Let me be honest with you about something.
Before I really understood autism, I didn’t always handle meltdowns well. I’m not proud of that. But I also think there’s a version of this conversation that only ever talks about compassion in this beautiful, calm, theoretical way — and completely ignores the reality that you’re standing in the middle of a supermarket, your child is on the floor, people are staring, and you haven’t slept properly in three days.
So let’s talk about it honestly. Because that’s the only way this is useful.
First — a meltdown is not a tantrum.
I cannot stress this enough. I know it can look the same from the outside — the crying, the screaming, the throwing themselves on the floor — but it is coming from a completely different place. A tantrum is goal-driven. A child having a tantrum, on some level, knows what they want. A meltdown is something else entirely. It’s what happens when a nervous system hits its absolute limit and has nowhere left to go.
Blake didn’t choose his meltdowns. He wasn’t doing it to embarrass me, or to get out of going somewhere, or because I was a bad mum. His brain was simply overwhelmed — and more often than not, it’s his senses that push him over the edge.
The smell thing.
This is something I don’t think gets talked about nearly enough, so I’m going to talk about it.
Blake and I both have hypersensitive smell. And I mean really hypersensitive. Before Blake came along, I genuinely used to think I was going mad. I would smell something that was making me feel physically sick and look around to find that absolutely nobody else could smell it. Not one person. I’d be standing there wondering if I was losing my mind — because how can something be that overwhelming to me and completely undetectable to everyone else?
Then Blake arrived, and suddenly I didn’t feel quite so alone in it.
Just the other week, we had one of those moments that really brought it home. We were all in my ex-husband’s car — me, Blake, and Matthew in the back seat. Matthew opened a can of Red Bull. Now, Matthew has one a day — and before anyone says anything, I know, I know, but pick your battles, right?! — so none of us thought anything of it.
What we didn’t know — what none of us had any idea about — was that Blake absolutely cannot bear the smell of it.
It hit him instantly. I could see the panic rising before he even had the words for what was happening. His whole body changed. He started shouting, “The smell, the smell…!” And we were on the motorway. We couldn’t pull over, couldn’t get him out, couldn’t remove him from the situation the way you’d want to. So we did the best we could — windows down, got the can as far away from him as possible (once we figured out that was the issue), everyone trying to stay calm while Blake worked through something that felt, to him, completely unbearable.
It passed. But it shook me a little, if I’m honest. Because it’s a reminder that meltdowns don’t always come with a warning you recognise in time. Sometimes you don’t know the trigger until it’s already happening.
The world our kids are navigating is exhausting.
Think about the last time you were somewhere overwhelming — a loud concert, a crowded shopping centre on Christmas Eve — and you just desperately needed to get out. That feeling of everything being too much, all at once.
Now imagine that’s triggered by a smell. Something invisible. Something nobody else around you can even detect. And you’re in a moving car on a motorway with nowhere to go.
That’s what Blake was dealing with in that back seat. And that’s what a lot of our kids are dealing with on a daily basis — sensory input that doesn’t filter the way it does for neurotypical people. Sounds are louder. Lights are harsher. And smells? Smells can be absolutely devastating when your brain processes them at that intensity.
It’s not behaviour. It’s a breaking point.
Learning to spot the signs early was a game changer for me.
Blake has tells. A particular restlessness. A change in his breathing. He’ll go quiet in a way that’s different from his normal quiet — more tense, more internal. Over time, I’ve learned to read him. Not perfectly — that day in the car proved I don’t always catch it in time — but well enough that I can often step in before things escalate too far.
Sometimes that means leaving a situation before it’s convenient to leave. Sometimes it means asking people around us to make adjustments that might seem strange to them — like asking someone to move away, or a window to be opened, or a particular food to be put away. And sometimes there’s nothing to be done except ride it out together and make sure Blake knows I’m right there with him.
The things that help us most are often pretty simple:
Getting him out of the overwhelming environment as quickly as possible. Keeping calm myself — because my panic on top of his panic helps nobody. Giving him space to regulate without pressure or commentary. And afterwards, talking about it — not to analyse or lecture, just to understand each other a little better.
That last one is how we found out about the Red Bull, actually. Once Blake had regulated and we were home, he was able to tell us. And now we know. We won’t make that mistake again.
Here’s the part nobody really warns you about.
Responding with compassion when you’re in the thick of a meltdown is genuinely hard. It goes against every instinct you have, especially when you’re in a car on a motorway and you can’t actually fix the problem.
There were times I got it wrong. Times I let my frustration show, and then felt absolutely rotten about it afterwards. I think most parents of autistic kids have been there, even if they don’t say it out loud.
But I kept coming back to this: Blake wasn’t giving me a hard time. He was having a hard time. And the moment I was able to hold onto that — even imperfectly, even on the days when I was running on empty — it changed how I showed up for him.
What compassion actually looks like in practice.
It’s not always serene and calm. Sometimes it looks like frantically opening car windows on a motorway while trying not to let your own anxiety show. Sometimes it looks like googling “can Red Bull smell trigger sensory meltdown” at midnight because you want to understand what happened. Sometimes it looks like crying a little once everyone’s home and safe, and then making a mental note — okay. Now we know. We’ll do better next time.
What matters is that your child knows — even in their worst moments — that you are not against them. That they are safe with you, even when the rest of the world feels like too much.
That takes time to build. It’s not one conversation or one good day. It’s a hundred small moments of showing up, again and again, and saying — without necessarily using the words — I’ve got you. Even now. Especially now.
And trust me — they feel it. Even when it doesn’t look like they do.
