Published on 12, July, 2020
Yesterday my 10 year old son had his first violent meltdown which has completely shocked me. Although he is prone to meltdowns and will bang doors, stamp on the floor and scream at the top of his voice he is never violent. Yesterday after a meltdown I went to speak to him after when I thought he'd calmed down, he obviously hadn't calmed down enough because he launched at me and put his hands around my throat in total rage. His hands were gripped as hard as they could be. It was only for a few seconds and then he let go realising what he'd done and apologised over and over. I wasn't too sure how to handle it, you don't expect your loving little boy to ever hate you so much he'd try and strangle you.
When he'd calmed down I told him that he was banned from all his games consoles indefinitely until I felt he had earned the right to have them back and I told him that I forgave him this time but that I'd never forgive him if he did it again.
I'm worried that he could do it again if I'm not strict enough with him but I'm also worried that if I'm too strict he'll never forgive himself and may become depressed.
Has anyone else been in a similar situation.
There is a manipulative personality type that might do this, but I wish people would look at the underlying causes of meltdowns. For many they are an extreme response to an extreme environment. You might not recognise that environment, but it is there for many.
Tony Attwood's The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome has a section headed "a malicious subgroup" p335 - the little dictator. But that would seem to be more calculating than just physical attack during meltdown.
Two things seem to drive meltdowns - spiralling anxiety and sensory overload. The former involves negative reinforcement and obsessive exploration of any and every outcome to sutuations they cannot understand properly, so their mind is working overtime and there is little left to handle day to day living.
Whereas you might have one bad day, when everything goes wrong, and have a 'last-straw' moment, and a burst of anger, many on the autistic spectrum are close to that threshold pretty well all the time, and meltdowns are an explosive response to extremes.
It might be possible to ease the pressure of these situations by helping him to talk through issues and find answers, or encouraging him to write things down (so they are on paper rather than going round in his head) and then draw spider diagrams or whatever other device for working things out on paper. Some things, because of lack of social referencing, aren't as easily resolved as for non-autistics, who can just talk things over with friends. You have to process it internally, and an over-propensity for this type of analysis leads to to much negative thinking.
The sensory environment is often hard for non-autistics to understand. Some people are experiencing so much pain from their environment that it leads to meltdowns. There may be ways of easing that environmental stress.
If you feel you are being attacked, attacking others can seem to be the way of showing what it is like.
What I am particularly concerned about here is this idea of ignoring it so they don't think the anger can get them anywhere. But is this manipulative anger for certain? Is he just a spoilt child using anger and physical attack to get what he wants? Or as I've explained above reactions to things you do not comprehend? If the latter, just ignoring it isn't solving anything.
Perhaps it might just be worthwhile trying to find out what he is going through.