Distinguishing Meltdowns from Tantrums
Show Notes for Embracing Autism Podcast — Ep. 208

Introduction:

Lia: In this episode, we will walk you through how to identify the differences between a meltdown
versus a tantrum, as well as tips on how to work through meltdowns and how to prevent them in the future.

Lia: Welcome to Embracing Autism, a podcast for parents of autistic children seeking advice
and support while spreading awareness and acceptance of autism spectrum disorder.

Lia: I’m Lia.

Matt: And I’m Matt.

Lia: And each week we will discuss our journey with autism and talk about how to embrace your
child’s individuality while providing guidance, tips, resources, and sharing our personal stories. This is-

Both: Embracing Autism!

Matt: Hey everyone, welcome back. We’re going to call you the Embracers.

Lia: Yeah, we decided we’re coming up with a new, a new name for our little fans.

Matt: Let us know what you think on our Facebook page.

Lia: Is that degrading?

Matt: Or is it cringey?

Lia: Or is it cool? Actually, I’m a little cringey about it myself Embracers- or is it cool, I don’t know.

Matt: We’ll think about it.

Lia: Let us know the comments on this episode on our Facebook @AutismWish, be like yeah or no people please stop.

Matt: Gosh, we sound like the corny mom and dad.

Lia: We are the corny mom and dad.

Matt: Right, but like that’s-

Lia: That’s our life. That’s us.

Matt: Okay.

Lia: It is what it is.

Matt: So this episode we are talking about, what? All things meltdown, tantrum and shutdown, kind of all in one?

Lia: Yes, absolutely. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term shutdown, because I know I hear a lot of people on the internet talk about meltdown and tantrum, but I rarely see shutdown. Shutdown is kind of like the adult version of a meltdown. Some autistic adults still do have meltdowns, but some experience shut down instead, which is more internalized rather than externalized.

Matt: I mean, I think quite literally like a computer just shutting down, blocking off the outside world basically.

Lia: Right. So what we’re going to talk about today is essentially three points to the process. So the first part is–

Matt: Identification I guess.

Lia: Yes, identifying the behavior. What is a meltdown? What is a shutdown? What is a tantrum? And then we’re going to kind of walk through how to navigate that when it is happening and then how to try to prevent it in the future. This is a topic that we are quite familiar with.

Matt: I was going to say I think we dealt with this at least once or twice just today this morning.

Lia: Yeah, it’s pretty frequent at least with the older one.

Matt: Right.

Lia: One of the questions that we’ve gotten very frequently in our live Q&A’s for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, we run a Q&A, what quarterly maybe, once a podcast?

Matt: Yeah usually as soon as we’re introducing the next season usually. I think we’re trying to do it more frequently just to kind of be in your face, live.

Lia: Hopefully not too much, but enough. So what we do is we do these like live Q&A sessions and in the last I believe like two of them that we’ve had this question continues to come up and the question is essentially how can I tell if my kids having a meltdown or if they’re having a tantrum
So it’s basically like do I punish them for like misbehaving or is this a place and time where I give them empathy and give them their space. How do I differentiate the two and what do I do?

Matt: And I actually struggle with that quite a bit too because I mean we have what we call what a three-nager.

Lia: Yeah, three-nager.

Matt: She definitely is sassy and has attitude and I mean your typical-

Lia: She could just be me.

Matt: In smaller form. But no I definitely struggle with kind of gauging like okay is this just your standard three-year-old tantrum or is this something bigger and so i mean it’s trying to gauge where does one leave off and the other one start. I think we had figured out that for what a tantrum it usually focuses on them getting whatever the end result is.

