Understanding Autism: The Truth Behind Meltdowns

When I was growing up, I had a massive temper tantrum every time my mother took me to her favourite clothes shop. At least, that is what she thought it was, and I do not blame her for that, as she had no way of knowing anything different.

She loved Marks and Spencer and still does to this day. Any trip into town was not complete without a visit. She did not know that I was autistic, as autism was unknown to almost everybody in the 1970s. It would be many years before I discovered I have a different type of brain. So, all she saw was me apparently misbehaving spectacularly every time we went to her favourite shop.

I would pull at her, cry, complain, and do anything I could to persuade her that I needed to leave as soon as possible. All of this started long before I could read or have any obvious way of identifying the shop I was in beyond my bare senses. But it was those senses that were causing the issue for me. I knew when I was in that shop by the smell. A smell that, to me, was so strong and repulsive that I would do anything to escape.

Looking back, I know that I was having a meltdown brought on by sensory overwhelm. The problem was, and indeed still is for autistic children and their parents, that I was unable to articulate what I was experiencing, and my resulting behaviour looked precisely like the temper tantrum of a spoiled child who was not getting their own way.

The sensory overwhelm I felt was so vivid and extreme that fifty years later, I can still recall it in detail. I can remember the smell and how awful it made me feel. While I no longer experience it in that chain of shops, I smelled it somewhere else recently, and it was just as repulsive and overwhelming. The difference was that as an adult, I was in a position to immediately remove myself from the problematic location.

There are, as I see it, two major issues when an autistic child experiences sensory overload: They are often unable to communicate what they are experiencing, and those around them are having a different experience, so they?cannot guess what the problem is or relate to it in any way.

The Communication Barrier

Let’s start by looking at the issue of communicating what is happening to us during sensory overload. To begin with, when the autistic child is very young, as with all children at that age, they will only have a limited repertoire of communication anyway as they are still learning the basics of language. This is often frustrating both for the child and their parents.

As adults, we may still, on occasion, find ourselves unable to explain precisely how we are feeling and how frustrating that is, particularly when others want to understand and help us. For a child in distress, this situation is compounded. All I could tell my mother about the offending smell was that I did not like it and smelled “grey”. To this day, that explanation makes perfect sense to me and I cannot offer any other description. It feels like trying to describe the colour red to someone who has been blind from birth.

But describing anything becomes much more difficult when you are overwhelmed and distressed. Even basic tasks can become monumentally difficult under stress. A young child in a distressing environment with only limited communication skills in perfect circumstances will inevitably struggle to vocalise what is causing them the problem. If they are forced to remain in the environment, which is upsetting them, it is little wonder?that they have some form of a meltdown. As an adult who understands that I am autistic and who can generally vocalise issues I encounter, I still, on occasion, have meltdowns when sensory problems become too much for me. A young child who is overwhelmed is simply reacting in the only way they know how. It just so happens that this often looks exactly the same as a temper tantrum, even though something entirely different is happening.

Different Perceptions

The other big problem is that the environmental factor causing distress may not be an issue for anyone present. My mother could never smell anything out of the ordinary in her favourite shop, whereas for me, the odour was overwhelming in the same way that the smell of a farmyard full of cattle is distinctive, to say the least. So, how could she possibly identify that as the problem when she did not experience the stimulus?

This issue arises daily for autistic people, including adults as well as children. When complaining that the office environment I was expected to work in was too loud, I have often been told that it really is not that noisy. This is somewhat less than helpful.

Interestingly, we readily recognise that we all have different tolerances and preferences in some areas. It is a running joke or battle in many shared workspaces that some people prefer a tropical temperature while others prefer to sit in arctic conditions. Nobody in that situation seeks to deny the experience of others with a different perspective. We understand that we like different foods from one another and that some of us prefer lots of spices while others can eat only plainer food.

So why is it so difficult to understand that the same situations can arise in any situation regarding any sense? We know that dogs, and indeed young people, can hear high pitched sounds that are inaudible to the rest of us. Why would other senses be any different, and why do we assume that everyone else’s tolerance for light, sound, texture or a million other things are exactly the same as ours?

As an adult, I can and do push back when someone attempts to invalidate my lived experience in this way. But how can a young child do the same? How awful must it feel to not only be overwhelmed by intolerable sensory inputs and unable to escape, but to also be surrounded by adults denying that the stimulus causing you a problem even exists and criticising your behaviour as you attempt to communicate a sensation that defies description?

Nobody, adult or child, chooses to be overwhelmed by our senses or to have a meltdown as a result. It is a deeply unpleasant and unsettling experience that leaves me exhausted for a considerable time afterwards, not to mention the feelings of shame and embarrassment that come along with it.

If an autistic child is melting down, it is likely because they are feeling exactly as you would if you were put in a room that you found intolerably hot or forced to wear headphones playing music at a volume that causes you pain.

How to Respond

The obvious answer when an autistic child starts to meltdown is to get them out of that environment, fast. The more nuanced solution is to try and learn from when it does happen, and to avoid those situations in the first place if you can. It does not matter that it feels alright to you, or that the problem is not one that you understand. Your autistic child is not making this up. As they grow older, they may be able to explain a little more about what it is precisely that causes them the issues, and there may then be more solutions available. Noise cancelling headphones if the problem is sound, or sunglasses if the issue is bright lights, for example.

But please listen to your child, even if their communication is very limited. I well remember struggling to explain what I was going through, but that did not make it any less real or painful. I really did want to behave. But we all have our limits, and we all do strange things when we reach them. For an autistic child, it may be that those limits are exceeded in what for many other people are everyday and completely normal circumstances.

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