Temper Tantrum, Meltdowns and Co-Regulation

Picture yourself on the grocery store with your child. Suddenly, passing by the toy section your kid starts asking you for a very expensive toy, you said no and try to explaining that its to expensive, then the child starts yelling, and that’s when you decide to adopt a more firm approach and give him a clear “NO”, then he start crying and throw himself on the floor.

Now imagine that you are at home cooking a meal, your child is in the living room playing on his tablet. Suddenly you hear a loud noise, you check the kid and he is rocking (increasing self-stimulatory behaviours) and repeating words or phrases over and over (echolalia), the tablet is in the floor. This have happened before and you know that the child gets mad when the tablet shutdowns, you pick up the tablet that now has a broken screen, you approach the child and ask him what happened, if he is okay, and you start talking about how expensive the tablet was and lecture him about not throwing the tablet when the battery is discharged. The child start banging his head on the floor and start yelling.

These situations might sound familiar to you. Are you able to discern which one is a temper tantrum and which one is a meltdown?? In this entry I will explain the difference of each one of them.

What are Tantrums?

Tantrums are want-oriented, they are intended to control some one else’s behaviour involving strategies to get what you want. In this case the individual is in control and trying to manipulate, nevertheless temper tantrums can lead to a meltdown depending on how the are handled. The second situation of the introduction is a clear example of this, due to an unclear explanation of what to do when the battery is discharged and the confusing amount of questions, the child suffered a cognitive overload leading him to a response of self harm.

What is a Meltdown?

Meltdowns are overwhelming state triggered by sensory processing disorder and cognitive issues (executive dysfunctioning)

Imagine not being able to shut out noises that becomes louder and louder or being incapable of seeing properly because there is an intense bright light over you, probably that will lead you to a breaking point. Lipsky, a renowned autistic speaker, mention that a sensory overload “will present itself differently for each individual but the commonality here is the sense of panic it creates within the autistic person’s mind. It is a completely terrifying experience for me and for other autistic individuals… Progressive shutting down of sensory systems, the narrowing of perception, and the loss of the ability to communicate at the most basic level, is what we experience, and it can be terrifying”

Executive dysfunction can worsen the individual’s response by not understanding the reason behind too many changes in the environment, not receiving understandable answer to questions, having too many choices, being given open-ended or vaguely defined tasks

Meltdowns can even be a response of something happening in the individual’s life such as social pressure or bullying. As opposed to tantrums, its a reaction that implies a lost of control, is not goal oriented, the child is not looking to get any specific thing.

What can I do?

Meltdowns are very difficult experience, they involve a lot of self harm behaviours such as head banging or biting, screams and crying that usually happened in public or unsafe places. Part of my job as a therapist is working in natural environments, accompanying the child to the park or walking home from school, so I know how painful and uncomfortable is for the child and people around them when meltdowns occurs, it feels like it’s going to last forever and there’s a lot of emotions, confusion and fears involve, but the key to dealing with this successfully is to stay calm.

If you get anxious or emotional it will amplify what is going on, you need to be calm offering yourself as a rock of stability and safety, this will help autistics individuals to bring themselves out of their stressful state helping them to regulate.

When you face a deeply stressful event, you enter in a survival mode, that means that the autonomic nervous system of your brain reacts triggering a fight, flight or freeze (shutdown) response, therefore you are not able to rationalize what is happening at the moment and are unable to integrate that emotional experience.

Young children do not have the biological capacity to overcome stressful situation by their own, they learn to do this after a lot of co-regulation experiences. Remember that they are learning to make sense of the world and their emotional world at the same time.

What is Co-Regulation?

Co-regulation is an experience where you successfully regulate yourself with the help of the accompany of a safe (calm) person in a safe space, in an overwhelming situation. A safe person is someone who have a calm rate heart, soft gaze, prosodic voice and is respectful of the space of the child. To become one, you need to being able to deeply examine your own behaviour in moments of crisis, avoiding talking because very little that is said in these moments will be processed, and evading restraining their movements and approaching when is not wanted.

You need to remember that the child is in a state of deep fear and despair, and you need to wait until he/she is calm to show an empathetic approach saying things such as “I know you are mad”, “It’s ok to be mad”, “look! mom is here with you”. Then when the event is over trying to work on the feeling and the situation, going over alternative behaviours and solutions to the event.

In the next entry I will explain what to do step by step when you have to deal with challenging behaviours.

Stay Home. Stay Safe. Let me know if you have any question down in the comments. 

 

If you want to know more about trauma and co-regulation check out this blog: Age Of Awareness