When M was two, a spilled glass of water could send him into a meltdown. We didn’t have a diagnosis yet, and this behavior was one of the early red flags. His response to a spill (or an object accidentally dropped or broken) was a combination of panic, terror, and rage. He would scream “Can you still drink it? Did you not drop it? You didn’t drop it! Can you clean it? You could still use it!” — describing the world as he wished it were, before the accident that threw him off balance.
Sometimes he would try for “do-overs,” by replaying the actions that led up to the catastrophe: “You want to go back in the living room and come into the kitchen again!” Often he would flail his arms, sweeping other objects off the table and escalating the meltdown. His whole body would shake until his teeth chattered. Sometimes he would hit himself in the face.
We would try to reassure him that it was just an accident, that we could refill the water glass, clean up the spill, tape up the torn page in the book. We tried to stay calm, to comfort him. But we were worried by what seemed like a huge struggle to cope with small surprises or setbacks. My sister joked that “toddler screams ‘clean it!’” was my top Google search in 2009.
After the diagnosis, we were advised by some therapist or EI teacher to try to minimize these incidents by not drawing attention to them — ignore the reaction; quietly clean up without too much talking or fuss. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. After learning more about autism, I began to understand the panic as a response to a combination of things: a loud noise, a disruption in routine, an unexpected and confusing display of emotion from an adult (spills at our house are often followed by “goddammit!” or “motherfucker!”), and, on some level, the uncomfortable recognition that we are not always in control of what happens — that there is disorder in the world.
For about a year, my husband and I would freeze in our seats, prepared to leap into full combat mode if there was a minor spill at the dinner table. Eventually this kind of meltdown became less frequent, but I still get a rush of adrenaline every time I drop or break something in front of my son.
One of the worst incidents happened more than a year ago, when I dropped a glass bottle full of ricemilk as we were walking upstairs. M stared at the broken pieces in terror, sobbing “Is it still a bottle? It’s not a bottle anymore! Could you still drink it? You could go back downstairs and come up again and then it would still be a bottle!” I cleaned up the mess, filled a new bottle, and tried to calm him down, but he stayed hysterical for nearly an hour.
I thought of this day when I saw the HBO special on Temple Grandin. Temple asks her aunt how she will know which room is hers, and they agree to tape a sign to the door that says “Temple’s Room.” Later, a draft blows the sign off the door, and we watch Temple panic as she takes in this change. The film makes it clear that the room has become unfamiliar and sinister now that the sign is gone — it is no longer her room, and this is confusing and frightening.
It occurred to me that M’s panic over spills and small accidents could be less about the loud noise or the surprise, and more about the horrifying idea that an object can cease to exist. If he does not recognize the broken pieces as “still a bottle,” then when a bottle breaks, it just disappears. Honestly, it seems like a pretty reasonable thing to panic about. This is, after all, the root of all human religious thought — our discomfort with the idea that people can simply cease to exist. We create elaborate fairy tales about the afterlife and divine intervention because death is terrifying, and there are no do-overs — time moves in only one direction.
I don’t actually think my three-year-old’s tantrums are all about existential despair, or evidence of his recognition that there is no God. But I do think there is more to it than just shock at a loud noise. And ignoring the reaction might not be the best way to handle it. The idea that an object can just disappear out of the fabric of space-time is upsetting, and his response doesn’t seem so surprising or unreasonable when I look at it that way.
M has come a long way in the last year. More often than not, he takes spills in stride — with no reaction other than a typical preschooler’s desire to play in the mess. Last week, his brother dropped a plate off his highchair tray, and it broke in three pieces. M’s eyes got huge, and he started to cry, “Is it still a plate? It’s not a plate! It’s not a plate anymore!”
I started to clean up, and I said, “Yes, it’s still a plate. It’s just broken in pieces. Just like your eggs — they’re cut up in pieces, but they’re still eggs.”
M was quiet for a while. I finished cleaning up, and we went back to eating our breakfast. I was keeping my eye on L to make sure he didn’t dump anything else off his tray.
Several minutes later, I turned around to look at M and realized he was still staring at his eggs, with a huge smile on his face. He was whispering to himself, “Still a plate. The eggs are still eggs. They’re just cut up.”
It’s so true – M is really just giving voice to the fears many of us have. I loved the little breakthrough at the end. Nice for him AND you.
You articulate all of this so well.
Thanks. The fear may never go away completely, but it’s nice to see him learn new ways to process it.
Very poignant post. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you.
Oh, wow. Awesome post. Has my nose tingling from the tears, you know?
Thanks Kim.
in the wee hours of the morning i’m researching pdd-nos, asd, and ran across this post. it cut me straight to the heart and gave me chills at the same time. my little one patrick is the exact same way – and i’ve never seen it articulated so well. thank you. for reminding me i am not crazy. i am not overindulgent. and i am not imagining patrick’s reactions to the things that happen in life.
Of course you are not imagining things. And yes, that’s the best thing I’ve found in reading about other people’s experiences: the validation, and the reminder that I’m not the only one doing/thinking/feeling whatever it is. Hooray for the Interwebz!
hi great post and another one very relevant to me – like the sleep one! My DD reacts in a similiar fashion to any spills, things that fall, seatbelt on or not on quick enough, jigsaw piece missing, toy broken the list goes on and on. I feel like i’m always on edge and have begun to realise its a bit of a vicious circle – my stress her stress. Really trying to work on it and how i react but every situation so different and man it can just be so stressful…supppose she didn’t lick the asd off the ground!! i’m in hyper mode myself! interesting to think about what their reactions might really mean..we should underestimate it.
