Autism and the importance of processing time.
Autistic children and adults can find it challenging to process events and experiences, often taking longer than other people and leading to overwhelming feelings and meltdowns. In this post I’m going to share with you my recent observations of Edward and the importance of processing time for autistic children and adults.
The School Day
Edward attends a special school where they meet his needs everyday. However, it’s still an exhausting day for him with lots going on that he has to process. This comes out when he gets home. His taxi pulls up outside the house, we open the taxi door, he throws himself out and rolls around on the floor. He then yells ‘I’m dead! School has killed Edward!’ After this, he picks himself up and staggers into the house. This is when he starts to process the day. He will say random things about what has happened during the day. It usually starts with the moments that have caused him some distress. For example if his class have been too loud or another child has had a meltdown. We then let him sit down in the lounge with his blankets and put the telly on or YouTube. We give him some snacks and then leave him. After about an hour he has decompressed and then he’ll start to interact.
Later on in the evening he will start to mention random things that have happened during the day.
A School Trip
There’s nothing like a school trip to throw a spanner in the works of the routine of autistic children. Edward had a school trip to Pennywell Farm, a lovely small working farm with goats, bunny rabbits and baby piglets.
Bearing in mind he went with his special school who were fully prepared with lots of adult support for each child, it was still a difficult day for him and took him a long time to process the day when he got home.
The first thing that he was distressed about was the fact that he didn’t eat his school packed at school. He had to eat it in totally different surroundings and he had only eaten his sandwich and none of his other snacks. He cried about this for around an hour and then he was ok.
It wasn’t until the next morning that he told me another child had squashed his French Fancies and he obviously was not able to eat a squashed one. Then a bit later on he told me about how he got to see and hold tiny baby piglets.
Although it can be distressing to see your child struggle to process the day, it’s important to take a step back and leave them.
As harsh as it sounds there is never going to be a day that doesn’t overwhelm them or that something isn’t going to trigger them as it’s part of the condition of autism. Even though we try as much as possible to pre empt triggers and meltdowns it’s impossible to stop these completely. So when they do happen, it’s important not to try and hurry along the processing time for them.
