Meltdown or temper tantrum?
I often hear oh the word meltdown.
If Z is kicking off in town, kicking off or a temper tantrum like a toddler who’s at the age or stage of development to know what they want or don’t want but can’t express that’s not a meltdown.
I think it takes away the importance of a meltdown. A real fight or flight meltdown isn’t a temper.
We’ve been very lucky as in meltdowns don’t tend to happen often. No that’s not a meltdown that’s me saying no, or that’s him not being able to run etc.
A meltdown is when he really can’t do anything else.
My first ever meltdown was May ’18 we were going through a round of ivf and I swear he could pick up on my emotions and hormones it was the first time I’ve ever seen him like a wild animal, I had to lay with him to calm him. That’s happened a few times since.
I’ve learned now to count backwards from 100. Most of the time it works.
To see your child attack and throw themselves around and not being able to tell you why is heartbreaking. You try to hold yet they push away. You shout to try and startle them into not injuring themselves, it doesn’t work. You re dress after stripping more than once when they are standing there shivering and sobbing. That is a meltdown.
At the moment he can say words he can spell them but he can’t tell us how he’s feeling, we’re seeing a few more meltdowns than ever. I can take the being hit, I can take the hitting and kicking out, I can take the things being broken, but I hate seeing him hurt. I shout and I know I shouldn’t, maybe I’m a little scared, what if he hurts, what if he needs to go to a&e how would I even get him there in meltdown mode leaping around like a salmon who’s been out of water for a little to long. He stamps what happens if he stamps his way through the ceiling or stamps to close to the top of the stairs and falls down?
Then comes the crying, the uncontrollable sobbing. That’s when you know you’re welcome to hold, to rock, to count and to gently cry too. We can count, then after what seems like for everything he’s calm, tonight he had to have his numbers in his hands.
The problem is he’s getting bigger, and stronger. He can do way more damage, how to I manage this in a few more years?
Tonight, for 40 minutes he was in meltdown mode.
No warning, no no’s, no previous upset.
Of course to him there was something. Something set him off, something set him into fight or flight mode and I’m sure he goes into both.
At the time when he’ll allow you to hold him, rock him and count, is when he finally relaxes. Mostly this is before bed so will be asleep within thirty minutes. Other times he’ll often have a short nap not long after.
It’s 8pm, his meltdown started around 6.30 finished about an hour later. He’s currently in bed exhausted.
He can’t tell me why, or what started. I can guess but I maybe wrong.
I call them sensory meltdowns when his emotions all become too much for him. They can be a few days worth or weeks, but at some point these emotions have to come out and the only way he can is a full blown meltdown. There isn’t anything we can do, people will say stay calm, that’s impossible but I’m working on it! I can move what I think he may hurt himself on but to be honest that could be anything and something I maybe even wouldn’t think of.
We try and put him in his pod wearing his sock the effort needed to get out of both wears him out a little quicker and I think a little safer, it’s similar to just zipping him up in the trampoline and letting him bounce it out safely.
I’m hoping the amount we encounter will go as quickly as they seem to have come, I tend to be saying meltdown more than ever, oh yes this is Z in meltdown mode.
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