Autism and Tantrums Take Two
I’ve posted about the dreaded autism tantrum before but I’d like to revisit the topic again. My daughter’s tantrums are progressively getting worse and worse. I really feel bad for the wee one as she just loses complete control during these periods. I think I have it pinned down to a language problem. You may be thinking “well, duh” but she’s verbal so I didn’t really think twice about it being a language issue when it was first mentioned. Her expressive language has gone through a growth spurt lately but her receptive language is stil lagging quite behind. Even though she is verbal she has no ability to convey her feelings and most of her wants and needs. We do have a limited picture board that we use but it hasn’t proved useful during the tantrums to help her communicate why it is she’s having a tantrum. I am going to look into getting another board for feelings/emotions to see if that helps.
Today’s tantrum came out of nowhere, like most tantrums. She’d been having a relatively decent day; preschool went well and she did well in the car on the ride to pick up her brother from school. We get home and as we walk into the garage she stops in place and screams at the top of her lungs; she was beet red and completely stiff. I knew she was mad by her expression but I didn’t know why. When she’d run out of breath she stopped, inhaled, and let out another scream that was longer and louder than the first. I closed the garage and once it settled down she ran to it and started kicking and hitting it while screaming. I somehow coaxed her into the house, screaming and crying the entire time, and once the house door closed she attacked that with the same fierceness she had attacked the garage door. I got her into the living room and did a cursory check of her while dodging flailing limbs and there appeared to be no injuries, splinters, bug bites, etc. In the middle of this, probably a good seven minutes in, she yells the word egg.
Ah hah, now I know what is wrong. She had her little Easter basket from school and her pink plastic egg had fallen out. We go out into the garage and I open the garage door and she bolts for the road screaming all the way to the end of the driveway before I was able to catch up with her and get her hand. We then walked around the car and found the pink egg sitting there on the ground just waiting to be picked up. She said “egg” again and that was the end of it.
I don’t know why she reacted the way she did initially instead of saying egg then but I am glad that something in that little mind of hers clicked and she was able to say egg so we could resolve the issue and move on.
