How can you tell when your ASD kid is heading for burnout

[dressedforcomfort]

I'm not talking run of the mill sensory overload/meltdown etc. But longer term, takes weeks and weeks to recover from, burn-out?

DS (9) seems to be struggling so much with sensory load lately. His noise sensitivity seems to have increased massively. It's taking much longer than usual to bounce back from activities that he normally loves. We're now 10 days into the holidays and he looks exhausted, despite having had lots and lots of quiet days at home with minimal stimulation. He shows no interested in wanting to play with other kids. We met up with a friend at the park today and he barely said a word to him. I'm really worried.

Has anyone else had any similar experiences/words of wisdom. I'm trying to balance giving him time to decompress versus worrying he's going to lose all his social skills if just shuts down for 6 weeks....

Our burnout looked like that and then shortly afterward reached a tipping point and rapidly flipped to school refusal and eventually, home education. 1) I’d recommend removing as many demands as you can all summer and see if there is a difference by the end - offer a real break and 2) “social skills” are often masking. Masking is what causes burnout and is one of the first things that gets lost and doesn’t come back for ages/if ever. If you want good social skills in six weeks time, dropping masking as much as possible all summer should help, not hinder.

Our 6yo dd is undiagnosed, "fine at school". She's had a couple of burnouts, the most recent resulted in clothing refusal.

With her we see a gradual increase in sensory difficulties (tactile) first. It starts with her being close to tears and massively emotionally sensitive, regression in things she's been able to do independently for ages. The sadness/ tears then become increased verbal and physical aggression, quick to temper. The smallest thing sets her off, sometimes for no apparent reason. The clothing sensitivity becomes overwhelming and at that point none of the strategies work, she resists everything. We then have to remove as many of the demands as possible.

It's horrible. Last time there were days she refused to leave her bed, she just lay there naked and even said her hair annoyed her. Total emotional and sensory disregulation. But yet she's "fine at school". Thankfully she's like a different child now, doing really well and mostly finding life a breeze. We live in fear of the next time it happens though. Heartbreaking to watch and not know how to stop it once it takes hold.

Should also say when she's heading for burnout she also seeks to control everything including people. She builds routines and rituals around her and needs to 'order' everything in her world to regain a sense of control.

@Whatafustercluck I'm really interested to hear what you say about clothing refusals. My DD (7) started aged around 3 or 4 with sensitivities to socks, but it has got progressively worse, and has had a v difficult year going from being a bit intolerant of most clothing, but having a few outfits that she could manage, to having only 1 outfit, and now in the last week total clothing refusal. Also a lot of issues with the feeling of her hair increasing over the year, which is incredibly distressing and now results in almost daily meltdowns. It's heartbreaking as she wants to be able to get out and do things, but any talk of clothing results in a total shut down. She's always been very emotionally dysregulated, but it's getting worse daily, and she's becoming violent and aggressive. She's awaiting a multidisciplinary assessment thankfully in a couple of weeks. We've been seeing an OT and doing sensory integration for the last few weeks, but it hasn't helped at all, and her paed has mentioned OCD as well as ASD/ADHD. Any words of wisdom for getting her out of this clothing nightmare? When you say that your DD is doing well at the moment, how did you get from clothing refusal to that state? I'm dreading the start of school and worried we'll have total school refusal because she can't get dressed. Once dressed and in school normally she's fine - suspect she's masking heavily.