You will find the cause of meltdown not immediately obvious, and may be a build up of stress from many factors, and the actual meltdown triggered by something slight or seeming unlikely as a cause.
Because of this people on the spectrum may be perceived as over sensitive or excessively fussy etc., merely because the apparent cause preceding a meltdown seems to observers as trivial.
Consequently someone less stressed, or having developed better stress management, may experience fewer meltdowns.
The potential is there. Several reasons have been advanced. More environmental stresses piling up. A narrower bandwidth or carrying capacity for stress....or a bottleneck. Various types of sensory overload, eg complex noise, movement and smells in shops, supermarkets and shopping malls.
With a child, trying to identify long standing worries, unresolved hurts or confusions, may be helpful in reducing the amount of underlying stress.
Also if there are places where meltdowns occur more frequently, stop and try to analyse what might be causing this. People not affected by autism tend to be better at filtering out background. You might be used to noise in supermarkets, but for someone on the spectrum they can be very uncomfortable - refrigerator motors, air conditioning, people talking in the next aisle, through thin walls of grocery produce, ringing tills, lots of conversations coming from all directions.
You will find the cause of meltdown not immediately obvious, and may be a build up of stress from many factors, and the actual meltdown triggered by something slight or seeming unlikely as a cause.
Because of this people on the spectrum may be perceived as over sensitive or excessively fussy etc., merely because the apparent cause preceding a meltdown seems to observers as trivial.
Consequently someone less stressed, or having developed better stress management, may experience fewer meltdowns.
The potential is there. Several reasons have been advanced. More environmental stresses piling up. A narrower bandwidth or carrying capacity for stress....or a bottleneck. Various types of sensory overload, eg complex noise, movement and smells in shops, supermarkets and shopping malls.
With a child, trying to identify long standing worries, unresolved hurts or confusions, may be helpful in reducing the amount of underlying stress.
Also if there are places where meltdowns occur more frequently, stop and try to analyse what might be causing this. People not affected by autism tend to be better at filtering out background. You might be used to noise in supermarkets, but for someone on the spectrum they can be very uncomfortable - refrigerator motors, air conditioning, people talking in the next aisle, through thin walls of grocery produce, ringing tills, lots of conversations coming from all directions.
