Myth: Autistic Meltdowns Are Attention-Seeking

Transcript

 Autistic meltdowns are attention seeking. The crying, the yelling, trying to leave the classroom, it's all just for attention, so the best thing to do is ignore the behaviors or discipline them for those behaviors. Hopefully that sounds ridiculous, but if not, let's talk about it.

A meltdown happens when the student is overwhelmed, overstimulated, or experiencing stress.It's difficult for them to regulate their emotions and behavior, so the result of the overwhelm can look like crying and yelling and other behaviors that are often viewed as acting out.

So as the teacher, what can you do during those moments? First, make sure everyone is physically safe, even if that means, you know, removing students from around the student who's having the meltdown.Then reduce what's being asked of the student in that moment and give them space. Reduce sensory input by dimming the lights and lowering the noise level and anything else you can do so that that overstimulation can, you know, calm down some. You also want to avoid talking a lot, even if it's well-meaning.So this isn't the time to ask, "Are you okay?" "What can I do to help you?" or to try to reassure them because that also counts as sensory input.

After all of that, that's when you can focus on recovery. We'll talk about that in the next video, but basically you want to do things to help them regulate, but you cannot skip this stabilization step.

Remember, with the goal during a meltdown isn't to correct their behavior, so you're not saying, you know, "Stop yelling," and doing things to get them to stop yelling. You're trying to help that student feel safe and reduce the overwhelm and give their nervous system time to recover.

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