Meltdown Post-Mortem, 504 Post-Mortem

Sunny had a major meltdown last night. It's the first violent fit Sunny has had in almost three weeks. I suppose that's good and bad at the same time... they were happening several times a week earlier this year.

I could almost see it coming. NN and Sunny had some alone time yesterday for the first time in the visit. She took him to the toy store and bought him a ton of toys. Then they went back to her hotel room for a bit and they played Pokemon while watching a Lego movie, then they met us for dinner and he came home with us afterwards.

He was getting into overstimulation mode... overstimulated with toys and overstimulated with emotions. At bedtime, it all spilled over. I had to restrain him for a combined time of about 20 minutes.

This time Guy stayed away. He has a tendency to get really mad when he hears Sunny cursing at me, and then says unhelpful things, such as "you're acting like a baby".

One of the things Sunny said tonight was that he wasn't happy about people at school calling him a baby. I'm not surprised that happens. We talked with his second-grade teacher at the 504 meeting the other day about how emotional Sunny gets in the classroom. Sometimes, when the teacher tells him to move his seat or tells him he can't do something, he'll start crying, and throw himself on the floor. Or he might sit down, sulk, and make handgun/lasergun shooting motions at the whole classroom.

I mentioned to the teacher that Sunny is manipulating to get attention when he does things like throw himself on the floor. Since she can't just ignore the behavior like we do (it distracts the whole class), the best strategy is to reward him for the absence of negative behavior, e.g. "you responded nicely when I said 'no', good for you, here's your 'right response' sticker!". We talked to Sunny later about the shooting stuff, and told him it was absolutely unacceptable to do that in class. Play-shooting is for playgrounds, not for classrooms. We'll have to monitor that behavior pretty closely and stay in touch with his teacher about it.

His teacher also told us about one really charming episode. The whole class have portable dividers made from laminated file folders that they can use when they need extra privacy for schoolwork. There was a class discussion about distractions, and Sunny reminded everyone not to distract him when he had his folder up. He said, "Sometimes it's hard for me not to get distracted. Because I have TWENTY things going on in my head at the same time! I want to focus and do my work right but it's hard for me!"

That was very touching to hear. He's so smart and self-aware.

After the meltdown last night he was remorseful, of course. I reminded him that this visit is a difficult time because it brings up happy things and sad things from the past, all mixed together. I told him he was like a ship sailing on the sea and the sea was a little stormy right now, but he could get control and make his way through the storm.

NN is in town for two more days. Tonight we'll do some sort of combined activity, then maybe on Saturday they can go to an indoor event together.