How do you handle your child's meltdown?

Post Reply New Topic

Ryan is 11 and is very verbally abusive and disrespectful when he is in meltdown mode. He is generally not too disrespectful at other times (considering his age). As a matter of fact, his level of disrespect is often how I see a meltdown coming on. He used to be violent when he was younger, but this is not the case anymore. He almost always comes to me and apologizes for his words and yelling afterwards.

So my questions are:

1. What are your handling meltdown strategies?
2. Are there ever any repercussions for things that happen during a meltdown?
3. Do you do post meltdown recovery/teaching?

Thanks.

I have 11 year old twins both with AS and their meltdowns can be very different. We generally try and head one off before it starts.
We have never had any sort of abuse so we are very lucky there. We get general screaming and lots of tears. It's the negativity I find hard to bear, the I wish I was dead, You hate me kinda stuff. When one of my kids has a meltdown the other will get v upset so it can escalate into an attack on 2 fronts.
Not sure if I handle it the right way but we have a timeout and have found that time in their bedroom away from the situation clams them right down and like your lad they will come down and apologise for their behaviour, usually very quickly. When everyone is calm we discuss what happened and how we cope with it in the future.
But thats in the home, public meltdowns and those that happen is school are more difficult. e.g. she had a major paddy in school during the week (over puberty stuff in class) and had to be taken out. Her teaching assistant is wonderful and has a real understanding of her needs. Again we take time to discuss the incident at home and try to understand the triggers.
I am a big believer in positive reinforcement and am always praising positive behaviours - need to keep reminding myself to do so
I think its about understanding them and letting them know that you do and work together on developing a way to cope and always, always tell them they are loved no matter what.

Very nice thread to have started. I don't have anything to add but am curious to read others responses. I do find my 13 year old daughter is calmer after I send her to her room, but generally she is unwilling to go instead fighting with me over that. She follows me around grilling me as to why my reasons aren't good enough to justify the answer that I gave her. If by chance I can actually get her to go to her room she is generally the better for it. She rarely apologizes for anything that she says unless I demand an apology, and generally after she does give the apology she thinks I should just be over it which is hard too but now that I know she is ASD it is getting much easier to not take things so personally.

Bittersweet, It was just recently when I started to see more apologies from my son after meltdowns. I am attributing it to the fact that since I have learned about his diagnosis just this year, I have been much more compassionate and understanding before during and after meltdowns. I was a pretty strict parent with my older daughter, and I would never allow her to speak to me the way he does during a meltdown, so I was always trying strict measures for his behavior. When I realized that he wasn't really in control and that he was more tortured by his actions than I was, I told him I understood that this was an area that was really challenging for him, and that I was going to work with him on making things better. Since then, more apologies, a little better behavior during meltdowns.

eta: Yes, getting him to his room is always challenging but usually works. I was thinking of making an area of the basement family room his 'area' where he can go and be by himself to calm down. I think he views the going to the bedroom thing as punishment and that is why I get such resistance. I will try it and keep you posted.

Solitude, solitude, solitude. Once the verbal abuse starts, DS is sent to his room. There is not much we can do once a meltdown occurs and the best I am able to manage is for him to be alone until he has calmed down...this has been working well for us now that we have established that he absolutely, positively HAS to go to his room when sent (he usually holds it in until we are home.) We also absolutely, positively, do NOT bother him when he's in there, especially if he seems to be playing or enjoying himself. He is allowed out when he's able to apologize appropriately (this often takes two or three tries; the first apology will usually come with a request for something he isn't allowed to have and will be followed by name-calling, whereupon he gets sent back to his room.)

We have consistent consequences for physical hitting: no TV and no physical contact from Mom or Dad (depending on who he hit) for 24 hours, no candy for that afternoon. This is more to emphasize how high-stakes physical hitting is in the meltdown hierarchy, and it has been successful. Verbal abuse (name-calling, threats) cost $.25 for each incident. We fine-tuned these consequences over time to make sure we had something that was neither draconian nor inconsequential.

This week, we had two days of verbal abuse and explosiveness; he was like a raw nerve. I waited until our bedtime to have a cuddle and a chat. I mentioned that because of name-calling, he'd lost $2.50 in the course of one afternoon, and that I was wondering if something might be upsetting him. It took a while, but finally he burst out that his teacher was "mean" and "pushing him" to learn (his teacher is awesome, but decidedly strict,) and he couldn't stand school...further questioning on my part uncovered that the school social worker had made a "deal" with him to stay out of her office for a full week in return for a toy he really wanted - so he traded away his ability to regulate himself at school and it was coming out at home. I'll be having a word with the social worker...grr.

We just try to help him avoid them - much better for all of us.

Typically, when a meltdown does occur, we (parents or teachers) didn't do our part to manage the situation, so I don't hold him accountable. If anyone in our house does something intentionally wrong, we do hold them accountable.

When we can't avoid the meltdown, we just try to keep everyone and everything safe. I don't think being punished helps - no one would choose the meltdown.

