We have a 6yo daughter, diagnosed with autism aged 5. She is what I guess you would call 'high functioning' in that she attends mainstream school, communicates well and does well academically.
However, at home it is just meltdown central. She masks at school and will typically be in floods of tears at pick up over any small thing. Yesterday evening she flipped because I asked her not to slam a door next to her baby brothers head. This morning before 8am because she didn't want to walk somewhere.
The intensity of the meltdowns is what worries me, because they're getting much, much worse. She screams and screams, growls, puts her hands over her ears, won't engage, kicks the walls, says the same thing repeatedly. This goes in for 30 minutes plus sometimes. She's also started pulling out her hair and hiding the clumps in her room.
In reception we had a few monitoring meetings with her school to ensure she was happy there, but they have now deemed them unnecessary as she copes well there. She doesn't have an EHCP or anything else in place so literally just a diagnosis.
We keep things low demand at home, go with the flow, do whatever it takes to prevent things getting to meltdown stage, but it is literally like walking on eggshells. Meltdowns still happen regularly during school holidays so I don't believe that makes much of a difference.
Should we be looking at therapy, medication, anything?
How can we help her? She seems so disregulated all the time. Life is miserable. Her 6 month old brother is becoming quite scared by her outbursts.