Lia: Yes, so that’s the main differentiator. When you’re looking at a meltdown versus a tantrum, the way that you can start to differentiate between the two is trying to identify the trigger. In some cases, what you’re trying to figure out is, is this like a sensory trigger? Is it a meltdown due to sensory ovedrload or is it a I want something trigger? With neurotypical children tantruming is very common when there’s something that they want that they essentially aren’t getting away with and that’s what will trigger that behavior. But with an autistic child typically it’s either a sensory component so something in their sensory environment triggered it either the lack of or too much of a certain sensory stimuli or it could be something like a routine disruption. When autistic individuals and children are very much so needing that structure and that routine with the day to day, if you disrupt that routine and they weren’t prepared enough for it, so perhaps they didn’t know that they were going to be going to grandma’s instead of to school that day, that in itself can trigger a meltdown. So that’s an indicator that it is actually a meltdown and not a tantrum. So just make sure when you do see that, the first thing that we advise is take a step back and think about what happened right before.

Matt: Right, and I mean we’ve seen our fair share of meltdowns in both of those categories. A disruption of routine before we realized that was one of the areas that became a struggle. We didn’t think that we had to create a schedule because we figured, oh, like they’re young kids, they’ll just kind of go along with whatever we’re doing for the day. But then we realized, no, it has to be pretty structured as far as the routine that we go through as far as breakfast, playtime, going out for activity, going to school, and whatnot.

Lia: What you can do is take a look at the behavior and look at what your child is doing in terms of what preceded the behavior and what happens as a result of that. Is your child behaving in a way that seems to be goal oriented? Does it seem like your child is behaving a certain way because they want a particular outcome? For example, they were having a snack and you told them that they could have goldfish and they said, no, I want pretzels. And then at that point in time you say,
well, we don’t have any pretzels so you’re going to have to have gold fish and then the meltdown happens at that point in time. Well then there you see the antecedent, you see what happened before and you see okay this child did not get what they wanted. Therefore, it is more likely that this is due to a tantrum and not a meltdown because it seems like it’s goal oriented. So a way that you can kind of test or check is give them the thing that they’re asking for and does the behavior stop at that point in time. If the behavior stops when you give them the pretzels, then that means that it was a tantrum. It was not a meltdown.

Matt: Now a meltdown would be you give them the thing and then they’re still melting down. They’re still on the floor or screaming crying, whatever. The item that they wanted didn’t resolve the issue. So it’s a larger situation at hand.

Lia: Or perhaps they didn’t even want an item and you’re just trying to encourage them with something that you think that they like, right? So if the kids melting down and you’re like ‘give them a piece of candy because he loves candy. Maybe that’ll cheer them up’. And they don’t want anything to do with that candy. That’s probably a big indicator that it’s a meltdown. It’s probably due to either sensory overload or routine disruption rather than a tantrum.

Matt: And we’ve seen that before like if our oldest is getting upset, and she’s in her carseat, if we’re trying to give her something, almost to like pacify her so we can actually buckle her up in the car seat, we’ll give her her like water bottle, which has like iced tea or something. Usually she likes iced tea. But if we give it to her, she’ll basically like throw it because it’s not doing the trick, that is not what her goal is. And that’s where we’re kind of like, okay, this is kind of a bigger task at hand. So we have to kind of use some other routine or other tips and tricks to kind of move forward.

Lia: Typically, when it comes to a meltdown, there isn’t really much you can do to stop it as it is happening and that’s a differentiating factor because with tantrums usually if you just give the child what they are basically asking for then the behavior will stop. But with a meltdown it will not. Tantrums need an audience. When a child is tantrumming they need somebody to know their tantrumming because otherwise they’re not servig a purpose, right? So the point of the tantrum is ‘I will behave this way because I can get what I want’. But if you’re tantrumming an isolation it’s not going to get you what you want.

Matt: Clearly not getting what you want.

Lia: Exactly. So that’s something that I’ve clearly noticed with our child as well is whenever she’s having a meltdown typically we put her in like an isolated space so that she can be safe and secure and make sure that she is not going to get hurt.

