Meltdown

A meltdown is what happens when the demands on a child, sensory Sensory Needs One of the eight Assembly Dimensions. It covers how your child takes in sound, touch, taste, smell and movement, and how they react to it. Read the full definition of Sensory Needs , social or emotional, exceed what they can process. It can look like shouting, crying, lashing out or running, and once it starts the child cannot simply stop: the moment for reasoning has passed. Some children go the other way and shut down, going silent and unreachable, which is the same overwhelm turned inward.

The difference from a tantrum Tantrum A word often used when a child kicks off to get something. A meltdown is different: it is a loss of control, not a choice. Read the full definition of Tantrum matters because adults respond so differently to each. A tantrum has an audience and a goal. A meltdown has neither: it happens with no one watching, giving in does not end it, and telling off does not prevent it.

Schools sometimes record meltdowns as behaviour incidents. If that is happening, it can help to ask, in writing, for the behaviour to be understood as distress and for the triggers to be looked at, so the plan becomes reducing the overwhelm rather than punishing the response.