Yes — my son definitely got his anxiety from me. And sometimes it’s hard to pick apart the anxiety from the autism: which reactions are sensory processing issues, which ones are fear. They are all probably a combination of the two, but I know I can never understand exactly how another person is interpreting sensory input. So it’s easier for me to relate to my son if I think about his behavior in terms of anxiety, which I’m quite familiar with…
I don’t think there’s any way to separate out the two, as an adult on the spectrum. I’m more likely to be acutely anxious when sensory-overloaded, and being anxious makes me more likely to be sensory-overloaded. Like any person, my anxiety is a product of my brain and the funny chemicals it uses; there’s no way to keep the sensory parts of my brain (which, after all, are processing the world around me for me to respond to in the first place) from the anxiety parts. Like you, I’ve found it easier to address the anxiety response in myself–I find the sensory stuff comes with it in turn.
‘shouldn’t’ – re above ‘shouldn’t underestimate’
Yes, this is BB too, but now the meltdown only happens if it was him who dropped something. He can accept an accident caused by someone else (just!) but the thought that he ‘got it wrong’ devastates him. The idea that things are not as they ought to be is so distressing for all our kids.
I’m glad it’s gotten easier for him to deal with accidents. I still don’t do so well with making mistakes myself…
I recognize in M the grief I feel in myself when something breaks or gets lost. I’ve had that kind of grief all my life. It’s not overwhelming grief, as when a person dies; it’s more a sense of keen disappointment at something passing. And that something isn’t just the object, but the associations I have with the object. In fact, I’m not sure that it really has to do with the object per se, although the object is definitely the marker.
For many of us on the spectrum, objects aren’t just objects, but full of associations. I have very strong emotive associations with the things I own (which is one reason that I don’t own a lot of things, and that I don’t buy things that can be easily broken or lost). For example, I can remember the day I got each of the rocking chairs in my living room: where I got them, who I was with, what the light was like, what time of year it was, and how I felt. The same holds for everything I have. Everything has some sort of emotion or memory attached to it and, given that we autistic people tend to have extremely vivid visual and emotive memories, an object can end up being resonant with feeling, even if it looks like a very ordinary object to other people. So when something gets lost or broken, it feels as though its whole history has gone with it, and it’s a reminder that those experiences are in the past, and that time moves on. There’s a sadness there that goes way beyond the object. I wouldn’t minimize the extent to which M feels this; what people sometimes lack in language, they more than make up for in depth.
I’m thinking that M may also believe that you have the same strong associations with objects, and may feel upset on your behalf as well as his own. I can remember feeling that about my parents from a very young age, because they tended to react very emotionally to things. The fact that you are staying calmer now in the midst of these mishaps is letting M know that you are not grieving broken items, and it undoubtedly helps him shift perspective.
I love what you said to M about the plate still being a plate, like the eggs still being eggs, just in pieces. It reminds him that things become transformed, and that it’s important to keep adjusting one’s vision. A good lesson for everyone, I think.
Awesome post, Sarah.
I feel that kind of attachment to certain objects too. Not all of them, but particularly to the objects I associate with people I have lost. Because objects, like photographs, help us access those memories and emotions we associate with them. Not only is it a reminder that the experience is in the past — it’s a real physical shift in our ability to remember. Without the object to trigger it, the memory is accessed less frequently, and eventually it fades. That loss feels just as worthy of grief as the loss of the person.
Absolutely. And it works with objects associated with painful memories, too; they can trigger things very vividly. Which leads me to wonder: If M ends up in an otherwise unaccountable meltdown, could it be that he seems something that reminds him of a difficult experience?
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks
What a stellar post. God, our kids are amazing and interesting… It occurs to me that our pit-of-the-stomach discomfort with their meltdowns isn’t simply because of the way we have to stop and wait (right when we had plans dammit!) but because they put a voice to our own angst and desire. How many times have we wanted to wind time back just a few seconds, re-trace our steps so that we don’t bungle again? Thank you for a great piece –I’ll be gnawing on this for awhile.
Yes. It’s hard to watch anybody display emotion that’s so raw; especially someone you love. It feels a little too intimate to see another person “lose control,” and it’s certainly a reminder that none of us are too far from that edge.
[...] Putting the Pieces Together appears here by permission. [...]
Rachel pointed me toward your blog. This is a beautiful post. I love your take on how natural it is to be upset over things apparently ceasing to exist, and I was very impressed by your comparison of the plate to the eggs. For my own spectrum child, finding the right way to frame a thought seems to be the key to him getting OK with something.
Thanks. The tough part is getting inside someone else’s head to figure out a frame that makes sense. I have no idea if that’s what helped this time or not, but we’ll see if it works in the future.
[...] at Kitaiska Sandwich, Sarah has a great post about the upset that her autistic son feels when things get broken or spilled. In reflecting upon [...]
Hello from France! Thanks for sharing this. An idea crossed my mind while reading: if destruction is hard to accept for your child, could art maybe help? With the possibility of creating things, destruction and disappearance are somewhat balanced. Just an idea; I don’t have first-hand experience with autism and am just starting reading things to learn about it. Best regards
That’s seems like . . . a huge deal. Right?? Did that “lesson” stay with him?
[...] Edit: This is a great post about identifying with the trauma of broken things: http://www.kitaiskasandwich.com/2011/03/13/putting-the-pieces-together/ [...]