Autistic meltdowns can be hard for siblings. Here are some resources and suggestions. These suggestions are intended for school aged children.
Understanding autism for siblings:
Check out this resource from OAR that has a general ‘Autism, my sibling, and me‘ workbook for children 5-10 years old. It’s a free resource (for your first download).
**First and foremost during a meltdown ensuring everyone’s safety needs to be the top priority.**
These suggestions are for afterward and may or may not be appropriate for your given situation.
Steps for reflecting for the child that had the meltdown:
- Wait until they are calm and if needed act as a co-regulator. See the Regulate-Relate-Reason model (Dr. Bruce Perry). All of this work is in the ‘reason’ section and there are pre-requisites to starting this work.
- Get the child to notice the impact on themselves: actions, body sensations, emotions (adapt to their developmental level) and what was leading up to the meltdown. Are modifications we can help change to avoid this in the future? This is our opportunity as adults to really try and understand what happened and make notes of changes we can help support.
- Perspective taking to understand the impact on their sibling. They could make a guess or ask their sibling questions and will likely require support. You could use a ‘social situation mapping’ tool for example:
- What happened
- How your sibling might have felt
- How your sibling acted or reacted
- Repairing the harm. This looks different ways and needs to be realistic for the child that had the meltdown. If it immediately results in another meltdown it was too soon (child was not regulated) or not realistic. It is not about making the child feel guilty (there’s a good chance they feel guilty anyhow), but more about clearly communicating that actions have consequences. Normalize that everyone makes mistakes and that fixing them can be uncomfortable, but it is still important. It could be saying sorry, making a plan for next time, fixing something broken or cleaning something up.
- Reconnect. This can be very individual and could be anything from a game, a hug, a special interest, creating together, playing together, etc. What ever is important for that particular relationship. Repairing the harm and reconnecting might be able to be combined (for example a lego car gets broken and the siblings re-build it together).
Example social story for a child who has experienced a meltdown:
- It’s not okay for people to ______ (yell at, hit, etc) me, that includes my family.
- Sometimes people lose their cool. **There’s a line between people making mistakes which happens from time to time and patterns of abuse, yelling vs hitting, and considerations around intensity and frequency, etc which depending on the situation should be considered** There might be a conversation about what meltdown is and trying to build an understanding of why their sibling might have a that kind of reaction.
- It’s normal to feel (sad, scared, upset, angry) when something like that happens.
- If this does happen I should talk through it with an adult.
- If this does happen it makes me feel ______.
- If this does happen I can:
- In the moment (*modify for your situation*): ask them to stop, considerations for safety, leave, re-direct their sibling, breathe
- Afterward (*modify for your situation*): talk to an adult, coping tools of choice (drawing, building, time outside, etc), time alone, 1:1 time with caregiver
- When my sibling is calm I can tell them how I feel
- Boundary setting specific to your situation. For example:
- Even though my sibling has autism I can still (win games, tell stories, go first, etc) even if it is hard for my sibling
- There are times when I can help (when they are calm) and times when I can’t (during a meltdown).
- Review again your in the moment suggestions and afterward suggestions