Understanding Afterschool Meltdowns and Shutdowns

As the new school year approaches, many families of neurodivergent children are preparing for the inevitable meltdowns or shutdowns that occur each day after school. These meltdowns stem from the transition from summer break to a new school year, which can cause stress and anxiety due to new teachers, classmates, routines, and expectations.

Source: cdn2.psychologytoday.com

For many neurodivergent kids, there is a daily buildup of anxiety as they work to mask or hide their neurodivergent traits all day in school. This stress can lead to either an explosion or implosion when they get home to their safe spaces, causing meltdowns or shutdowns that are not only stressful for the individual but also for their family.

What Can Be Done to Support Neurodivergent Kids Across All Settings?

Finding strategies that support children across the environments they exist in is crucial for their overall health and well-being. Supporting kids is everyone’s responsibility, regardless of whether an adult is part of their natural or professional support system.

Here are a few ideas that both parents and schools can put in place to help support children who struggle with afterschool meltdowns or shutdowns:

For Parents:

• Set up a routine for your child that they can look forward to, allowing them to have space and downtime, meet their sensory needs, or do whatever else they need after a long school day.
• Encourage your child to be part of setting up a routine that works for them. If they are not able to do this, look for signs that the routine is working or not working for them.
• Ensure that your child has space and materials to work through their primary stress response in a healthy way. For example, if they tend toward their fight response, give them space for physical activity. If they tend toward their flight response, give them physical space to calm down. If they tend toward their freeze response, give them time for crafting, playing music, or other activities that allow them to dissociate in a healthy way.

For Schools:

• Elementary-age children may benefit from an extra break in the afternoon that provides activities that can allow a child to let out some of the anxiety that has been building up over the course of the day.
• Schools can pay attention to settings that might be contributing to stress, such as noisy lunchrooms. If a lunch space is overstimulating, let the child eat in an alternative setting.
• Letting students leave class and transition a few minutes early to avoid the busiest part of passing periods may be helpful.
• Do not take away recess as a punishment. All children need their recess, but this is even more true for neurodivergent children.
• Middle- and high-school age children may benefit from scheduling more difficult classes in the mornings and easier classes in the afternoon. Study hall in the afternoon may also be helpful.
• Middle- and high-school students will also likely benefit from alternating nonpreferred and preferred courses during the school day as much as possible.

Collaboration and Cooperation

While many supports for neurodivergent children are siloed, their needs are not. Using perspectives such as systems theory or person-in-environment theory, which consider the whole person and encourage collaboration and cooperation between systems, will help set neurodivergent children up for success and ensure that more afterschool time is spent engaging in positive activities, rather than in severe stress responses that they have been working to bottle up all day.

With collaboration and a few accommodations throughout the day, families and educators can help make that success happen. While what happens outside of school may not be the school’s responsibility, the entire child’s support system shares the goal of setting them up for success.