Meltdown of massive proportion

[Sdpbody]

I just wanted to vent that my 4 year old has had the biggest meltdown that she's had in well over a year. Biting, hitting, screaming... she could not calm down at all. It took 1.5 hours to get her from start to finish where she let me get her dressed and put her to bed with me cuddling her.

I'm drained and could just cry.

I believe she has autism and we are finally getting somewhere with diagnosis, but at school she is a delight. She was described as "easy going, friendly, likeable and bright" at parents evening, but this is NOT what we often see at home.

I just needed to vent.

My sympathy

What happened beforehand?

It's hair washing night and she was screaming at me to stop. I said "please stop shouting at me" and then she hit me on the face, and I said she was going to have to stay upstairs after bath if she did it again, and she did it again, so had no choice but to follow through. I'm very good at following through with what I say, but this was the first time she hasn't been allowed downstairs to play for 20 mins after bath.

Sympathies from me too. My son is just turned 6 and we still get this from him occasionally. Thankfully not 1.5 hour ones, but we definitely were at 4. I also suspect he is neurodiverse in some way, though he is also pretty good at school, they are not overly concerned. It's the regulation at home that is an issue though.

I totally agree with following through and see why you did what you did. For us, routine is really important and sometimes taking that away isn't worth it to deliver a consequence. I've done it myself (e.g. not following instructions at bedtime has meant losing story time as we are late getting into bed) and then wished I hadn't when dealing with the resulting explosion. So now I try really hard to take a moment and leave the room following an incident, then think through what I'm going to say before I say it. Particularly if he is already disregulated. I think it depends if the behaviour is a conscious choice or if it comes from that disregulated state- if the latter, I often decide that a consequence won't have any effect and will make it worse.

None of this is criticism by the way, just explaining where I am with it as someone a couple of years further on than you! Be kind to yourself!

@capnfeathersword , I completely see what you mean. It's so hard to know if she has conscious choice over what she is doing, and it seems for the last 2/3 times, just before I action the consequence, she will comply, so she knows that I was about to follow through, and quickly changed her behaviour. But this time, she just couldn't cope with the consequence, and I did feel so bad for her. It's tricky to know what to do for the best. 😭

Yes definitely. So tricky. We have had some success with positive consequences. So I might say something like "hitting mummy is not ok, it hurts. We don't hit" then I might say "I need to see that you're ready to be kind/ speak in a kind voice/ apologise for hitting mummy and then we can go downstairs and have a cuddle/ some warm milk before bed/ an episode of octonauts before bed" - basically anything that you know will help regulate them. Sometimes we do some deep breaths to get to that point where we are ready to go and do the positive activity. We do the finger breathing or we also do the 'picking lemons' technique.

I know some people don't agree with asking kids to apologise but I always try to get an apology out of mine because I think it's just part of them acknowledging that their behaviour was unacceptable and has hurt someone, even if they didn't mean to.

My in-laws totally think we are too soft and that this approach rewards the behaviour but I think of it as associating a positive with calming down. It is a different approach to managing the behaviour of our older child, who had more garden variety tantrums/ misbehaviour. My DS has done much better on this approach and I think it has also taught him what helps to regulate him, as he gets older and needs to regulate himself. But we aren't perfect and sometimes I will lose it and get cross because I am human, we all are!

I doubt I could be a parent today. I would refuse to cuddle with someone who hit me.

It sounds like the hair washing pushed her beyond what she could cope with which makes sense if you suspect autism. Obviously hitting you is completely unacceptable but it does seem like she was in a frenzy and not fully in control. Agree it’s tricky to know how best to respond.

@OhcantthInkofaname

You say 'someone' like you're referring to a random adult. We are discussing a 4 year old who is being assessed for emerging additional needs.

It's this sort of passive aggressive, smug comment that makes it so much harder for parents navigating this sort of journey.

I'm sharing my own experience of parenting my own struggling child. I'm sharing what worked for us.

OP there is a special needs board on MN where you may get helpful/ understanding responses.