Matt: So the difference between the meltdown and the tantrum as well is with the meltdown they don’t really have much regard for any type of dangerous situation or potential injury that they could wind up in. As where like a tantrum if they are on the floor and they hit their arm for example they might shift over and start crying because they got hurt and because they have the audience of mommy and daddy, oh, they’ll cater to me because I’m hurt now. So just kind of shifts the tantrum a little bit, but when they’re in a meltdown mode, they don’t really care if they get hurt. They’re kind of fighting and kind of overwhelmed with whatever the situation is, and because they’re not really doing it for an audience, it’s the meltdown. So I think it is much more, it could be a much more dangerous situation, unless you put them in a safe environment.

Lia: So with tantrums, you essentially see that it’s coming out of a place of anger or frustration, and it’s basically just like this emotional outburst that they’re having. Whereas for an autistic meltdown, those tend to be a reaction to being overwhelmed. When an autistic person is melting down, during that meltdown, they don’t have any control over what’s going on. So it’s not going to really benefit them if you try to approach it like a typical tantrum. So if you try to just give them hugs or try to give them an incentive to behave or if you try to discipline it, none of those are going to be effective because at that time, at that moment, that person is essentially kind of checked out right now because they’re really overwhelmed with the stimuli or whatever it is that caused that meltdown. That is just something that they’re not going to be able to do during that moment in time.

Matt: And I mean, we have tried to– we might be in a store at when a meltdown happens. And typical to like a hug, you’re basically trying to carry them out of the store. So I mean, you’re holding them and they’re fighting, they’re dead-weighting, they’re doing whatever they can basically to get out of your arm. So it’s not like a simple hug and comforting will resolve it right then and there.

Lia: One of the first things that you should do during a meltdown is make sure that you are looking out for safety. So now that we’ve showed you how to identify between basically a tantrum and a meltdown, the next thing to do is if you do identify that it is in fact a meltdown, make sure that your child is safe and everyone around them is safe. Because I know that we have older children and people who listen here with older autistic children who may be what, 14, 15? And if it’s a 14, 15 year old autistic boy, it’s likely that that child is actually bigger than you if you’re a mother, for example. I’m 4’11. Any 14 or 15 year old boy would clearly be a potential threat to me if they were violent and aggressive. So one of the first things you want to do is just ensure that everybody is safe. And one of the ways to do that is by trying to create a safe space for your child where they can go to during this time that will give them this kind of zone, like a Zen zone, if that makes sense.

Matt: Right.

Lia: And if they are not able to control their behavior at that time, at least it provides a space where that person is safe. You can have sensory equipment there, you can have whatever their special interest or whatever it is that they have that provides them comfort and just have them kind of isolated from the person that they are potentially harming just to make sure that there’s no clashing going on.

Matt: Right, because our kids are I mean much younger– I mean we have three and two year old. So I mean one of the things that we’ve noticed is when our older one is having a meltdown, she loves music. So if we’re able to start playing music,it’ll start to slowly pull her back a little bit. I mean, she’s still having a meltdown, but sometimes it’ll kind of pull her back a little bit where we’re able to kind of get her into a better state of mind as well.

Lia: And some places they advocate for restraint. And I am not really a big fan of restraint with, I guess, one exception, which is unless your child is the type of child who likes that sensory input. So like our youngest child, she loves being held and squeezed and that provides her a lot of comfort.

Matt: She’ll go up inside your shirt.

Lia: Oh yeah!

Matt: So I mean, she’s looking for like little places to like nuzzle.

Lia: Yeah, she literally crawls into my shirt and pokes her head out of the hole of the head of the shirt.

Matt: She’s with mommy.

Lia: Yeah. But what I would say is steer clear of any sort of restraining system or anything like that. If you feel like you’re in physical danger and your child is just too big for you to handle, then in that case, I would say call in support to help you or just you isolate yourself until they are able to go and process their meltdown. But if it’s a younger child or even an older one, have them have an area that is their safe space. So at all times have some sort of sensory room or some safe nook that is always available to them so that they are able to go there. And when they’re having moments that they’re not in a meltdown practice going to that room and doing the instruction of when I feel this, I go here. It might help to have social stories to back that up. It might help with some sort of visual schedule or some sort of system to help them process that before the meltdown happens.

