"The picture above is my #original work and it depicted my daughter struggle moment coping with her tantrums/meltdowns. I made the flower frame based on the 'heart' shape but with the unfinished curve and the happy face mask which she should 'wearing' instead of covering her face with her hands. "
Tantrums and meltdowns are the 'behaviour' that always present in every ASD children. The 'hot' discussion between these two: what causes tantrums and meltdowns vs parents approach on how to handle it successfully. Believe me, both 'unwanted behaviour' really give challenges to your level of patience, emotional stability, often looks tough to prevent and handle coz it might end up with both of the child and parents goes mad too! So, hold your deep breath and slowly let it go. Don't rush on taking any steps just keep calm!
Here I share my strategies from my real life experiences handling tantrums and meltdowns and hope it could benefit other parents who are facing the same situation like me too.
Her tantrum started when she requesting a Lego toy with Justice League theme i.e. Batman because she likes the logo that printed on the box while playing with the superhero action figure is her last thing. When she starts whining, my husband and I already knew this is a tantrum and we normally took the following steps:
- We keep calm and always reminding ourselves do not carry away with angry emotions as we already identify this is tantrum resulting from her desire to obtain a Lego toy as mentioned earlier (her common request).
- We act like a confused person (by making a confused face) pretending that we don't know what she really wants. We normally say to her like this "Dear, we don't know what are you looking for when you keep whining like that. You should stop whining and talk to us slowly what you really want".
- After she stops whining and starts saying or gesture to something, we immediately show our interest to know what she wants to say and appreciate her effort by celebrating it by smiling a bit at her and acknowledge her good effort using language/gesture instead of whining. Our objective is to make her known that tantrums don't work at all!
- We apply this strategy consistently and definitely, it takes hard work to make it through successfully. No giving up and always be in self-control.
While during meltdowns our approach is a little bit different. It's simply because meltdowns normally caused by sensory processing disorder (is like 'a brain that has to work hard to process so much information' at the same time which come from an environment full with sounds, smells, sights) which triggered the entire nervous system become overload. This meltdown can become more 'wild' when the child has lack of self-control.
Here are my strategies:
- Talk and have pre-conversation about a place she will be visited. Make her visualize it through pictures.
- Always reminding about how to be in self-control i.e. holding hands when she feels afraid.
- Bring to more quieter place to tackle overwhelming feelings and teach to hold deep breathing and slowly let it go. If the meltdowns occur, my husband will bring her to more quieter place to manage her sensory overloads, (actually she can't really communicate to us what is actually the cause). Here, parents need to be alert and act as a Private investigator (a.k.a. PI) to finds the possible causes.
Also, encourage to give some visual cue to assist children with ASD know what to expect before they got to any place. In other words, make them prepared and always talk and repeat about the positive outcome whenever thing is under control.
That's all for me and hope this sharing could give some help on how to handle tantrums and meltdown situations. Please take note, every ASD kids is not alike because they are so unique in their own way ;). My way maybe not probably practical to some. Therefore, any good comments are welcome here and even sharing about your strategies that you already applied to your kids too.