The way meltdowns present can change over time. “My body felt so overwhelmed and kind of in shock.” “I would scream a lot - not screaming as in being mad at anyone, but just a lot of loud vocalizations, shaking, and occasionally hitting things,” says Jacob Lewis, a 19-year-old student at Hofstra University who was diagnosed with autism in fifth grade. Their sink is plugged because they don’t have effective ways to communicate, so eventually, their brains overflow, resulting in a meltdown.” “Sensory issues like light, touch, noises, changes in routine, or other emotional stress are like that slow drip. That slow drip will eventually cause the sink to overflow if the drain is plugged,” Pervez says. They result from a buildup of sensory or emotional stimulation that chips away at a person’s ability to control their behavior. But the real bottom line here is that tantrums are a normal part of a child’s development, and your child will grow out of it.Īutism meltdowns, however, have no age limit. Each trigger slightly changes the ideal way to react (ignore them completely, work with them to do the task, and not give them that thing, respectively). They’re usually triggered by a child wanting attention, not wanting to do something, or not getting what they want. Temper tantrums follow a predictable pattern: A tantrum begins with often explosive high-intensity anger and winds down to whimpering sadness. And knowing that difference is crucial for parents of autistic children to be able to best help their kid get through the outburst. The two look similar, but the causes and strategies to manage them are vastly different. And because one in 44 children in the U.S. Just about every child is prone to temper tantrums once in a while. “But for a child with autism, he may be screaming because he has no way to communicate that he needs that toy to feel safe in his environment.” “Young children don’t have sophisticated emotional vocabularies, so a child screaming for a specific toy is going to look like bad behavior in a neurotypical kid,” says Noor Pervez, the community engagement manager for the Autism Self Advocacy Network. The National Autistic Society (NAS) defines an autism meltdown as an intense reaction - such as shouting, screaming, crying, kicking, lashing out, or biting - in response to being overwhelmed. ( To learn Fatherly’s best advice on how to stop temper tantrums, click here.) What you think may be a temper tantrum could actually be an autism meltdown. There are some nuances between tantrums - what triggers them especially, and how to deal with those triggers - but when your kid is autistic, it’s a whole other ball game. Whether at home or out at a park or the grocery store, a kid moves through a tantrum, from anger to sadness, while a parent stands by unable to do much of anything to shorten it. Temper tantrums are universal - and look pretty much the same for all kids.
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