The Best Strategies for Calming Autistic Tantrums & Meltdowns

If you’re a parent of a neurotypical child, you’ve surely experienced the temper tantrums that come along with denying your child that candy bar in the grocery aisle, or (gasp!) making them wear the Sesame Street t-shirt instead of the preferred dinosaur t-shirt! If you’re a parent of a child with autism, it’s less likely that you can predict what will cause behavioral and emotional meltdowns from day to day, situation to situation, environment to environment.

In this article, we will show you how to recognize the differences between how these behaviors are characterized: autism tantrums versus autism meltdowns. They are not the same and cannot be addressed in the same way. After discussing each one, we will look at how to best calm down a child with autism depending on if they are having a tantrum or a meltdown.