Meltdown vs. Temper Tantrum

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With my son, a meltdown would occur after maybe a day or few days of being overly disagreeable about many things. It is like the whole family dynamic is off in some way. Maybe too many activities (such as during the holidays), the household stress might be big at that time, something out of the ordinary in going on in the family and his rumblings start. It is like we scold him several times for behaviour he knows isn't accepted and then finally we have a large meltdown where we have to force him to go to his room and cool off. The actual topic he had a meltdown isn't ever the problem. It could have been over anything. It just happens to be the final straw that sent him over the edge.

Thankfully, we only experience a true meltdown 2-3 times a year at most now. That doesn't mean he is always easy, but between him learning better coping skills and us learning not to engage in certain ways with him, we can keep him on his off days in the rumbling stage until it passes. Actually, the meltdowns he does have now are usually only when my husband or I are tired, exhausted and stressed ourselves and then he pushes, complains and argues at us so much that we backslide and lose patience with him and push back when we should stay unemotional.

As far as being too sheltered. I say stay with what your standards happen to be. Our family is LDS (Latter Day Saint or Mormon as most people know us by). If anyone knows anything about us, then you know we can be considered strict in most circles. I am sure we coud get more push back as he gets older, but so far, my son understands why we have the standards we have and seems to have become rigid in regards to them. I wouldn't change my standards just to cave into peer pressure. That seems like a precedent I wouldn't want to start. Just because they will hear or see objectionable material in other places isn't a good enough reason for me to allow it into my home. I have made adjustments as I have felt appropriate. For instance, my son and his twin are almost 10. They do not watch PG-13 movies. However, they did want to see these last 2 Harry Potter movies. I had read the books and allowed them to read them, so they know the story, but I wasn't sure what the movie version would be. I watched the movies beforehand and then allowed them to watch them. That was a situation I felt comfortable with.

I think how AS kids like to have everyting explained throws us off sometimes. Usually my son needs to have everything explained in detail and I talk to him as he is much older, but then when he is overly sensitive and emotional, he acts less mature than his actual age. If I try to talk to him in that manner in that moment, he becomes worse. It is like he doesn't want to hear logic in that moment. It is only later, when he is calmer, that the logic can get through.

As far as punishment. Our drop dead rule for him has been no touching anyone when you are angry. That will get him punished no matter what the circumstance. We feel that that is one rule he needs to learn to never cross.

In the particular instance you're talking about, I probably would take something off him and explain that he has to learn to control how he feels about that. For our 11 year old, he loses computer time because that's his special interest. I agree with not punishing meltdowns, but int the long-term kids need to learn how to process their anger, because if they don't learn to when they are younger then it just creates bigger problems when they are older. If I take something off him, I don't get mad at him myself (like I do with my other kids) - I just say very calmly that I know he finds it really hard to not get upset, but we need to work on being able to cope with those things so that when he goes to the next step up in school he won't get in trouble etc. etc.

In similar situations I try to work through with our AS son, what he needs to do to calm himself out of the outburst. When he is yelling and losing his rag about something, I usually just stand there saying, "you need to take yourself to your room and get a book out and look at it until you calm down" - I just keep saying it over and over again until he goes. Then he can go to his room, feel really mad, let it out, calm down, and he usually comes back and carries on like nothing happened. Over a period of about two years doing this, he has learnt that he doesn't get his own way all the time, and he also often takes himself off to his room voluntarily, or I only have to tell him a couple of times. He has got used to the fact that Mum and Dad don't always say "yes", and he has become a lot better coping with getting let down about things at school as well.