Today I'm looking for strength so here I sit with a heavy heart remembering inspirational words attempting to find some peace with a bad morning.
"My child is not giving me a hard time, my child is having a hard time." And this was my morning.
It's hard to remember that there is a vast difference between a meltdown and a tantrum, especially in the midst of it. Tantrum & meltdown, two descriptors people use so randomly describing their typical children and don't really understand the difference in the autistic world.
This morning my bucket filling, loving, kind, helpful Adam was instead the screaming, kicking, crying, upset Adam. He was having a meltdown not a tantrum. Why? I have no idea, neither does he. He will have little easily averted meltdowns randomly almost everyday, but these bigger ones seem to build up in him until he bursts. In his sensory overload exhaustion this morning, he could't find his words, he could only scream. He couldn't accept comfort, he could only hit. He could not find empathy, he just didn't care. He couldn't understand why I couldn't read his mind and fix it. It's so unbelievably difficult to stay calm and collected and try to remember that he is not "wanting to give me a hard time, he is having a hard time." His meltdowns are getting better and less often and if we can catch it at the right moment, we can work through them. This morning, we could not. Today he stayed home from school. I don't like to set him up to fail and the outcome of school today would not be positive.
His meltdown lasted for a few hours but he's calmer now and we have decompressed. With the calm came immense regret and sadness on his part, that he treated me that way, that he missed school and that it happened. He hates aspergers right now. He wants to be typical. He wants to fly under the radar. I want him to be happy. I'd like to just snuggle him now and ignore that we had a bad start to the day, but no, today is a mental health day. Not the stay in bed, drinking tea, watching Netflix kind unfortunately. Today is a learning day, but not at a school desk. Today's lessons are calming techniques, self regulation, empathy and emotional processing. You know, the stuff we should all know how to do as adults but are vital for my son to know as a child. Lessons I pray he will learn and use as an adult to help him navigate this world with more ease than he has had thus far. This is when so much work is done. We talk about what led him to his meltdown today and how it felt and how it could be different next time and how he feels now and is this a feeling you prefer and how do we get back to calm and what would he do if he felt that way and he wasn't at home and what would he do if he was home but I wasn't and what ques were there and could he change things at that point to get a different outcome and and and and ??? I convince him again, and I truly know he believes it in the moment, that he is stronger than aspergers and he has worth. This is how we handle these situations, this is how we reframe and take advantage of these horrible meltdowns and turn them into teaching moments. At this point, I would rather just tuck him into my pocket, steal him away from the world and keep him safe, my little secret treasure. But alas, we do the work, it's exhausting for him and it's exhausting for us but this is what we feel will help teach him how to regulate how he is feeling and how he will react. This usually opens up a day of very intense long conversations that I'm so blessed to have with him. He lets me have a glimpse of both his greatness and his struggle and he amazes me that he can handle it all as well as he does.
Now that he has processed, the adrenaline wash is over, he's happy again. I hear him talking to his video game, pretending he's filming a youtube video. Thankfully, he'll go to sleep tonight feeling lighter having dumped all his stresses and internal conversations on me. I'll watch him sleep for a bit and marvel at the progress he's made over the years and pray for a future that has compassion and understanding for him. Then I'll take a hot bath and cry because it's hard and it's traumatic and it takes a toll. Gutt-wrenching is not a strong enough word to describe how it feels to watch your child struggle with something you can't fix for them. I worry. I stress. I do the best I can with what I know. I'm immensely proud of his bravery and his progress and I'm in absolute awe of his powerful mind. I feel like I fought a battle today.
Sending strength to all autism warriors today. Kids, parents, siblings.
**disclaimer: How we deal with meltdowns may be different than how others with autistic children deal with them, that does not make us or them right or wrong. Every child with autism is different.
