Meltdowns

Thomas had 2 major meltdowns this past week. One was on Monday. We THINK the trigger was when the personal care worker reached out for Thomas, to keep him safe from our car when Grandpa was pulling in the driveway. None of us can think of any other trigger. We do know he didn't have a nap at school that day. He ended up falling asleep for about an hour and woke up as though nothing happened.

Yesterday was more intense. T. was outside with Dan. T. wanted "one toy" that is in our storage shed, in a bin, along with many others. Dan said "check with Mommy." Uggh. I hate that. Thomas comes to me and asks, and I said something along the lines of "Let's pick out a toy from inside the house." That didn't go over well. I then said "Thomas, you have lots of toys here. Let's pick one so you can take it outside." Too many words. Still didn't go over well. He persisted and you could see and feel the meltdown coming. I asked what toy it was that he wanted. He didn't know. He just wanted ANY toy that was in that shed that I had already so "no" to.

Now, at first glance, this looks like one of those 'let him have the frikkin' toy so we avoid the meltdown moments. I would love for it to be that simple. With Thomas, if we let him within 100 yards of the storage shed, he would race inside and open up all the bins throwing toys behind him, and MAYBE pick ONE. He lost any chance at all with the first punch to my shin. He did the routine kick, hit, scratch, punch, yell, and cover my mouth hard with his hands.

We tried swinging him (PCW took his arms, I had his ankles). He escalated more. We had to stop because he was squirming way too much to guarantee he wouldn't get hurt in the process. We tried some deep pressure rubbing on his back. He responded with a head-butt. That's when I took a quick break, outside of the house.

When I got back inside, Dan had T back in his room, but T was still not calmed. He was hitting and kicking Dan, then turned on me again. At this point, I don't even remember what the breaking point was to get back to regulating, but it happened almost as quickly as everything started.

I was telling someone else about this and we both agree it was not a temper tantrum. It MAY have begun that way, but then he really didn't know how to regulate. Taking his delays into account, even most typical 3 to 4 yr olds who didn't get what they wanted would have been able to get back into the swing of things much faster than T. did.

We'll see where this week takes us on Meltdown Lane.