Matt: This is something that you’ve also been working during a meltdown as far as kind of regulating the breathing, kind of slower pace, kind of calming, pull her back a little bit. So I mean, it’s not like she is increasing her heart rate so she’s like in that fighting mentality. It kind of calms her down so then it kind of gets her into more zen, I guess, as you were saying, mindset. So I mean, that is, I guess, one way that we, I mean, it’s still an ongoing process, but I think that that is a very helpful way if you’re able to kind of start making those transitions as well.

Lia: Exactly. So that’s part of developing a calming routine. So whatever works for your child, you know your child best. And like I said, not every autistic individual is the same. Every autistic person is still a person and is very different just like we are very different from each other. So I would always encourage that you custom tailor whatever it is to your child’s specific interest and their specific sensory needs. If your child is like mine, and needs a lot physical sensory input, the youngest one. Then that one, I do give her the cuddles and hugs because that helps her. My oldest one is the complete opposite. My oldest one does not like sensory input of touch. So when she is having an autistic meltdown, the best thing for her is often times to put her in her safe space with her lights, because she really likes LED lights. She really likes a lot of stuffed animals and things just cuddling her that are not humans. She doesn’t like humans. And just provide her that space and give her her space because she is way more likely to be able to self-regulate if we’re not interfering than if we’re constantly trying to give her a hug or trying to like hold her hand or anything like that.

Matt: Right and that goes in line with I mean obviously you’re saying very different kids for different things. Being aware of their sensory needs so you’re not actually creating more of a problem and putting more sensory overload into the situation, try and pull it back. So obviously in our situation, eliminating the pressure of like a hug from like us or something that would just add kind of fuel to the fire essentially.

Lia: If your kid is dysregulated because of overload, the last thing you want to do is add more sensory input. You’re just like you said, adding fuel to the fire at that point. So again, this is very, very important that you custom tailor this to your child and don’t just take any of our tips and just think that it’s a blanket statement because it’s not every autistic person’s different, everyone needs different things. So make sure that you’re listening and observing your child. Watch for what happened. Watch for how they’re reacting. See if you can gauge any sort of pattern. See if you’re able to basically find what the triggers are so that you can eliminate those if it is in fact due to sensory. And the most important thing that you can do during the situation is make sure that you as the parent stay as calm as possible because if you are disregulated, if you are anxious and stressed and angry — which is very easy to do I can’t tell you how many times this stuff sets me off because they trigger my auditory stuff when they’re screaming and crying. It triggers me. So I 100% can understand that. But I teach my children when they’re having a meltdown to smell the flower, blow the flower. And that’s the way that I’ve taught them to do a deep breathing exercise to help self-regulate. And they’ve started to pick up on the smell the flower for inhale, blow the flower for exhale. So when we are teaching our children these tips and tricks and giving them these tools. It would be completely hypocritical of us if we didn’t follow them ourselves, right?

Matt: That’s fair. Smell the flower and blow the flower Lia.

Lia: Yeah, better do it. But in all seriousness, I do catch myself and I’m like, you know what, as frustrated as I am right now for the sake of my child, I need to just self-regulate, I need to take a moment and if that means you need to leave the room or whatever it is that you need to do to make sure that you are not going to be overreacting to your child and again, adding fuel to that fire — do that. Because it’s important that we stay calm and it’s important that we stay zen because how is our child’s going to get to a zen state if we are not.

Matt: And there’s been times where we’re out in a bookstore, a Walmart, wherever, and a meltdown will happen. And I mean, yeah, we could get extremely frustrated and grumpy as we’re taking them out of the store or we can basically just pick her up, be calm, quiet, walk straight out of the store and basically work through the tantrum outside of the store. I mean, just so there’s not screaming in the store and in kind of in a calming place. So I mean, I’ve kind of gotten in the attitude of like, okay, we’re just having a tantrum, like we will address it as soon as we get to a better place that is kind of a more peaceful area that we can actually like work through it.

