Blog Post | Breakdowns Are Painful for Everyone - Recognize the Flags
Breakdowns Are Painful for Everyone - Recognize the Flags
Bearing witness to the meltdown:
As a parent, it is painful to watch your child suffer a meltdown. Once they are in the thick of it, you can do nothing; you know your child is suffering, and you may feel powerless at that moment to stop it. However, you are not powerless to help them develop an awareness of the impending doom, the triggers that send them into overdrive, or how they recover from that meltdown.
Know the warning signs:
Every child has warning signs that they are beginning to slip into an elevated state where the amygdala is likely to take over. Sometimes those warning signs are much more external such as clenched fists, a flushed face, or sweating. Sometimes those warning signs are more internal such as buzzing bees in their chest, a volcano in their stomach, or a struggle to breathe. As a parent, you can help your child by actively noticing the external cues and working with them to identify the internal cues. From there, you can help them develop language to communicate when they notice an internal cue.
I had a 13-year-old client, whom we’ll call Oscar, who developed the coded language of “hot hands.” When he told his mom or dad that he was feeling hot hands, they gave him the time and space he needed to regain control. By developing awareness of his warning signs, and talking about how he would communicate those warning signs with his mom, he was able to slow, and sometimes stop, the escalation. And while this process did not help Oscar down-regulate, it did help him halt the escalation and commence the process of regaining control.
Be aware of the triggers:
Triggers are events that habitually result in meltdowns, but we don’t always explore them to understand their root cause or notice the pattern. For instance, going back to Oscar: Oscar had several triggers that we all initially misunderstood. Though math homework regularly led to meltdowns, we learned with exploration that math homework wasn’t really the trigger. The trigger was Oscar’s desire to avoid his negative voice, which was guaranteed to come out while he struggled to understand math problems. Once we identified that trigger, Oscar and I worked together to develop skills and tricks to prepare him for that voice before he started his math homework. Mom and Dad worked to create a system of strong positive reinforcement throughout the process to counter that negative voice, and Oscar developed a plan in concert with mom and dad to help him manage his response to that voice if it showed up during his math homework.
Triggers are more obvious than warning signs, and it becomes easier to recognize your child’s triggers once you begin actively looking for them. As parents, you often deal with so much chaos and overwhelm daily that it becomes more difficult to see these triggers. At the moment, you may just wish your child were “normal.” But by focusing on the root cause of your child’s trigger, you can develop strategies with them to help preempt the trigger and mitigate the effects.
Watch their recovery:
People with ADHD rarely burn themselves out; in the middle of a meltdown, we can be an eternal flame of anger and frustration. This means that when the meltdown finally ends, and your child has calmed down, it did not happen by accident. Whether they realized it or not, your child made choices and took actions that helped them calm down. For Oscar, the solution was sitting with his favorite cat. Sometimes he would vent to the cat; sometimes they’d play, and other times he would snuggle the cat. But we didn’t realize this at first; curiosity was key to understanding how Oscar was down-regulating. Oscar and his parents focused on staying curious and paying attention to what he did after each meltdown and talking with him before and after a meltdown. Because of this, we could identify that time spent with this specific cat was the best way for Oscar to down-regulate his response.
Recognize and Celebrate their progress:
Now the cool-down process that typically would take 45-60 minutes has been whittled down by Oscar to 10 minutes. He did this by knowing his warning signs (hot hands), catching them early (telling mom he has hot hands and having permission to take space), knowing his triggers, developing systems to support him in his efforts to manage his emotions when triggered, and lastly by developing techniques and tools to help him down-regulate (hanging out with his cat for a few minutes).
This learning process takes some trial and error, and the elements are not always obvious. But if you stick with it and work with your child for better understanding of their challenges, they can make great strides in learning important skills toward mitigating and even preventing breakdowns in the future. Small steps can lead to big changes and when our kids start those small steps and get good results, success breeds more success.
Griffin Rouse
ADHD Coach | Center For Living Well with ADHD, LLC