Don't get me wrong - I understand that my son isn't in control, and that we need to be vigilant about protecting him. The punishment isn't intended to prevent meltdowns or teach him to stop one - but he needs to know that there are consequences to certain actions and words, whether he's in full control or not.

I don't want him growing up expecting that the world will excuse violence or violent language because he has a disability.

I get it. We tried that approach and it just left our son feeling defeated and avoiding situations wher the consequences are evident. (for instance if he had a meltdown at school, then wasn't earning fun friday because of the meltdown, he wouldn't go to school Friday). So for us, the consequences worsened our lives. I think the reality of the meltdown itself is sufficient natural consequence - it is pretty horrid.

I'm not judging others' approach - just saying what we do and why. I was just reflecting on where we were a year ago and the progress has been astounding, mostly because of the support and what we have learned here

Thanks everyone, no I wasn't OP but this is helping SSOOOO MUCH! You know when your child has hurt you and then you hear them in their room having a good time and enjoying his/her self after they just disrupted the whole family it has a tendency to piss a person off LOL. Thanks LOL keep it coming.....

In an NT kid, this is known as "getting away with it." In a kid on the spectrum, this is known as "rebooting the internal hard drive." My son is just trying to restore his brain to functionality, which sometimes means he pretends things are completely normal until things are. Sadly, this gets him in trouble at school - he would hit a kid and "not even be sorry." They had no understanding that my son had acted automatically, and wasn't able to process what had happened, much less react appropriately.

This is comforting to hear. This has been something that in the past I've had to explain to other moms and teachers. But, even though I know this logically, I still have trouble with it myself. In general him "not acting sorry" has been a sore point for me... especially with his sister. I remember one time when he chucked a basketball at her head so hard that it knocked her over and she started crying. I got upset because he seemed so oblivious. I said, "What should you do now?" hoping he'd say, "I should comfort her" or "Say I'm sorry." But, of course, he said, "I should put the ball in the basket." After talking to his awesome Special Ed teacher, she assured me that he is not without compassion. Now, I know that I have to be really specific and say, "Hey, now it's time to comfort her. You see she's crying? It's because you hit her in the head. Can you go tell her you're sorry and give her a hug please?" We do that all the time and he'll do it, but man, when will it become automatic for him? Or will it ever?


As far as meltdowns are concerned. We'll have periods where he won't have any for while. But then they'll rear their head when I'm not expecting! It's usually during transitions so it ends up entailing me carrying him to the car while he's crying and perseverating on the fact that he doesn't want to go where we are going, or something. Usually, when I push him through, he is fine wherever we go. Maybe the ride in the car settles him down? But, lately, it hasn't been working so well. Like, he doesn't recover by the time we get where we are going necessarily. So, I'm not sure exactly what to do. Plus, as he gets older, we won't be able to just pick him up and carry him!! The problem is that it always happens when we're going somewhere. My only tools have been to try to avoid it by making a visual schedule or something... sometimes it's not working though.

When he has a meltdown and we are just at home. I do usually have him go to his room to settle down. Sometimes I have to go with him and hold him to make him stay. Or, if I put a book on CD on for him, he'll stay by himself.

GREAT thread!!
This is an area we struggle with. We've done a lot of things wrong over the years and as he has gotten older we have had to change how we handle melt downs.

One big challenge right now was hinted at above. His age and size. He is 15 and 5' 8". I am 5' 4" and he loves that! It also imposed a problem when it came to disagreements, pre-melt down and melt down.
He loves to get right close and look down at me during any of those times. Once he is looking down at me it seems to feed his emotions, fuel the fire. So he must sit down when he starts getting upset. The 2 places he loves to start things is the kitchen when I'm cooking or when I am setting at my computer (he can really tower over me then). So in the kitchen if he wants to discuss something with me while cooking he must sit on the stairs and we will talk, me at the computer he must sit on the floor beside me or any were else we should both sit down. If he isn't calm enough to sit down then he is told he isn't calm enough to talk and needs to go take a break and calm down.

Something we use to do wrong is punish at home for things that happened at school, The school punishes him and then we were double punishing him at home. He had some of his worse melt downs over this because he had already did his punishment for what happened.

One thing that we have really tried to work on is the ping-pong battles. When the words start ping-ponging back and forth nothing but escalation of his emotions and ours will follow.
We as parents had to stop trying to prove our point and get the last word in when dealing with our son. Just as a lot of other things are done differently then NT people so is Arguing, reasoning and acceptance. It has to do with some of the keys NT people pick up on during the arguing that my son does not, body language, sarcasm, double meanings, even tone of voice and volume. Once every one is calmed down then we get back to what happened and what the consequence will be. It's a work in progress.

We do send him to his room. And he will still fight it but it is getting better once we sat him down and explained it isn't for punishment. It is so he can have a chance to calm down, adults can calm down and to help things not get any worse with the words that get said.
I told him when he is sent to his room it is a "time out' for everyone.

