How do you handle your child's meltdown?

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Wow, I love the suggestion about the yield. I think I will discuss this with my family. My daughter is 13 and she gets upset when going places unless she thinks we're going to the Goodwill LOL. Often when I drag her along she wants to stay in the car so since she's older now she stays home a lot. When we're going to the in-laws for dinner once in a while it depends on what they are having whether she wants to go or not. We make her go, but then after she eats she is ready to go and starts hounding us to go home. We are always explaining to her that we are "visiting" and she needs to find something to do because the more she interrupts the longer it will take. Now I think I will find something for her to do while there (like a puzzle or playing solitaire or something) since you all suggest heading off the meltdown before it starts. And thanks to Tracker for the reminder about punishing for meltdowns. It made me think about being female and having PMS occasionally, the feeling of knowing you are agitated by everything, recognizing it is happening, but the control it takes to maintain yourself is exhausting and I just need to stay away from everyone on those days. I know if I do snap out on my kids or husband how bad I feel afterwards and how I can see with clarity that my behavior was wrong and unjustified in the given circumstances. I think many women can identify with this analogy. I do see that probably the best punishment is just fixing the damage done by the meltdown and sometimes that does mean that she can't have the privilege because she's put everyone in a state that the thing she wanted can't happen now or she's wasted so much time arguing that the window of opportunity is now closed. I can think of so many times in the past where she's hurt my feelings so bad and I have had to tell her, You can't hurt me in this way and then expect me to take you places. Now I am not going anywhere because I am too upset. This makes her mad but this is a natural consequence of hurting others. She asks me what does being upset have to do with taking me to the mall, it has nothing to do with it. And I have to explain to her why it does. The other day she told me that that making decisions out of emotions was stupid her way was better. She had a friend come over and that friend assured us she had a ride home. She never does but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and since she is my daughter's only friend I am easily pushed over by my desire for her to have a friend rather than than logical reasoning that this kid won't have a ride home and I will have to drive her home in a snow storm. So, I stupidly believe that she will have a ride home and let her come over. Guess what, she didn't have a ride home and I had to take her home. So when my daughter tells me my decision making was stupid I was able to demonstrate to her that had I acted out of logic and not emotion, her friend would not have come over and I while I wouldn't have been troubled to take her home she wouldn't have gotten her way and been able to spend some time with that friend and how that completely logical decision might have affected her BUT likewise I was able to demonstrate why having a balance of logic and emotion is important in relationships with people. I don't know if that made any sense to any of you, but it was a good teaching moment for her and I have been able to several times say NO, your friend can't come over because she lied to me and I won't tolerate that behavior. I have to find a way to get my daughter a new friend because this one is nothing but TROUBLE>...Sorry I got completely off track.

Our daughter had been doing fairly well until recently when dh had some changes at work and now we are dealing with meltdowns. She was awake for 45 minutes and I could hardly get her out the door in time for school. She ate some breakfast ok, but would not get dressed and whined and fussed constantly about going to school. Telling me things like go away and so on.

When we finally got out the door she ran from me and tried to play with the neighbors dog *we have problems with some neighbors letting their dogs run across our yard and they are descent people, but it is becoming a huge problem especially when I am trying to control wrong behavior*. I did what the school councilor just told me about picking her up and taking her to the car. Im sure the neighbors were watching the show as they are nosey

I have material from the school to read and view today on dealing with the meltdowns and bad behavior at home that thankfully doesn't occur in public alot for now. She admittedly says she doesn't know much about any sensory challenged kids which she somewhat has problems with. May have to speak with the teacher this time about it when parent conferences begin.

Wow Im feeling burned out as dh is traveling with work lately and her grandparents are busy with relative that suffered a ministroke. They've been a big help, but I don't want them stretched too thin at their age. I so love coming here for advice and support everyone. Thnx

I'm so sorry things are difficult, Pook.

I think this is about par for the course when there is a disruption in schedule - the good news is, once she acclimates to the new routine, things should improve. We have this issue whenever there is a day off school, or whenever there is vacation - DS takes a long time to get back into his "groove," but he eventually does get there.

I have twin sons on the spectrum. There meltdowns are very quick and usually trying to figure the base of it and talk through can help. If not timeout for a bit to come down does well

Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting about this topic! My son has meltdowns, and in the past, I would spend all my time during the meltdown trying to talk with him, reason with him, all to get him to calm down (at the time we didn't know what was going on). And no, it didn't work. It is only very recently where we are letting him go to a location by himself until he calms down, and then talk afterwards. He is always apologetic for his outbursts. We are still in the process of trying to figure out how to avoid them, though. Any thoughts on that?

It's great to see this topic. Time out is a no go here. My son's meltdowns are only fueled by being sent away (to his room or honestly anywhere) - he completely lets loose if he thinks he will be alone with himself so most of the time I have to sit with him, not touching, not reasoning, just calmly talking to him until he is done. It's SO painful because he says awful things and recently has started spitting on me, but you can see that he is terrified of being alone with himself when he is raging like that. He never gets "what he wanted" at the end of a meltdown, but often times he doesn't seem to care anyway. The desire is gone and he and I are exhausted. My husband (pre-diagnosis) was adamant that he be punished for these tantrums but eventually admitted defeat since any punishment just escalated into a meltdown and it was a never ending cycle.

