Meltdowns

when my daughter has a meltdown she becomes very violent ,it becomes a point of no return where you just have to ride the meltdown out , she smashes her room up or whatever room she is in , i try to get her to her room so i can control the damage and so as she doesn't hurt herself she scratches pinches pulls hair throws tv she has broke my nose , i have been in so much pain with the scratches every where i have cried myself to sleep , the one time her Dad left a hammer out just while he popped out she had a meltdown and well long story short i ended up in casualty ,thankfully the melt downs have lessened but they are no less violent when they do happen i even have to evacuate the house some times  .

I've seen my fair share of meltdowns over the years, one of my twins had a semi permanent bruise on his forehead from headbutting the floor when he was three or four. I have a 14 yo so called 'normal' child lol who throws furniture and goes nuts, I just keep her away from everyone until she calms. Like Deb said, try and control the damage.

All you can do is to stop them hurting themselves or anybody else. They always feel bad about it afterwards. Then they need plenty of love and understanding.

Hi, I have a nine year old daughter with autism. Lots of the literature and courses, like Early Bird, tell you to try to prevent melt downs from happening in the first place, but of course that's easier said than done sometimes. I find it very difficult to remain neutral and not get cross with my daughter when her behaviour spirals out of control. However, when I do manage to do this, I find that the only way I can bring her out of her melt down is to give her a cuddle and reassurance - which is very hard to do when she is being naughty. Once calm, I explain to her that she is losing a privilege (such as being banned from Nintendo Wii for a day) because of her behaviour, which she eventually accepts. When I carry through this punishment, her behaviour does improve remarkably for a few days until it is forgotton again.

I have tried to use the 'traffic light' or 'stop and think' srategy - where you  show something like a picture of a red light which symbolises 'stop and think' and then when calm, you show the orange and then green light - to symbolise 'go'. However, this didn't work because she has some sort of phobia of lights changing - it frightens her. Does anyone else have any other stop and think strategies that they have found that works?

Hi there,

I think its important to gain some understanding as to why a meltdown is happening, and see whether a pattern begins to occur. This way you may be able to prevent meldowns by addressing the original cause. Also, by monitoring your childs behaviour you may notice signs of aggitation prior to a full blown meltdown - many children i work with will clench their fists, grind their teeth, scream, or mumble repeatitive nonsensical words. If you can see this happening then you can try to prevent a meltdown occuring by either removing whatever it is that may be upsetting to them (are they oversensitive to something?), if they have a token board then increase the delivery of tokens for positive behaviour (this can be for seemingly very small things like having 'quiet hands' if theyve been hitting and pause for 2 secs etc), other things that sometimes work include giving the child squeezes on their arms and legs (although be careful not to reinforce negative behaviour, ie, hitting etc as this could then lead tomeltdowns occuring as a result of pairing pleasant squeezes with meltdowns, thus increasing behaviour...tactile reinforcers should be used as a preventative measure), or having a basket with pillows in where they can go and squeeze into a ball and squeeze pillows - this obviously is for younger children, but does seem to be effective.

As with what to do when a meltdown is occuring just try and remain as neutral as possible to avoid giving them any negaitve (or positive) attention, and continue to make sure they are safe. There is little else you can do at that stage. Afterwards, you could then carry out whatever procedures you have been advised to do, or if you havnt got a plan in place, then its always good to try and ignore it and start to positively reinforce more appropriate behaviours (this way teaching them to seek more positive attention). If your child is functioning at a level where they can understand social stories etc then it could be an idea to address this problem b reading a social story specific to them.

Hope that helps : )

Well coming from someone who used to take really nasty meltdowns I think I
could give a wee bit insight to why some autistic kids might have the meltdown
in the first place.

During my primary years I went to 5 primary schools. Number one was a really
weird experience for me in the way that I had to adjust to a very structured
place, some where I wasn't in control or just got uppset and didn't know how to say it. That has something usually to do with a
meltdown I found with other "aussies". Through my schools I found that school three handled things way better than the rest, though school one and two were mainstream.

The last two, four and five have to be my worst for quite different reasons for each. In school four I had very nasty meltdowns, and when I say that I mean I could destory the class room, over the sillyest of thing.

School five I hated. I was mvoed from four due to bullying from child in the unit there and mainstream children. Whilst in five if my tone of voice was deamed "threating" you were locked in a room for the rest of the day. Fair enough they had some real nasty  or difficult children in the unit there, but for children like me at the time (alot less difficult by the time I left four) 

So like I said, children with autism like the sense of controll becuase without that they become as i'v seen very edgey, some will be intimidated by strong male charcters and same for the woman. It all really depends on the child but 9/10 iv found it to be about a control thing they have going