Agree @capnfeathersword. I am on a similar journey with some very very challenging situations and feel I have made kids of errors in my trials to find what works best. I’ve been strict, kind, rewards, sanctions etc etc tried all sorts to better understand how my child works and how to help them. One of the things that has made this possible is that my extended family have throughout told me that I’m doing a good job and to just keep trying. Knowing that my child is loved and not judged and that I am supported to make the decisions I see fit (even when they don’t turn out well) has made the world of difference. This sort of snooty judgement is the sort of thing that makes an extremely difficult situation actually really lonely and dangerous for parents of complex children who already feel isolated enough.

I could have written something very similar earlier this week with my five year old. There are signs she is like one of her brothers, who was thought to be borderline autistic, but it actually turned out he's dyslexic; he struggles with language and communication.

My daughter has never really ever had tantrums, but suddenly had a few over just a couple of days; the last of which she hit me. I'll admit I felt a wave of anger and my parenting at that point wasn't brilliant. But then the light bulb went on and I realised the situation was getting out of hand and I was the adult in it. I encouraged her to take ten deep breaths with me. She didn't, but as I did, she watched and also began to calm down. I then put her on my lap and snuggled her in and asked if she was feeling angry. She shook her head, so I asked if she was feeling sad. She nodded and we spoke about why. I admitted that I had felt angry. We also spoke about how it's not nice to use our hands. The day after this, my daughter was poorly and her temperature was soaring. I can now step back and see the pattern in her behaviour deteriorating and the fact she was coming down with something.

Your approach led to the tantrum from what you've said. Maybe it is time for a new approach?

What has been gained by being so rigid? Don't get into a power battle with a child you suspect has autism.

If you suspect autism you have probably read about masking? It’s common for parents of autistic children to find that they are well behaved while out of the house around adults in other environments, but then the stress of holding that mask gets let out when they get home.

My eldest has been diagnosed with ASD and sometimes has these meltdowns. I have found it best not to ‘punish’ him for these as that tends to make him more wound up. Instead I now try to keep my voice very calm and acknowledge that he is feeling angry or sad, then say I will wait till he calms down

We understand so much more about child development than we used to, we'll understand even more in the future.

If you think the hair washing was a trigger maybe read up on sensory processing. Often accompanies add but you can put things in place to help without a diagnosis. Think about the hair wash in detail of sensory onslaught. Is the shampoo too perfumed? Is it water running down face or into ears that is upsetting? Is it too much rubbing of head/pulling on hair? Then figure out what you can change? I scented shampoo/ face guard /swim goggles/ mimimise rubbing/ let her lie down to rinse out instead of pouring water over head. If something is triggering her fight/flight response in this way things will not get better by just pushing it she will just get more terrified

Understanding Ds’ sensory profile has been so important for us. We all have eight senses - the obvious 5 (touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing) and then proprioception, introspection, and vestibular. Children who are autistic will crave some senses, and then be incredibly sensitive to others.

If you can limit or tone down the difficult sensory experiences, and give them lots of the sensory experiences that are calming and regulating, then their resilience massively improves.

Typically in school they are bombarded with difficult sensations, and come home wrecked, unable to cope with small issues because they desperately need to recharge.

I’m not picking on your parenting when I say this next bit; I’m just sharing an insight that took me years. When your dc was telling you to stop the hair washing, she was communicating that she was having a difficult experience. You reacted to a child saw as being difficult.

I’m not blaming you at all - you’re following the guidelines. It’s just you’ve been given the wrong manual.

Thought experiment: Imagine for a second that you discovered that instead of shampoo you had been using something else, something mildly acidic that was hurting your dd’s skin. If you checked the label and saw the words “skin irritant” would you have continued the way you did? Would her reaction seem disproportionate?

Neurotypicals have a theory of mind, and essentially this means that they instinctively believe that everyone is having a similar experience of the world as they are. The key to raising a neurodivergent child is being able to understand that this is not always true. A light that doesn’t bother one person, can hurt another person’s eyes.

Once I realised that when ds had a meltdown, he wasn’t being bad - he was having a very bad time, everything changed for us. We’ve rebuilt his trust that I care for him and he isn’t clinging as rigidly to his control because he knows I will try to see his point of view.