Again, this is a situation that occurred with my Munchkin. But it highlights that some meltdown triggers can be long term issues and new ones can come out of nowhere.
Munchkin was generally a peaceful child at school. Then he started having more meltdowns at school and at home. And he was getting back into needing a rigid unchanging schedule. On the weekends, if we were busy, Munchkin would be prone to misbehaving on a grander scale then normal with the occasional meltdown thrown in for spice. Despite multiple talks with his teacher, we just couldn't see where things had changed to trigger this.
Then one of his aides discovered that he was getting headaches. She was seeing all the signs of this. So I started giving him OTC medicine for the headaches when I saw the signs of them. And the signs were pretty distinctive if you were aware of the problem. But it's not in my nature to medicate continually so I started looking for the causes of the headaches.
It didn't take us long to figure out that untreated the headaches got worse throughout the week. Even with medications, sometimes they just got worse. That, of course, lead to the realization of why changes in our weekends were a problem. Munchkin spent the weekends getting rid of the headaches. Any changes in our normally lazy weekends meant that the headaches didn't fade quite as much. Now imagine that compounding over several weeks and you understand why his meltdowns increased.
But again, while that helped in treating the headaches, it didn't tell us what was triggering the headaches. So of to the neurologist we went, after his family doctor maxed her knowledge. The neurologist checked for multiple things, including epilepsy. And after going through Munchkin's medical history, and our family medical history, and a whole stack of medical questions we finally started figuring out what the base issue was. And what could be done about it.
The base issue is the teenager hormone changes. Yup, nothing that we could alter in any way and no solid way of predicting which days were going to be worse than others. He does have a mild indicator on some days but nothing that we can use solidly. On some days he will run a continual low grade fever that is not connected to any illness. It took multiple visits to his regular doctor with testing to finally figure that out. And on a few rare days that temperature will be more than low grade.
But regardless of all of that, it basically meant that we were only going to be able to treat the headaches by prevention or medication. All of that research with the neurologist, and all the information that I had been tracking on his headaches and behaviors, quickly narrowed down the triggers. Especially since all of the simpler headache triggers had already been eliminated in our lives.
It turns out that we already knew one solidly, and had adapted for it because it is one of his sensory overload issues. That one was loud noise. It was already in his IEP that he couldn't attend pep rallies or large meetings because of this. And at home we kept noise canceling headsets with us when we went out so that he could put one on when he couldn't handle the noise level. But this explained why there were days that he went around with the headset on, even when it was quiet. Basically, the headaches had reached a level where any noise was painful. You and I would take a nap at that point, but Munchkin doesn't have a nap ability unless he's extremely ill. That's just the way he is.
The second issue was new but also one we had already dealt with to a degree at home. Munchkin is sensitive to strong scents. We didn't know more than that at the beginning. And the reason we hadn't tripped across it before, at home, was because I have a bad reaction to chemical scents and strong scents. So to keep me from having headaches those were not present in our home. Unfortunately, Munchkin was being exposed to strong scents at school.
The third issue was new to us completely. Munchkin is sensitive to fluorescent lighting. Apparently very sensitive. This is actually something that is in the family but I didn't know about it until we went digging. I have family members who are so sensitive to fluorescent lights that they bring lamps in to their offices and don't use the overhead lighting. This was made very clear when the neurologist observed Munchkin turning off all the fluorescent lights but leaving on the small incandescent lamp. I had noticed the habit of shutting off all lights before but had just generalized bright lights. It didn't take me long to confirm the neurologist's findings. We are still changing out fluorescent bulbs in the house for incandescent bulbs but it was done immediately in the rooms that Munchkin spends the most time in. Unfortunately, that is not an option at school.
Now, I was given an option to medicate Munchkin in a manner that would possibly help with the headaches. And have the side effect of sedating him to a large degree. The medications were blood pressure medicines for adults. So I went researching. And in the end, I chose to not medicate and to home school. Those decisions were based on Munchkin's medical history and the additional side effects that would have been dangerous to his health from those medications. You might have chosen otherwise.
But back to meltdowns, in figuring out the cause and the triggers we were finally able to deal with the meltdowns. In our case, if there are signs of pain from one of the triggers we take immediate steps to remove the trigger and relieve the pain. You can do this with or without medications but it can't be done until you know the triggers. While Munchkin is still going through the hormone shifts, and probably will for another 5 years or so, the meltdowns due to those triggers have decreased amazingly. And Munchkin is now able to provide better hints that he is starting to react to a trigger, although I still long for the day that he can just tell me that he has a headache. It's harder to work on the communication for that when the headaches are so few and far between now.
After 1 1/2 years of dealing with this at the trigger level, Munchkin can now tolerate periods of exposure to his triggers without big problems. So now we can get more errands done in a day. Going into multiple stores with fluorescent lights is okay when the exposure is only a day or two here and there. Walking by displays of strongly scent items, or stores filled with them, is okay for him if not for me. Again, as long as it's not a regular thing. And that's another thing to realize, even when you know the triggers and start to relieve them, the improvement is not immediate. It took over six months before headaches were no longer so easily triggered in Munchkin. For six months I couldn't go to more than two stores for more than a half hour each, regardless of the break in between stores. Munchkin's sensitivity was that high because of the level of exposure before we realized the problems. And one of our surest signs that he's dealing with a headache is still that he turns off every fluorescent light that he can find a switch for.
So, please, don't jump to the assumption that meltdowns can't be dealt with. Just keep looking. And don't ignore even the smallest clue. Finding triggers like the ones here takes time and a lot of observation. Taking notes helps a lot because then you aren't likely to forget something. And sometimes one issue can seem like another. Some of the reactions that Munchkin had with the headaches looked an awful lot like petite mal seizures. But they weren't. So keep looking. Ask others to look when you feel you aren't seeing something. It took the school aide noticing the symptoms for me to recognize them for what they were! And I'm so incredibly grateful that she noticed. I don't want to imagine how much worse those headaches could have gotten before we would have finally discovered them.
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