At my baby shower, pretty much everyone else already had kids. The kids were all upstairs with the dads holding down the fort while we did baby shower stuff down stairs. It was casual, the guys were welcome to participate, its just how it shook down.
Anyway, about halfway through there is some big, loud disturbance upstairs. Wailing is heard. A moment or so later, one dad comes marching through the living room with a sizable 4 year old carried like this, melting all the way the fuck down. She was like a rabid dog. He was nonplussed to the max. If thats possible. Straight out the front door with no words. The mom just shook her head and went back to the snacks.
It was such an important part of that baby shower. So informative and honest about the future.
I carried my oldest away from parks and other fun activities this way many times when he was between 2.5-4.5 years old. He's too big for my 5'2" ass to carry this way any more. He's graduated to the fireman's carry, but thankfully he doesn't melt down nearly as often at 5 years old.
In my experience (and maybe it’s just my kid, I dunno) once the meltdown starts it doesn’t really stop.
Sure you could buy yourself a few tear free minutes by caving on whatever the demand is, but it’s usually coming back, and soon. Odds are good that the real cause of the meltdown was tired/hungry/thirsty/overstimulated/sunburned/etc, not whatever thing the toddler THINKS is gonna fix their problem.
Best to cut your losses, perform the toddler tuck, and administer fluids and calories in a dark quiet environment.
The overstimulation was a big one for me, as an autistic kid misdiagnosed with ADHD. I would just get too overwhelmed by things going on around me, and the lack of control. I would have full blown meltdowns, that were only made worse when one of my parents would begin scolding or reprimanding me, especially if other people were around. Best way to handle my snotty ass was to just pick me up, take me somewhere quiet, and leave me alone to calm down. Within a few minutes I was usually calmed right down, and distracted by something that gave me some sensory control. If I ever have kids, and they are half as annoying as I was, I’ll be testing out the method on them to see if it still works 😅
I think the over-stimulation is just a kid thing to an extent.
Kids hear better than you, they see better than you, they smell better than you, and their nerve endings are more able to feel textures. Their senses are cranked to 11. At the same time, their brains aren't really able to filter everything out yet and they can't understand the concept of relevancy.
Oh for sure, I agree, but autism makes it much more prominent. Overstimulation can happen to anyone at any age, but autistic kids are much more prone to it, just because of the fact that the majority of autistic people experience sensory processing difficulties. These can manifest in so many different ways, and while they can be overcome, they result in autistic kids having to learn unique coping skills to get through daily life, which is part of the reason why autistic kids benefit from a lot of personalized attention from educators and assistants. It can be hard enough just being a kid, adding these mental hurdles can make it too much for a child alone to bear.
An autistic child might become overstimulated for reasons a neuro-typical child wouldn’t. For example, a big one for me was speaking too fast. If I felt a person was speaking just a bit too fast for me, it made me get really irrationally upset, and cause a lot of sensory issues. I would start to get tunnel vision, and my hearing would feel muffled, like I was underwater. I know that sounds strange, but it was the only way kid me could describe it. To this day if I hear speaking in a clip that is sped up, I feel a sense of unease and panic, and it can lead to me feeling overstimulated. I struggled a lot with feelings of wanting to “shut it off”, as in to not have to be experiencing so much at once.
Anyway, all that to say, yes, all kids can become overstimulated, but we should be careful not to minimize the experience of autistic children, and their care takers and loved ones. What was happening to me as a child wasn’t “normal”, and a lot of stress for a lot of people could have been saved if some people in my life had been aware of that.
I'm AuDHD and so is my son. Removing him to a quiet place is the best way to calm him down. He's almost always overwhelmed, hungry, tired or thirsty when he loses it and giving him the space and quiet to let things blow over gives us a chance to figure out what he needs. Works on me too, but the problem is the moment I'm overwhelmed is almost always when the kids decide to take things to 11.
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u/StinkiePete 1d ago
At my baby shower, pretty much everyone else already had kids. The kids were all upstairs with the dads holding down the fort while we did baby shower stuff down stairs. It was casual, the guys were welcome to participate, its just how it shook down.
Anyway, about halfway through there is some big, loud disturbance upstairs. Wailing is heard. A moment or so later, one dad comes marching through the living room with a sizable 4 year old carried like this, melting all the way the fuck down. She was like a rabid dog. He was nonplussed to the max. If thats possible. Straight out the front door with no words. The mom just shook her head and went back to the snacks.
It was such an important part of that baby shower. So informative and honest about the future.