Lia: And don’t, don’t care what people say.

Matt: And that’s my thing too. Like I’m not worried about the stranger in the aisle over who over here’s my little girl’s meltdown. Like I don’t have to interact with you. I don’t really care what you think or have to say. I’m just walking to get my daughter into a better peaceful area and we can work through it on our own time together.

Lia: I know sometimes it’s hard to deal with the judgment and the shame and everything that comes with parenting a meltdown at the time and people just don’t understand so just don’t let it get to you because most people don’t know what’s going on and you know to each their own we are living our life we’re doing what’s best for our child we’re making sure that she’s safe and she’s okay and she’s able to self-regulate and at the end of the day that’s what matters right you and your family so don’t care about what other people will say or if they’re whispering or staring at you and just focus your eyes on the prize which is making sure that your child is as comfortable as possible and that she is able or he is able to self-regulate when needed.

Matt: Well, I was gonna say and the other what 90+ % of people who don’t have any knowledge of what autism is. I mean, let them talk. I mean they don’t know what they don’t know so it doesn’t matter.

Lia: Exactly and that’s very similar to shutdowns which happen with the older kids sometimes. So the shutdown similar to the meltdown except it’s more internalized. So you’re not going to see something that looks like tantrumming. Instead, you’ll see somebody might isolate. They might not want to talk because they might have selective mutism or they might just want to get away from any social interaction whatsoever and just lock themselves in their room. It’s kind of like a, ‘I’m trying to prevent a meltdown therefore, I’m going to isolate and shut down instead’.

Matt: You’re taking the steps necessary beforehand to kind of limit the stimulation of the sensory world, I guess. I mean, I’m imagining that when you’re shutting down, you’re trying to find a safe space on your own and working through it that way.

Lia: It is kind of like working through the meltdown before the meltdown happens. It’s kind of like it is a self-regulation method. So instead of having like the child smell the flower, blow the flower, it’s kind of like a shutdowns an internalized way of regulating a meltdown from happening, but it is still basically in the family of a meltdown. That person is still struggling at a moment in time. So when it comes to those, if your kids older and you’re able to communicate with them, I would just recommend asking them if they know if they are able to communicate it, ask them, what do you need when this happens? Do you need me to be with you? Do you need me to stay away from you? Do you need me to provide you with X, Y, and Z? What is it that you need when this happens? And then just try to accommodate those needs.

Matt: And I was going to say kind of the same rules apply, trying to read the situation. I mean, if you’re able to have the conversation with them, if they are older and able to communicate with you, you can kind of ask and figure out exactly what they need to try and get them into a better state of mind. So you don’t want to add additional fuel to the fire, like down like we previously mentioned with the meltdown.

Lia: So just all in all, this is just basically us trying to explain the differences for you and we hope that this is helpful. The reason that we think this is really important is because I have personally seen and I know Matt you’ve seen that a lot of parents of autistic children tend to isolate themselves and their children due to meltdowns and I think that that’s something that makes sense to happen as a reaction. So you might be embarrassed or it might just be too stressful to bring your child out and a lot of times what happens as a result of that is parents just say you know what then we can’t go out anymore we’re gonna stay home we can’t go to the playground we can’t go to the store we can’t go to any of these places because my child will meltdown and so I basically highly encourage that you continue to attempt to do these things and go out with your child because you don’t want to deprive your child of a quote unquote ‘normal’ life as much as possible you don’t want to stop taking them to the playground to church to the store if at all possible. So instead I would recommend that you try to see what these triggers are and anticipate them in advance and try to provide them with the necessary accommodations before it happens so that you can try to prevent the meltdown from happening.

