 What is the difference between a meltdown and a shutdown? I'm going to answer that question briefly in today's video. Now meltdown and shutdown are things that you will relatively commonly see in children with autism spectrum disorder or who struggle to emotionally regulate. Now the big difference between meltdown and shutdown is that one of them gets our attention and the other one generally doesn't. But they are at the heart really, really similar. And the way in which we can support someone who is melting down or shutting down is also really similar. So the best way I found of understanding the difference between meltdown, which tends to look like this, meltdown, a big tantrum-y kind of thing versus shutdown, which tends to be a bit more like this. Where we kind of go inside ourselves. The big best way I found of explaining it is thinking of the kind of common anxiety responses, fight, flight, freeze. And your meltdown is more like your fight, flight response where you've got all this anxious energy coming around everywhere and it's coming out in a big, loud way somehow. Meltdown is like your freeze. They are like the deer in headlights and you completely shut down and go inside yourself. So it looks really different. But generally speaking, both shutdown and meltdown are as a result of overwhelm. This is a child who is overwhelmed. Perhaps they are struggling with sensory or social overload. Perhaps they've got big, big feelings bubbling up inside that they don't quite know what to do with. And so their body goes into shutdown or meltdown. In both cases, it's really important to remember that essentially shutdown and meltdown is about the brain being completely overwhelmed. And that young person therefore is not going to be in a great position to have a conversation with you about this. To explain to you why they are shouting or withdrawing. They're not in a good place to process stuff. And so actually generally with both shutdown and meltdown it's about getting through the next few minutes safely and sensitively. So that then we can enable that child to continue with their day. So meltdown is more external. This can often look like what we might call a tantrum. But we need to remember this is not a child who is being purposefully naughty. It's a child who right now is completely unable to cope for whatever reason. And we might not be able to understand those reasons and they might not ever be able to voice them. But right now they're not coping. When a young person is in meltdown shouting is not going to help. The most important thing you can do is to keep them safe and to try really hard to stay calm. What they need is for you to feel safe, supportive and predictable at this time. And that can be really difficult because it can trigger difficult stuff for us. When a child is big and loud and shouty and angry and aggressive that's really hard. And sometimes we have to do our very best acting skills or remember be the swan. So trying to appear calm and serene as we glide across the water. And actually we're frantically paddling. This is the time when your stock phrases can come in really helpful. So remember those are those phrases that you prepare beforehand that you practice saying and then you say again and again and again like a broken record in these difficult times. And that can be things like I'm ready to listen when you're ready to talk or you're safe I've got you. Whatever the child that you're working with finds helpful. You can say it as many times as you need to. And remember your lovely calm audio narrator type voice that helps to calm you and it helps also to calm them. Shut down on the other hand unlike meltdown which is external. Shut down is internal. This is when a child will kind of turn in on themselves and they will often become very very quiet and withdrawn. They might become completely unresponsive. So we often don't really even notice this because they tend not to be causing any trouble. If we're in one to one interaction with that child or they're part of group work for example and they go into shutdown then we can get quite frustrated because we can feel like they're being sort of truckulent or rude or non responsive. And again we can sometimes then be constantly prompting them trying to get a response and actually right now they might not be capable of formulating and giving a response. So sometimes what they need again then here is for you to be that safe calm supportive predictable adult. And as they begin to calm then they will feel more able to engage with things. The kinds of things that you can do to help a child in this moment apart from just generally being kind safe and supportive this can be things where things like an object that they find comforting can be really helpful. So at home like a favorite toy at school they might have a particular item that they keep with them that helps them to feel calm or connected and it can be helpful to give them that item at this time. When a child goes into shutdown this is also a particularly high risk time when a child might engage in dangerous behaviors like self-harm. Self-harm is relatively common among young people who are autistic and it's in these kind of shutdown moments when we're going in and ourselves and really retreating from everything around us when we might be more likely to kind of do ourselves harm. And the other thing to remember here is that during those kind of shutdown moments everything might seem quiet to you, there's not a lot going on that child's just being quiet but they might have a huge amount of different thoughts and feelings swirling around in their head so things probably seem pretty noisy to them and it can be hard for them to work their way out of this without a little bit of support and guidance from a kind and caring adult. Again all your usual calming strategies can really really help here kind of soothing music or going to a less sensory overloaded environment just having a safe adult alongside to sit with us whilst we calm can really help. I'd love to hear what strategies have worked for you when you're trying to calm down a child who's either in shutdown or in meltdown. Are there any strategies that you have found that work for both situations or any that you found particularly helpful for one or the other? Do leave them in a comment below because people do read the comments and your ideas and suggestions are really helpful to other people in the same situation. Also I might cherry pick a few and put together a future video on the topic. So remember both shutdown and meltdown do matter, neither are your fault, neither are the fault of the child and both require an adult who is supportive, safe and predictable to support the child through it. The other thing that often helps is just a little bit of time. This is happening at a point where our feelings are right up here and with a little bit of time those feelings will begin to dissipate and the child will become better able to manage and to put into place their other regular coping skills. If you want to know more about this kind of stuff I'd massively recommend following Gareth Moorward and Studio 3 who have developed what's called the low arousal approach. Gareth Moorward is basically my go-to guy for all things autism. You might remember the interview that he did with me about autism and my diagnosis a few months ago in Dubai. But yeah, he's absolutely great. So I'd recommend him and his website and Studio 3 who he is now working with and their low arousal approach which you might find helpful. And I believe there's a new book out as well from the team there. Another book that you might find helpful if you're supporting children who are autistic is this book. Is it okay to ask questions about autism? I absolutely love this book which is full of simple questions and answers and it's basically anything that a kid or their family or their friends would want to know about autism answered in straightforward easy to understand language. So the reading age of this book is really young but it's useful for anyone with an interest in understanding more about autism. So I'd highly recommend it. I'll put it in a link down below. I hope it was a helpful video. I love reading your comments so please do take time to leave a comment down below letting me know if you found this helpful if you have any ideas or suggestions to add and whether you've used this video in any way because I often don't know what happens with them after I release them out into the wild. So let me know if you used it in some way. Other than that, all that's left to say is stay safe, take care and be kind to yourselves and don't forget to subscribe for new videos from me every Tuesday and Friday. Until next time, bye.