frustration meltdowns....

[Finch]

I have NO idea where to put this...discipline? toddlers? special needs? It's a combination of all those factors, so I just decided to dump it here.

Anyway, ds just turned 3. He's about 12-18 mos. developmentally delayed in lots of areas, age appropriate in others. Language is a hard one for him. He has a vast vocabulary for labeling objects, but cannot do 2 word combinations well, and gets frustrated VERY easily. Because of his autism combined with the fact that he's a toddler, when he gets frustrated and freaks out, there's almost no calming him down. I try to talk softly to him and show him what to do or help him, but he just freaks and either tries to hit me, hit someone else, hit an object, or bends over and pushes his head into the floor and screams.

For example....tonight he was playing with our little cordless shark vacuum, he likes to just push it around the house. Well, the handle will click closed in the upright position when he puts it at a certain angle, and he can't figure out how to get it down on his own. When it clicks upright, he FREAKS. Screams, gets near panic, squawks "help help help!" then screams when you try to show him how to fix the problem himself and refuses to listen or even watch what you're doing. This is par for the course on lots of things. He cannot dress himself or feed himself. We are trying to teach him how, but it is slow going. When he's putting his arms in shirt sleeves, sometimes his thumb or finger will catch on the fabric and momentarily his hand will get stuck. He LOSES it. Screeches and screams IMMEDIATELY. I tell him calmly and quietly to calm down, to slow down, and try to show him it's not a crisis, but each time he just screams through what I'm trying to tell him until the problem is fixed. If I were to let him sit there with his arm stuck until he stopped screaming he would MELT DOWN and would literally be unable to stop the spiral of anger and frustration and he would just tantrum for like 30 minutes or until he collapsed. I've seen him do that with other things, so when he gets frustrated, we try to help him work through the problem even with him screaming because he just freaks.

He CAN'T tell us what is wrong a lot of the time, we do a lot of mind reading. He won't use picture communication or sign language, which of course makes everything more complicated.

Part of this is a special needs thing, but part of it I KNOW is normal toddler development, right??

My question is....what can we do to help him more?? When will this phase taper off or at least get less severe?

If you've read this far, bless you. :

[BellinghamCrunchie]

Its normal toddler behavior, but I think people usually feel that it resolves or gets better as the child gains communication skills. If your DS is not gaining communication skills, its possible that it might not get better as quickly.

I'm sure you have done a ton more research than I have regarding children with autism, so I don't know if it will be much help. And I certainly don't know your child like you do. But your post was looking lonely, and I have worked with children with autism for a very long time, so I thought I would post to see if there is anything useful you might gleam from it. My background is ABA, though, and that might be something you are not interested in.

Its been my observation that the frustration meltdowns in children with autism get worse rather than better with time. Well, its not so much that they are more intense, but as they get bigger and stronger, the meltdowns become difficult to deal with.

The first skill we attempt to teach is communication because it really does seem critical in avoiding many meltdowns. Sometimes it takes a long time because often children with autism don't imitate well at all - they can't look at the sign you are making and make it themselves. So to learn a sign, we used hand-over-hand guidance to the degree they would tolerate.

Its better to teach communication skills frequently throughout the day when the child is calm. Once they are melting down, its really hard for learning to occur.

Another thing we did is when a meltdown was predictable, practice when the child is feeling safe and in control how to get through the situation that is not going right. So, for example, with the vacuum, we might bring out the vacuum several times a day and work on teaching him to unlock it.

Sometimes during a meltdown a child could be encouraged to engage in a favorite stim to help him calm down (there is a whole other school of thought which says that stims should be eliminated in favor of more "normal" behavior). It seems to me that people with autism have particular difficulty voluntarily turning their attention to something else. Their sensory nervous system often seems to be running the show, not their cognition. It seems more useful to therefore try to engage with them at the sensory level rather than the cognitive level (e.g. redirect to a favored sensory activity rather than validate emotions and try to get them to problem-solve with you which is more cognitive and which you might do with a child without autism).

Its hard to know to what degree meltdowns are developmental (typical of a 2-year old) vs. to what degree autism is contributing to being stuck in frustration when they are so young.

[wendy1221]

I'm sorry to say that there isn't much you can do other than let them scream their frustration out, and do what you're doing, keep helping him work while he's screaming. Ds1 still has "temper tantrums" sometimes (AS) and ds3 is already starting to throw them. But ds1 and ds3 were/are both very early talkers, so I disagree that it's just the lack of communication for autistic kids. They just get incredibly frustrated. And as someone w/ AS myself, I like to explain it as we feel emotions MORE strongly than normal people (unlike what the old stereotypes used to say ), we just have a hard time recognizing WHICH emotion we are feeling, so frustration even over something minor sends us out of control. I try to help my kids name their emotions, which is very important. When he's frustrated, say "You're feeling very frustrated that this vacuum handled clicked closed. Let me show you how to open it again." He might not seem to hear you, but he probably does. IME, autistic people don't miss much.

Ds2 is NT and while he did throw the ocassional tantrum, they were never as long or as all out as the other 2 boys' were/are. I never thought to try turning their attention to their favorite stim. Or maybe I have. Ds3 likes to spin around and I guess I have picked him up and spun around in circles w/ good results when he starts having a meltdown. But ds1's stim was banging his head, and I always thought that was almost worse than the tantrums (he did it HARD! Not something I'd like to encourage.) And anyway, he usually did it during a tantrum anyway, just not the same way he did it when just stimming. Giving him a bear hug sometimes helps, and sometimes makes it worse. No matter what, you're taking a chance and what works one time might not the next.

So I guess if your little guy has a safer stim, that's a great idea to try that.

Gosh, we just watched "The Producers" last night. THinking about temper tantrums is making me think of Gene Wilder going into hysterics "I'm hysterical, I'm in hysterics, I'm hysterical!" "Now I'm wet and I'm still hysterical!" "I'm in PAIN, I'm wet, and I'm hysterical! No! Don't hit me again! It just heightens my sense of danger!" You just need to let them get it out, and help them w/ whatever is frustrating them so much.

ANd I do agree w/ BellinghamC, the meltdowns DO get worse as they get older. There's no helping ds1 AT ALL anymore when he has one, we just have to ride it out, whether that's 5 minutes or an hour of screaming. BUT, they don't happen very often anymore. Less than once a week, maybe less than once a month sometimes. Knowing his triggers is probably what helps that. We just avoid taking him to places where he gets sensory overload now.

[Finch]

Originally Posted by BellinghamCrunchie

Sometimes during a meltdown a child could be encouraged to engage in a favorite stim to help him calm down (there is a whole other school of thought which says that stims should be eliminated in favor of more "normal" behavior).

I am of the school of thought that stims are just fine, as long as they don't interfere with stuff necessary for living, like sleep and food. We all stim. Auties just stim in ways that are considered "socially abnormal," so people mistakenly try to squelch it. Stimming calms him down, I definitely don't try to squash it.

The suggestion of taking the vacuum out several times a day and teaching him how to work the handle is EXCELLENT. How come I didn't think of that?

Wendy, thanks for the insight, it's actually very helpful to know that he probably does hear me even when he's in such a spiral. We're trying so hard to help him identify his emotions when he has them, he's getting better at it. We try to be as calm and gentle with him as we can, it's so hard because the louder he gets the calmer we get and sometimes I wonder if he even hears us. So it's good to know he probably does.