Reply to Autism meltdown and family life

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Autism meltdown and family life"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I have two teens with high functioning autism. Every time we try to do a family activity together — go out to dinner, to the pool, a show — invariably one or the other will get triggered by something (a change in schedule, not having the right item of clothing, whatever) and melt down. Yelling, screaming, retreating to their room. Then the event is ruined because we are too late, it has to be cancelled, etc. It’s just f’ing exhausting. 
So the easiest thing to do is never try to do anything, because their immediate reaction to anything slightly new or outside of their comfort zone is “no!” I confess that I get annoyed by this, because I would like to occasionally go do things and, what’s more, I know that when we do manage to overcome their initial resistance they usually have fun together. But more and more often lately we are just getting bogged down in freak outs. If it’s not one of them getting upset about some tiny thing, it’s the other.
It’s hard for me to know how much they truly are not able to adapt versus their just being unwilling to. I never know how much to push it. I don’t remember why it wasn’t like this when they were younger. Maybe they had meltdowns (of course they did) and it felt more age-appropriate, or maybe they were just more willing to follow adults’ lead than teens are. It just feels like we never have fun together as a family and that makes me sad.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics