Decrease Autism-Related Shopping Meltdowns

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Meltdowns happen. But, there are ways to decrease the likelihood your child will have a shopping meltdown. In my previous blog I discuss tips to understand shopping meltdowns. In this blog, I outline simple ways to decrease autism-related shopping meltdowns.

Tend to basic needs first

Before a shopping trip, tend to your child’s basic needs. Make sure they are not hungry, they are rested, and they have received positive interactions with others such as play time with parents, peers, or siblings. Hunger and fatigue make children (and adults) more irritable. Before shopping, you could have a snack with your child and ensure you are attending to and delighting in their positive behaviors. From your child’s point of view, shopping likely means a lot of difficult to manage sensory experiences (sights, sounds, and smells) and adult correction. Therefore, it is important to ensure positive interactions (even for 5 minutes) before a potentially stressful shopping trip.

Use a visual schedule and list

As much as possible, let your child know about the shopping trip before it happens. Visual schedules are incredibly useful for children with autism. Add shopping trips to your child’s schedule, and better yet, try to have a routine grocery shopping or errand day each week. This will help increase predictability for your child. A visual shopping list with smart phone apps, pictures, or clip art can also help your child actively participate in shopping.

Identify meltdown triggers

Identifying meltdown triggers can help caregivers stay one step ahead of potential meltdowns. Some caregivers find that headphones, sunglasses, a soft object to hold, or the child’s favorite foods can help reduce meltdowns. If you observe your child is becoming upset, take a moment to help them calm down before the frustration builds. This may require a pause in shopping so a full meltdown does not occur.

Teach calm shopping behaviors

Children need to learn what behaviors are expected. Some children need explicit teaching and modeling. Social stories and video modeling can help children learn appropriate social behaviors. Video modeling can include having your child watch a video of another child successfully shopping with an adult or a short clip of themselves engaging in calm behavior while shopping. Children may need specific reminders and prompts at different points of the video to ensure understanding. Parents can also attend to calm behaviors during the shopping trip with praise (“Nice inside voice!”) and positive gestures such as a high five, or introducing small portions of food for the child’s “calm” behaviors.

Plan

Planning can help prevent meltdowns. Make a shopping list, decide what shopping items are most important so you can get those items first, and try to reduce the total shopping time. If you ensure you have plenty of planned strategies to help your child stay calm, your child can learn how to manage the stresses of shopping.

autism-related meltdowns

Understanding Autism-Related Shopping Meltdowns

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Children do not always go along with the shopping plan easily. Autism-related meltdowns can make shopping even more difficult. Understanding autism-related shopping meltdowns can help you and your child experience less stress during a shopping trip.

autism-related meltdowns

Carefully observe your child’s triggers

Observe what happens before your child has difficulties. Most children are more likely to have a meltdown if they are hungry or tired. A common trigger for children with autism also includes sensory overload. The lights, sounds, smells, and crowds from a shopping trip can trigger a meltdown. Shopping at the popular grocery store on a Saturday may be more stressful for your child because it is loud and chaotic. You might observe that the smaller, less-crowded grocery store does not trigger a meltdown.

Understand the difference between meltdowns and tantrums

Both meltdowns and tantrums can include screaming, crying, falling on the floor, self-injury, and destruction. But, meltdowns and tantrums happen for different reasons. I define a meltdown as the visual display of a child becoming overwhelmed in response to a trigger. Meltdowns do not immediately stop when a child is given what they want or when they are taken out of an unpleasant situation. The intensity of emotion during a meltdown may take a minute (or more) to decrease.

Children throw tantrums to gain access to something (attention, food, toy,  etc.). Children also throw tantrums to avoid something (unpleasant activity, ending play, bedtime, mealtime, etc.). You can usually stop a tantrum by giving the child what they want (leaving the store, that special toy, attention, etc.). A child having a tantrum may also watch for your reaction to see if the tantrum is working.

Conduct an experiment

Parents can carefully observe and implement systematic changes to decrease the likelihood of a meltdown. If you know your child’s triggers, you may be able to modify the trigger. For example, if a change in your child’s drive home from school triggers a meltdown, plan to give him or her ample notice (verbally or visually) that a shopping trip will occur. If the grocery store’s fluorescent lights are too bright, consider ways to reduce the child’s exposure to the lights.

Understanding autism-related shopping meltdowns gets us one step closer to improving your errand-running experience! On my next blog, I will provide tips to prevent meltdowns.

santa trauma

Make A Plan to Avoid Santa Trauma

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Santa Trauma

The holidays can be a difficult time for children with autism spectrum disorder. Difficulties can arise from changes in schedules, blinking lights, shiny objects, crowds, or the man with a hairy face that only comes once a year in a big red suit and loudly proclaims, “Ho Ho Ho.” Santa Claus can be intimidating for any child. As a parent of a child with autism, make a plan to avoid Santa trauma.

santa trauma

Santa trauma is not a “clinical” term. That is, Santa trauma is not a diagnosis. But, many of us have seen children cry, reach out for their parents in terror, or look petrified as they sit in Santa’s lap to take a picture. We have also seen stressed adults escorting children to sit in Santa’s lap despite the child’s apparent fear.

I define Santa trauma as significant emotional or behavioral reactions that happen when children (or adults) encounter Santa Claus. Santa trauma can happen while waiting in a line to sit in Santa’s lap, walking by Santa at the mall, seeing Santa on TV, or actually being forced to sit in Santa’s lap to take a picture. You or your child can experience Santa trauma. You may no longer have your child sit in Santa’s lap because the last time you tried it, your child had a meltdown and you are traumatized as a result. On the other hand, you may have wanted your child to have a big smile in a picture with Santa and he showed no reaction. Consider how to make a plan to avoid Santa trauma.

Santa Trauma From The Sensory or Social Experience

A child with autism spectrum disorder may have an intense response to Santa or he may look away because he has no social interest in Santa. Santa Claus provides a unique sensory and social experience because he only comes around once a year. Santa trauma can be triggered by Santa’s novelty or sensory overload from Santa’s big red textured suit, white furry beard, his big black boots and belt buckle, or his hearty “Ho Ho Ho.”

Make A Plan To Avoid Santa Trauma

You may need to make a carefully thought out plan to avoid Santa trauma. You know your child best. Think about how you can avoid or address a potential meltdown from a Santa encounter. Here are some tips if you do plan to introduce your child to Santa in person.

  • First, introduce your child to Santa in pictures, books, cartoons, stuffed animals, videos, or from a distance.
  • Talk about Santa in a way that is consistent with your family’s values.
  • Consider a sensory-friendly version of Santa through events for children with special needs.
  • Praise your child for any Santa approach such as looking at, going near, saying or approximating the word “Santa.”
  • Have a family member dress up as Santa for a controlled introduction in a familiar environment.
  • If you go to an event to take a picture, check your child’s reaction to Santa from a distance and the wait time before standing in line.
  • Make sure your child is well-rested and fed before the initial encounter with Santa in public. Have their favorite items readily available.
  • Do not force your child to sit in Santa’s lap if he is afraid or is on the verge of a meltdown.
  • Consider modeling a high-five or a fist bump if sitting in Santa’s lap is too frightening.
  • Be ready to leave the event if your child is upset by Santa, then do something you know calms your child.
  • Don’t feel pressured to visit or introduce Santa if you feel your child is not ready.

Make a plan to avoid Santa trauma. It does not have to happen to you or your child during this holiday season.

New Year, New You?

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girl-948246_960_720The New Year often brings resolutions of positive, sometimes dramatic changes to our lifestyles. Goals of weight loss, exercise, healthy eating, organization, or career accomplishment are commonly kick-started by the changing of the calendar. No matter what the goal, the one thing that they tend to have in common is that they are forgotten or abandoned not long after they are started. Research suggests that around 85% of people who make New Year’s resolutions fail. But what determines failure? If the lofty goal of suddenly attending the gym five days a week gets derailed due to increased commitments at work or home for a few days, have we failed? If we binged on popcorn during a Netfilx marathon after two weeks of healthy eating, have we failed? Is perfect the enemy of the good?

Many wise thinkers (e.g., Voltaire, Aristotle, Confucius) have cautioned against extremism. In other words, if a “cheat day” derails us from our overall goal of eating healthier in the New Year, we are setting unrealistically high expectations of perfection that will only lead to feelings of failure and a loss of motivation. New behaviors take time and repetition to become habit. Just think about how many times we will each write 2015 in error instead of 2016! So how do we combat these thoughts of failure and maintain motivation for healthy life improvements? Ironically, research suggests we love who we are right now in this very moment!

As taken from the work of Dr. Kristen Neff at the University of Texas at Austin, self-compassion is extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy or failure. Self-compassion has been shown to promote greater life satisfaction, optimism, curiosity, social connectedness, and emotional resilience and personal responsibility. According to Dr. Neff, self-compassion includes the following main components:

  • Self-kindness: being warm towards oneself when encountering personal shortcomings, rather than being harsh with self-criticism
  • Common humanity: recognizing that personal failure is part of the shared human experience
  • Mindfulness: taking a balanced approach to one’s negative emotions so that feelings are not exaggerated

Being compassionate toward setbacks and failure is actually what will support continued efforts toward our goals and long term change over time. One quick way to practice self-compassion is to ask ourselves what we would tell a friend who was experiencing a similar set back. Likely, we would kindly reassure our friend that set backs are normal and provide encouragement to get back on track! So instead of being discouraged by our lack of perfection in the New Year, let the New You be one of compassion and kindness toward our progress and ourselves.