Korimom - my daughter is the same way if I try to send her to her room to calm down. She needs to be with me when she is melting down and I can't talk to her or reason with her either. I am pretty much there just to make sure she doesn't hurt herself. She is 13 and will bash her head repeatedly into the wall, hit herself in the forehead and run and throw herself into the floor. I agree that punishment is not helpful and makes things worse for us.

Just chiming in here with what we have done in the past.

Most of my son's major meltdown have occurred at school and punishment at home is a loss of electronics either for the day or the weekend depending on the severity of the meltdown (like did the teacher have to call home or was there some sort of physical threat made against someone else).

A couple of summers ago though we were having a particularly rough time with at least a meltdown a week. These meltdowns including yelling, throwing things, and name calling until finally I had had enough. I told my son that I didn't like the boy he became when this happened, that his face became ugly and mean. I told him that I didn't like "that boy" and that he needed to leave. When that by itself didn't help I went out and purchased one of those long mirrors that people usually buy for kids going off to college and put it up right next to his bed. When a meltdown would start he was made to go sit on his bed and look at "that boy", to see the ugly faces he made when he said mean things. Within a week or two there was a decrease in the occurrance and severity of these meltdowns (no they didn't completely stop) and the first time he had to spend time looking in the mirror was quite something. After a few minutes of yelling at the boy in the mirror he began to cry really, really hard. It was like he was finally seeing what we saw and didn't like it. Myself I stood outside his room (where he couldn't see me of course) and cried myself b/c I felt like he had finally gotten it.

The other thing that I've done when he's gotten really mad but not progressed to full meltdown mode, is to sit him down and explain to him that b/c of whatever had happened he had every right in the world to be angry but he didn't have every right to be mean and nasty to others. He now doesn't like when I tell him this b/c I said it so often. He'll tell me, "I know, you tell me that ALL THE TIME" and I just smile.

I tend to agree a lot with what Tracker said.

For us, the most important starting point was being able to recognize what is a tantrum and what is a meltdown. Tantrums do not involve a complete loss of control and are usually the result of not getting one's way. For my daughter, she is able to continue to argue, she can be deliberately mean, and she can hit. All of it is to a large degree still volitional, and if you give in to her demands, she will immediately stop. Tantrums are nearly always anger based. Switch to a meltdown...her speech is no longer goal directed and it is often repetitive and not responsive to anything you say, if she speaks at all. She may lash out verbally or physically, but she really is not "there" with you. It is almost as if it is all purely instinctual. And there are no "demands" to give in to. You cannot capitulate to make her stop. Meltdowns seem to be more...I don't know...fear based. It might look like anger at first, but when you boil it down, she seems...like a cornered animal. Any "fight" is more reactive or "blind" than truly aggressive. By aggressive, I mean where the primary intent is an active wish to harm someone else. I see that in tantrums, not in meltdowns.

Tantrums are dealt with as a behavioral issue. This may include revocation of privileges or punishments. You cannot threaten or strong-arm your way into getting what you want. Period. Violence is met with punishment. Always.

But meltdowns are never met with revocation of privileges or punishments. She is not in control of her behavior. It would be, in my mind, like punishing a child with seizure disorder for breaking a vase in the middle of a seizure.

The "response" to a meltdown is to figure out how it got to that point and what could have been done to avoid it. For us, meltdowns brew. There is usually some sort of emotional or physiological overload that was not recognized and dealt with early on. When they were little, the "forensic autopsy" was mainly focused on me: what could I have done to prevent this, but as they are getting older, the focus has started shifting to them. I will not always be around, so they need to start recognizing their own warning signs and make a change independently. My son is 12 and is pretty good at this now. He goes to the nurses' office at school when he is starting to feel overwhelmed. She lets him lay down quietly for a few minutes, and then he goes back to class. Hormones are making this a little harder for him, but he is actually pretty good at recognizing (afterward) that whatever caused the meltdown was a hormone-related overreaction, and not reality based. My daughter still needs a lot of help with this at school. She is usually escorted from the room once a meltdown starts. She is in a mainstreamed classroom and unfortunately, sometimes the teacher misses the early warning signs. Not her fault. She's got 24 kids to monitor. They practice deep breathing with her, which seems to help shorten the duration. My kids usually don't meltdown at home anymore (except my son's have gotten more frequent because of puberty). But when they do, they most frequently need to be left alone. My son paces and wails. Though sometimes my daughter needs to be held tightly until she calms down. At any rate, talking to them in mid-meltdown almost always makes things worse. They can't understand what I am saying anyway.

One other thought regarding time-outs.

When my kids associated time-outs with punishment, they would get even more upset when I tried to make them take one.

Now, we recognize time-out as a positive experience, where one can focus on regaining a sense of balance. Time-outs are not punishment here. They are permission.

Really good thread.

I wish I had something positive to contribute, but many thanks to all for sharing your collective wisdom.

We are only a year and a bit into learning about all this and still adjusting. A pattern I am a bit worried about seems to have developed with my wife wanting to punish the children and my arguing, not always effectively, for just containing the effect.

Unfortunately, I also melt down on occasion. I wish I was better at heading that off.

Hopefully we'll all get better as we go.

^^^^This!

We use calming timeouts, which is apparently what they are supposed to be, as opposed to a euphemism for being sent to ones room as a punishment. We started out with the punishment interpretation because I thought that was what they were supposed to be. Once I found out about the other kind, and tried it, it went so much better.