One thing that I often get asked by families is how do I know if my child is in burnout? What does it look like?
Dr Dora Raymaker, defines burnout as: “A state of pervasive exhaustion, loss of function, increase in autistic traits, and withdrawal from life that results from continuously expending more resources than one has coping with activities and environments ill-suited to one’s abilities and needs.”
I feel that burnout is important to identify because our expectations of a PDA child in burnout are going to be very different to when they are in a place of stability.
I have had this post drafted for over a year but haven’t been game enough to share it until now. I hope that in sharing it might help other families to identify what their child is going through and help to fast track getting the right supports in place.
Everyone’s stories are going to be different. This is some insight into what burnout looked like for our PDAer.
Looking back, our PDAer has been through 3 periods of burnout.
At 2yrs when his sibling was born.
– We didn’t know it was burnout, just thought it was adjusting to a sibling.
– Things that had previously been tricky but manageable, started to cause daily meltdowns (bathing, teeth brushing, haircuts, sunscreen etc).
– We were trying to carry on with life, bribing our PDAer to get in and out of the car or to go places, writing social stories, trailing reward charts. These either failed completely or worked short term but would never last.
– We ended up having to stop attending lots of things like swimming lessons, playgroups, music groups and large gatherings. They were too overwhelming, and I couldn’t give our PDAer the level of co-regulation he needed whilst also managing the high needs of an infant.
– We were seeing strong flight stress responses when we were out: running away at the shops, walking off in the direction of home if other kids arrived at the park, riding his bike into the direction of traffic.
– There was a huge level of hypervigilance needed when he was around his sibling, I had to always make sure that I was physically positioned between them, if I wasn’t, our daughter would end up on the receiving end of a fight stress response.
– Our PDAer was experiencing extreme early waking, as early as 3:30am, and frequent night terrors.
At 3.5yrs our PDAer had a significant burnout period.
– Increasing days at Daycare and his best friend leaving were the main triggers.
– There was a build-up of separation anxiety over a couple of months. We would get meltdowns the night before daycare, the morning of, getting in the car, getting out of the car, waking through the door and then when it finally came time for a parent to leave.
– Afternoons after daycare we would get aggression or complete shutdowns. This was his system becoming so overwhelmed that he was moving beyond fight/flight and into freeze. This would look like: him curling up in the foetal position on the couch, becoming non-speaking, only being able to watch TV, not being able to engage in his interests.
– Then there came a day where the drop off experience broke our PDAer and that was the day we as parents said, “No more.” We pulled him out of Daycare and the relief in our PDAer when we told him he didn’t have to go back was immense, however he was left profoundly traumatised.
– He experienced severe separation anxiety, to the point that I couldn’t leave the room to go have a shower. Leaving the house was exceptionally hard, even for things he enjoyed.
– This was when we figured out he had PDA and we started letting go of lots of the demands we had been previously holding but we perhaps didn’t appreciate just how low we needed to go.
– As we started to see the positive impact of a low demand lifestyle we dropped more and more and more.
At 4.5 years, our PDAer had an acute relapse triggered by me going away on a weekend retreat.
– This one was an intense few weeks of not being able to leave the house.
– He just watched screens the whole time.
– He barely went outside.
– He barely had any meaningful conversation.
– He barely ate anything.
– He was very controlling.
– However, for this one, his recovery was much faster, mainly because we had so much more awareness and didn’t push him to do anything, we gave him time and trusted that he would re-engage when he was ready.
Laura Kerby recently posted about how when a child breaks a bone, we have very low expectations of what they will be able to do, we accept that recovery will be slow, we give them time, and we don’t push them too soon because it could lead to further damage. When our kids are in burnout, they need the same care and support.
If you have supported your child through burnout, you will know it takes an immense amount of inner resolve to trust the process and block out the judgmental voices of what you think you should be doing.
Supporting our kid’s nervous systems, trusting them, and giving them time to heal, are some of the most beautiful gifts we can give them.
Little by little you will see the glimmers that they are starting to come back.
