The autistic meltdown is over. Now what?

Transcript

 After they're stabilized, which I talked about in the last video, the student might look calm, but that doesn't mean that they're ready to jump back into their day. Um, their nervous system still needs time to recover and regulate. So here are some ways to help.

You can try movement like walking or stretching. That works for some students. Some students it won't. You just have to know your students. Um, during stabilization, which is what we talked about last week, you want to reduce sensory input. But now that it's time for recovery, you can try different ones based on what you know about your students. So for example, a crunchy snack can be regulating for some kids because that crunch does something for them. I had a student whose parents told us that Diet Pepsi helped them regulate, and it really did.

Um, you can also try offering a familiar or predictable activity that doesn't require too much mental effort because keep in mind, a lot of these meltdowns happen from them being overwhelmed, um, for a variety of reasons. You can look at last week's video for that. But you don't want something that's asking them to put a lot of mental energy into it. So you can have them do things like a puzzle or sorting objects or read about a special interest. So that way they're, they're doing something, but it's something that is enjoyable to them.

Regulation looks different for every student and it can take hours. So just because it seems like, wow, they're still not regulated and it's been ten minutes, what are we doing wrong? That doesn't mean that anything is being done wrong. It's just that meltdowns can take a lot out of the students and so it can take hours to recover from it as well.

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