Managing aggressive behaviour during a meltdown

[Iwanttotryandhelp]

I hope it is okay to ask this - I would really value some advice from autistic people rather than just posting on the sen board. if I offend anyone I will report to get this deleted.

My lovely, kind DD12 is autistic. She has a lot of anxiety (she is seeing CAMHs) about all sorts of things including school. And the return to school has triggered a lot of meltdowns at home (she masks at school). These have escalated to some hitting and shoving me which is upsetting. It's not too bad at the moment but I don't want it to escalate further (we've been their before)

If I try to remove myself she follows me, if I try to calm her/be calm she seems to see this as a green light to continue, if I tell her off things hugely escalate. So I'm struggling with this. I also don't know how to handle it afterwards - I normally wait till she is calm and then explain how this behaviour isn't acceptable etc, but I don't put in a consequence. My husband thinks this is wrong as she won't learn she can't hit/shove etc. I don't want her to be lashing out when she's a grown up 😭.

I would be so grateful for any advice/tips on how to deal with this. If you were like this in meltdowns as a child how did/could your parents have helped you. What did they get wrong (I'm certainly feel like I'm not handling it well). How did you learn to control your aggression as you got older.
Thanks very much for any help. Xx

She's lashing out at you because she feels safe with you. She doesn't feel safe at school.

Two things spring to mind:

• Better adjustments at school, such as sensory breaks, so there's less steam to blow off when she gets home.
• A different thing that she can hit and shove, like a punchbag in the garage. Or she can have a treadmill to run it off, or whathaveyou.

Consequences can be framed as choices: you can choose to hit and shove mum and get no PlayStation (or whatever thing she likes) or you can choose to hit the punchbag instead and get PlayStation after dinner. You can discuss behaviour in terms of whether the choices she makes work for her and the people around her. This idea shamelessly stolen from https://www.hgi.org.uk/resources/delve-our-extensive-library/education/good-choices-autism-and-human-givens

The smiley/sad/etc faces thing really helps with alexithymia.

Thank you for your comments @VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia they are really helpful.

I think the key point to remember is that if it's a true meltdown (and not just an angry tantrum, which we're just as susceptible to as NT folk), then she won't be in full conscious control of her actions.

That, of course, leaves you with a significant problem - you can reason with her when she's not in a meltdown, but that information and logic won't actually influence her in-meltdown processing.

I can only speak from my own experience, but my mother's approach was to appeal to my emotional processing - that's far more core to behaviour than logic and reason. Essentially, she acted like I'd physically hurt her during meltdowns, and reinforced that by showing me afterwards once I'd calmed down. That apparently caused me to pull back and go for inanimate objects more (I don't fully remember, for obvious reasons).

Something else you can do is to help her to recognise the onset of a meltdown before it happens, so she can remove herself and go somewhere safe. Combined with the above...you might find it gives her some agency in a process which usually has none (and this will definitely help her manage it as she grows into an adult).

For what it's worth, I haven't had a meltdown in years - this is partly because I've constructed a world around myself which generally insulates me from the kind of stresses and overloads that cause them, and partly because I can recognise the very early warning signs and get myself into a dark, quiet room before I reach the point of no return. I do, however, have far more frequent shutdowns (every three or four weeks, sometimes more) - you can kind of think of them as an internalised meltdown, where my brain can't really function at any high level, and communication capability is cut down to a minimum, but there's no outward physical manifestation. These are a lot more manageable, but still need to be managed and aren't often compatible with holding down a 9-5 and appearing to the world like a typical human.

@ntmdino Thank you for this - it is incredibly useful for me to think about. The angry tantrum versus meltdown is difficult for me to tease out to be honest. Most of her meltdowns and/or tantrums are driven/sparked by anxiety. So even if sometimes it isn't a full meltdown as such (as in she has some coherence) she is so driven by such fear/anxiety she doesn't really have control of what she is doing.

And thank you for sharing your personal experience too. That is very inspiring to hear that you have been able to form a lifestyle/techniques that have enabled to control your meltdowns - I hope my daughter is able to achieve the same in the future. The shut downs sound tough though💐.

Better adjustments at school to help reduce anxiety, but if that doesn't help, possibly home school as an option?
This subject can get abit contentious as it's a difficult decision to make, but I know I'd have been better off not being forced into a hostile environment when I was that age. (very crap school and clueless parents in the early 90s)

@wakeupandbefunky thanks for this - sorry to hear your school experience wasn't good. Definitely agree re reasonable adjustments - I need to push the school on this. Quite scared of homeschooling to be honest. But also want DD to be okay.