Why I hate the term 'meltdown'

If there's a word in the world that I hate, hate, hate, it's the word meltdown. A meltdown has been very closely associated with autistic children and autistic adults. What a meltdown is to the untrained eye or the naked eye is some form of a temper tantrum or a misbehaviour or something that should not ever happen in public.

But let's have a look of what a meltdown, as it's known, is actually called. What it actually is is our response to external stimuli. I will name one that I hate, and that is walking on sand with my bare feet. I hate it. It's the worst thing in the world. I also hate whenever people are

having lunch together, like a working lunch, whenever there's 10 people there, and everybody's having different conversations, and I just can't follow it. I struggle with that as a man, as a 30 year old bearded tax paying man. So how can a five or six year old process that information? Let me tell you, because I've been in this position whenever you're sitting at a table, and you see other people managing so well, and you internally feel that you are not managing well it's not easy to deal with. 

If anyone can name me an appropriate reaction to not fitting in, then I would love to hear it. It's all about hearing our perspectives on how these words, and these stereotypes of autistic children hurt absolutely all of us.

Jude Morrow

NTI

www.neurodiversity-training.com