Pre-melt down
We have also just started a "safety" word. The word can be anything that would mean something to the child. We chose "Yield" because it fit the goal we were after. When we start to see him get upset and head towards melt down we say Yield. Just as in road safety that means, slow down or stop, make sure its safe before you continue. Safe meaning when you are calm.
He is visual so to start I have made a yield sign with paper and taped it to a pencil. Most of our melt downs are at home. Things start getting out of hand I say Yield and hold up the sign if its near by. The person using Yield must say nothing but Yield over and over until a normal voice is being used, he has taken some deep breaths or what ever he needs at the moment to calm down.
Now the most important part of Yield to him is the "continue". He will get to "continue" to talk once he is calm. We also can say STOP once everything possible has been said and the conversation is now done. He has a few repeats of the word STOP then it is ROOM over and over until he goes to his room
The only way this will work is to be consistent (my struggle). Once yield is said never say another word until he is calm, Once stop is said never say another word until he has stopped and never respond to anything he says as he is going to his room.

2nd most important thing to my son is when conversations or talks get out of hand and he ends up punished because what was being said was misunderstood. The adults start getting mad and upset because of misunderstanding what he meant or he misunderstood what we were asking and he provided the right answer to the wrong question.
He now has the right to say "Yield" to slow down the conversation and stop the parents from getting mad when he is being misunderstood or when he is confused.
He may not say Stop because that is to mean no more discussion on the topic.
He may say Room. When he calls room he goes to his room to calm down and the adults are to calm down. Adults can not follow and keep talking or talk at his doorway. Th conversation is to continue with in 15 -30 minutes after everyone has calmed down again. The first thing he is to do is explain why he called Yield. Tell us the misunderstanding or confusion.
Still all a work in progress.

I can't wait to hear what others have to say.

Brenda, I really like this - and I'm going to start with the sitting down; my son isn't my height yet, but he tenses up and pulls himself up to his full height - sitting down would make this difficult to do, and might be a better interim step than sending him directly to his room.

I urge you, I strongly, strongly urge you, before this ever happens again, to research Martin Seligman's research into what he calls learned helplessness.

The quick version is when bad things happen and there's nothing you can do to make them not happen or make them less painful, you give up hope and quit trying to improve your lot in life.

I know punishment or things perceived to be punishment are a controversial topic on this forum, and I wouldn't be bringing it up - except this system has worked for us. We are down to 1 violent incident in the last 6 months, from one or two every month or so. (the recent one involved another kid hurting him, it was more like self-defense.) We are still working on his threatening language, but that has lessened as well. In part, what he's learned is that if he doesn't go to his room when we ask, he will likely lose control and there will likely be an explosion...and then consequences.

Part of the key was finding consequences that had some meaning, but were not a huge loss to him, either. The imposed automatic consequences also short-circuit my son's tendency to beat himself up over an incident - he is far harder on himself than we are, and more likely to frustrate himself to the point of giving up.

Hello there

First up, this is a common question, so a lot of people have already addressed the main points, but I thought I would just add in some clarification that I think would be useful. For starters, the term 'meltdown' is a somewhat poorly defined word. Some people set the bar for meltdown at 'mildly emotion and perhaps a bit rude'. Other people set the bar for meltdowns at 'incredibly overwhelmed with uncontrollable emotions'. I personally think the later description is a better definition, but ultimately, it doesn't really matter as you approach the problem the same way.

The first step is to recognize that the problems are due to uncontrolled emotions, which are most likely either caused by, or worsened by stress. Learning what causes your child to get overwhelmed and stressed out, and then avoiding or handling these things differently, will greatly reduce the problems that your child has.

The next step is to recognize the emotional overload and stress building, and then take steps to reduce that. The advice given about taking a break, putting the child in their room until they have calmed down, and postponing the problem until after everybody is calm are all helpful bits of advice.

And most importantly, the last step is to teach the child to recognize and heed the signs that his emotions and stress levels are too high, so that he learns to avoid problematic situations, and self regulate himself before he winds up causing himself to have another meltdown.

There are indeed repercussions for what happens during a meltdown, but they come by themselves; you don't need to add any more (i.e. punishment). If you have never had a meltdown, then you really don't understand what it is like, but allow me to ASSURE you that it is not a fun thing. When your emotions take over, and your helpless to stop it, you aren't enjoying yourself. The closest thing I can compare it to is an emotional breakdown, and I don't think anybody would view those as pleasant events.

It is only reasonable that the child has to repair the damage, and fix the problems that he caused during a meltdown. And getting an apology seems like a reasonable request, but adding unnecessary punishment, and making him even more miserable then he already is when he has had a meltdown isn't helping. It's just making a bad situation worse. The goal is to teach him to recognize and prevent future meltdowns, not make him suffer even more for things which he didn't want to have happen in the first place.

As far as post meltdown teaching, yes absolutely! That is perhaps the best possible thing you can do. Figure out what caused your child to become so overwhelmed and learn to handle that differently so you don't wind up with the same situation again.

Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, you might want to read the book I have listed in my signature. It goes into quite a lot more information regarding meltdowns, how to predict them, and how to handle them. Thus far, it has helped lots of people, and hopefully it will help you too.