Have you ever been in a car accident?
Do you know that feeling you get when you realize that you’ve done all you can, but your vehicle just will not stop in time?
Where everything slows down in your mind and you know you are about to crash?
I get that same feeling when Jonah is about to have a meltdown.
It feels like I can see it coming a mile away.
I will mentally prepare myself.
I will assess our surroundings and the possible dangers. I will mitigate the risk of injury, first to those around us, then to Jonah, then to me.
I will try to pick the “battlefield”—Contained and not in public, if at all possible.
I will grit my teeth, mutter a quick prayer, empty myself of all emotion, and then say “okay, let’s do this.”
So, why am I telling you all this?
Well, let me tell you about yesterday.
(Huh boy.)
Here are some contributing factors for yesterday that made me think, “WARNING! MELTDOWN IMMINENT!”
1). It was a Saturday. Most kids love their weekends, but for Jonah, the routine and predictability of a school day keeps his anxiety in check. Weekends are chaos, or can be.
Since 2020, whenever there is no school, it could either be a “good thing,” or a “REALLY BAD” thing. The uncertainty breeds anxiety.
2). Jonah had been to the doctor’s office earlier that day, and had gotten a shot. Anxiety was already high. (That’s another story)
3). As a reward for being such a trooper, Jonah got to go to the local Children’s museum.
While in theory this place is awesome for Jojo, it was less than ideal yesterday.
Jonah has not been back there in over 2 years. The prospect of going back is VERY HIGH on the “preferred activity” scale. Very little would redirect him if redirection was needed. Possible exceptions include the Great Wolf Lodge, and/or Disneyland.
4). Parking is horrible at the Children’s Museum. It’s street parking in an urban environment. One way streets everywhere. So you can imagine the anxiety caused when we drove right past the building and had to keep going because there was “no parking.”
And after I DID find a parking spot, I was already out of my car when I noticed the sign over the spot that said “permit parking only.” So I had to get back in the car and start it back up again to go park elsewhere.
In the past, this would have been an instant meltdown. Jonah would assume we were leaving and… well… that would be that.
But Jonah held it together.
5). When we got to the entrance, it was LOCKED. There was a sign taped to the door that read “CLOSED from 1pm-2pm for lunch.”
It was 1:30. We were literally looking through the window directly at all the “fun” to be had and needed to wait half an hour.
Another instant meltdown in the past…😳
But not yesterday.
Jonah STILL held it together. I set a timer on my phone to count down from 30 minutes and asked Jonah after each minute “how much time” was left. He sat calmly with me the entire time, just counting the minutes.
6). When the museum finally opened again, a TON of people entered, both older and younger than Jonah. It was loud, crazy, and chaotic.
Jonah had to share the space, equipment and toys with many other kids and parents, some who did not know how to share, and some who would not play how he wanted.
I watched as Jonah spent 5 minutes gathering plastic balls to float down the little waterfalls, only to have a 3-year-old snatch them out of the water right after he released them.
I watched him trying to play as kids intentionally blocked the air flow of one of his favorite sensory machines, the huge, wall-mounted one that blew colorful scarves around a maze of transparent tubes…
I watched as adults attempted to insert scarves into the openings of the machine meant as release valves if scarves got stuck, apparently unaware that it affected the airflow for the rest of the machine, and unaware that what they were doing was making the machine “not work.”
But they didn’t actually care if the machine was “working” as intended. They just wanted their kids to have fun.
I saw Jonah trying to take the scarves out of the release valves as soon as the adults let go of them, and saw the nasty looks the adults gave him because he was “spoiling their child’s fun.”
I saw Jonah’s frustration mounting.
I tried to redirect him to a different part of the museum, but he screamed “ALL DONE, DADDY!! DADDY, I WANT SPAAAACCEE!”
He had fixated on simply watching this machine “work,” and these people were sabotaging it, and Daddy, his last resort, was not intervening to help.
This was the start of “that moment.”
He would react with screaming, with violence, or with both.
I mentally prepared myself.
I knew a meltdown was coming.
No.
What I saw unfolding was a culmination of all the anxiety building up over the course of the day exploding into a proverbial World War 3 in the least preferable place possible. There must have been around 50 kids and as many adults in that place.
It was very enclosed.
I would have to physically pick Jonah up to find a safe place for a meltdown. And that loss of autonomy would send him into a flailing, screaming, hitting, biting rage.
I briefly considered, but there was not a “safe place” here. The “parking lot” was a busy street. The foyer might do, but I would have to physically block him from going back into the museum, while simultaneously letting others go inside.
The staff probably would not appreciate it either. At home, I would just wait him out, which could take hours…but I would not expect others to have that kind of patience. I wondered how long it would take until they called the police?
I readied an exit strategy. What preferred activity could I possibly use to get Jonah to leave?
I came up blank. I could check to see if we could go swimming but I was pretty sure we had missed the open swim time.
Would it be better if I just let him rage here in front of everyone, while apologizing every 10 seconds for… however long it took…or should I attempt to carry him out? (Can I even pick him up when he’s like this anymore?)
I thought all these things in the span of about two seconds.
“Hey Jojo, do you want to go see the magnifying glass?”
😕
I didn’t expect that lame redirect to work but I was completely improvising and had run out of ideas. Maybe if I sounded “excited” enough about it he would think it “cooler” than his new favorite machine.
To my absolute surprise, it worked.
Jonah extricated himself from the fray, and over to a “less crowded” area. Luckily, nobody else was using the magnifying glass and Jonah had just discovered how it worked.
He started walking around with it up to his eye, just looking at “everything.”
I was mildly stunned.
My adrenaline was still pumping, and Jonah had not reacted how I thought he would… no… how I KNEW he would react.
He was self-soothing with the magnifying glass. After a minute or two, he redirected himself to more water-sensory fun. Mostly younger kids were playing there.
I noticed they were not sharing their water toys and would often take Jonah’s toy away, but Jonah would just calmly play with something else or walk away…
When other kids crowded him out of an area, he would go play somewhere else.
Jonah would fixate on certain toys or items, but would quickly move on if another child started playing with it.
He spent 15 minutes playing with other things before returning to the “scarves machine,” and all the parents/kids had moved on.
I was absolutely floored. 😲
The monster of a meltdown I had expected… never happened.
Even when kids were purposefully making the scarves machine “not work,” Jonah would just go sit next to them… waiting for them to get bored and move on, and then fix the machine himself.
Jonah was doing so well.
I could have cried.
He never had a meltdown. He kept his hands to himself. He never even so much as protested about anything.
I was absolutely amazed at Jonah’s level of self-regulation. This is something I have not seen in the two years he had to try to do “school” at home.
This is why Jonah needs to be in person at school. The social interaction and controlled “chaos” that they have while playing at school is “practice” for playing and social interaction while in public.
This is unparalleled social improvement in one semester. I cannot thank his teachers enough.
I am so proud of Jonah.
I let him stay at the museum clear until it closed.
And though we had a “moment” when I thought things were spinning out of control…
…we never “crashed.”
#Ausome