clip round the ear”.
Victoria was about 2 when I first found myself on the other side of this. We walked into the supermarket holding hands and almost immediately she threw herself to the floor in a tantrum and I stood there powerless and hoping the ground would swallow me up as women gave me that knowing look of sympathy and men were grateful they weren’t me. A couple of hours later we were in A&E… she had thrown herself to the floor so violently that she had pulled a ligament in her elbow out of place so now I not only had the sympathy of strangers to deal with, but a dozen questions from the triage nurse making sure I wasn’t abusing my daughter.
Fast forward a few years and only now do I realise that was my first major experience of an autism meltdown. To an outsider these can look like a tantrum. Hands over ears, screaming, laying down kicking. But a meltdown is not a decision a child makes. There is no desired outcome as there is with a tantrum which is usually the result of wanting something the child can’t have. They can simply be the result of sensory overload. Think about the assault on our senses you get from the moment you enter the supermarket: bright lights, every colour you can imagine, smells of different foods, noise of people talking, tills, the tannoy and music (yes, I was in Asda so the last one is my own fault!). Looking back it is now obvious to me that these sights, sounds and smells hit Victoria the moment we entered, she hit the floor to get away from them and I (later) hit the bottle!
It’s not just the hypersensitivity that can lead to a meltdown though. If it was we could pre-empt them and use diversionary tactics to divert her attention and hopefully prevent the meltdown occurring. Stresses can build up over a period of time and only later manifest themselves as a meltdown. This weekend has been a prime example. We had a few hours in the local pub yesterday afternoon. OK… quite a few! But V and Emily were quite happy sitting at the table, colouring, playing games and being treated as “big girls” with their “adult drinks” whilst chatting to the bar staff. They were both, for the most part, very content little girls. But as tiredness kicked in we could see the stresses of the day in Victoria. She starts stimming (a subject for another day) and Becs kindly took her home to bed. You would think a night’s sleep would be all the reset she needed, but as we’ve often seen before it can be the next day that things then become too much and V will go into meltdown, and that’s exactly what happened this morning. She became very argumentative (which is out of character for her normally), was struggling to communicate and basically shutting down emotionally.
There are also the other “classic” issues for those with autism such as changes to routine that can have unexpected results. Luckily Victoria has transitioned well into each new school year so far but one year in particular she really struggled. It took several weeks and lots of chats with the teachers before we got to the bottom of it – the class didn’t have 30 ipads so the quizzes they would complete after reading a book would be done on random days. Victoria doesn’t do random, she needs routine. Allowing her to quiz on Monday, Wednesday and Friday completely changed her whole persona and she went back to loving school as she always had. A tiny little allowance made all the difference.
Sadly, as is often the case, Emily bears the brunt of her aggression in this state. It is absolutely heartbreaking that Emily now thinks it is normal to be pinched, slapped and bitten by her big sister who “can’t help it because she has autism”. It’s a hard balancing act of understanding the role autism plays here and punishing bad behaviour.
Anyway, I got her kit together and we left for football, despite knowing we would be there long before we needed to be. Victoria just needed to get out of the house and I know I did too. And here’s the other strange thing with a meltdown – it and the reason for it can be forgotten as quickly as they arrived. I mentioned to her coach before the game that V might not be up for the game today as she had been struggling this morning and talking incoherently on the way to the game. Yet we went out on the pitch and had a cracking game with much more interaction and involvement in the match than usual. It makes no sense…
When we have described a meltdown to others, including our own families, they are usually shocked. Victoria is generally a placid, friendly, happy-go-lucky little girl so hearing that she can be so violent towards her little sister is often met with disbelief. She’s never shown any of these signs in school and that is because of another word beginning with M… Masking. People with autism often devote huge amounts of energy to hiding their autism, trying to fit in to a world they don’t quite understand and suppressing their anxieties. It must be absolutely exhausting to try to hide who you really are for so much of the day. It is certainly stressful and that stress has to go somewhere… during the day at school V is like a Coke bottle being gentle shaken. The pressure is building up but no-one really sees it. Only when she is in a “safe place” – with us as home – does the lid come off and the true emotions are seen. And felt.
I said at the start that these posts would be my thoughts, feelings and opinions rather than “facts” but the subject of meltdowns is such an important and misunderstood one that I will end this post to a link that explains them and includes a video of young people with autism describing what a meltdown is to them: Ambitious about Autism – Meltdowns and Shutdowns
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