Published by: Someone’s Mum Blog

To most parents, the words tantrum and meltdown are interchangeable – a way to describe a frustrated and uncontrollable child – the name for those moments when strangers stare and you wish you could shrink into yourself. Every parent knows them.

To the parents of autistic children, and parents of children with sensory processing issues, those words will always mean very different things.

It is hard to make others understand. The difference between those two words is central to my life. I wish I could explain; I wish I could show you…

But a child in meltdown is confidential. I cannot show my gorgeous boy in full meltdown mode because it is, should be, taboo. It lays him bare, at his most vulnerable. He is pure emotion, pure anguish. There are no photos, no record of our bleakest times but these words.

There are those who will witness such moments; they will see. But they will not KNOW. No one, not even his grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles – the hundreds of people who love him – they do not KNOW.

I can give you the definitions – Click here to read the rest of the story