Matt: Yeah, I think it kind of, I mean goes kind of to a negative place when you start giving into the fear of the meltdown because you are limiting yourself from society. Oh, we can’t go to the playground because he might have a meltdown. Oh, we can’t go to the store. As soon as you give into the the psychology of we can’t do this because of the meltdown, it’s kind of a losing game because it’s going to keep building and building and building. If these kids aren’t exposed to society because you’re afraid of the meltdown happening, it’s just going to become a bigger and bigger and bigger spider, I guess, in your life. And then when it does happen, that would be just a reason of, ‘oh, that’s why we can’t go to the store’. So I mean, I would really push against the mentality of I can’t do something because they might get upset and have a meltdown.

Lia: And then on top of that, it will add resentment towards your child. Like you will start to feel resentment. Be like, I can’t go anywhere because my child is always melting down. And that sort of negativity and that sort of mentality can end up being extremely toxic. And it can end up breaking those bonds that we’re trying to build with our children. It can even impact your marriage or your relationships with others because it is going to basically influence your day to day life.

Matt: And I mean, they might also surprise you. Like, I mean, we were surprised morning. We took both our kids to the playground, basically as soon as it opens, so they can have full range of everything. And usually our oldest, whenever it’s time to transition from playground to going driving to another activity or whatever we’re doing on the weekend, she would get upset. She would have a total, start of a meltdown because she didn’t wanna leave. But today she was actually okay, just walking to the car and she was comfortable hopping into her carseat.

Lia: And for us, it’s a win, right? So if she has a meltdown n9 out of 10 times, that one time is still a win and that one time is still worth continuing to do it because every little win is progress. It doesn’t matter how slow that progress seems to me. It’s still progress.

Matt: Right. I would always focus on the small victories because they add up over time. So stay positive, stay focused on that versus living in fear for what may or may not happen.

Lia: Yes. And just a few tips to wrap this episode up with. When it comes to the meltdown, if you’re
seeing that it’s due to a transition, find ways to make transitions easier. That could be through a visual timer. That be through an audio timer like a song. You can play a song and get them used to the routine of when this song is over. That means our time is done. It can be with a countdown. We’re going to be done in three, two, one. Of course you give them a five minute warning, one minute warning before that, but you can start making transitions easier by giving them predictability and routine. And so if that’s the reason why you’re having them meltdown, that is a way to basically help prevent that. If it’s sensory overload, try to find a pattern. When is this happening? Is it always happening when we go to the grocery store? What’s at the grocery store? Oh, they have lots of fluorescent lights and they are being visually overstimulated. Now I know next time I go to the grocery store, I’m going to bring sunglasses and offer my child sunglasses. So just things like that. It’s really all about observation. It’s almost scientific in the sense that you’re producing a hypothesis and you’re testing it through observation, right? So hypothesize what is it that you think is causing it? Test it. Go to the store. Give them the sunglasses. Did that fix the problem? If it did, then that means you found a solution. If it didn’t, you start with a new hypothesis and round and round it goes.

Matt: So you think of yourself as a scientist. I think of myself as a detective trying to solve it.

Lia: There we go. The science is a detective.

Matt: Either way, either way, we basically get to the same result.

Lia: Exactly. So I hope that this was helpful information. I hope that you guys learned something and just remember at the end of the day, it’s all about having patience and empathy and understanding and basically being willing to make the accommmodations necessary to make sure that your child is feeling comfortable, happy, and themselves.

Matt: Alright, we’ll see you next time.

Lia: See ya!

OUTRO

Lia: To summarize, a tantrum is distinguishable from a meltdown in that it is goal oriented while a meltdown is typically due to sensory overload or routine disruption. During a meltdown, a safe space can bring comfort and protection to your child until it subsides. We also discussed how anticipating a meltdown and providing necessary accommodations beforehand can help prevent sensory overload. Join us next week as we talk about all things transitions. We answer questions such as, what can I do to make a transition easier for my child? How can I help my child enjoy holidays if they’re too overwhelmed? And how do I prepare my child for travel? This is Embracing Autism.