New to this and need advice!

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Hello all, I am new to forums and not sure where to turn for this kind of advice. I'll try to make it short and sweet so it's not me rambling on. I have a girlfriend who has a 3 year old autistic daughter. Me and my girlfriend have been together for about 9 months now and we live together. I love her little girl like she is my own. I have never had to deal with autism before and I am left with tons of questions. I see it in my girlfriend every day that she is just drained and stressed out taking care of her daughter. I'm lost here because I want to help her every way possible but I have the least bit of knowledge of autism. I want to step in and intervene to try and give her some relief but I don't want to over step my boundaries. We've talked before about dealing with autism and how to approach a melt down but to me it doesn't seem like it has any effect. I was told that you aren't supposed to yell at them because it causes confusion. In my mind I like to think that her daughter is a 3 year old girl first before she is autistic. Her mom is her daycare provider and she treats her daughter like she is a normal child and it seems to work, but when she comes home for lack of a better term, all hell breaks loose. My girlfriend is patient and believes you need to talk to them to get them out of their fits. I need help with that so I know what I can do to help her. I feel horrible when her daughter has a problem and I'm sitting there watching my girlfriend try to calm her down.. her daughter is smart. I don't want to down play her autism but I believe she knows how to get her way. Will someone please help me on this matter. If I said some things that offends anyone, I apologize. Like I said, I am new to all of this. I want to step in and help but I don't know an effective way. SOME ONE, PLEASE HELP ME!...

You know what I would do?

I would post this in the Parent's Section. I would, then, delete what you wrote in the General Autism Section, since one is not allowed to "cross-post" on WP.

You'll probably get more responses that way.

I agree with kraftie, but I’m just gonna give you some information on Autism now, since you’ve asked. Autism is a spectrum so to get the right advice you’ll need to at least give some kind of idea where she might be. For example: is she verbal? Can she do most of the things that three year olds do? Stuff like that. Depending on wether she is high or low functioning or somewhere in the middle, can affect the which advice you need. Also, she is three years old so some meltdowns may actually be tantrums. The biggest difference is that a tantrum is usually seeking something and usually ends when they get the something, a meltdown is just something you kinda have to wait out and won’t be fixed as simple as giving her what she wants. If she can’t be consoled then it’s probably a meltdown; with those you need to make sure she doesn’t end up hurting herself or breaking things (depending on how she has meltdowns). If she has a habit of being destructive to herself or others during meltdowns, that needs to be coaxed away from. About the talking to her during the fits, if it’s a meltdown, talking is just more stimulation and that doesn’t really help with meltdowns (usually just prolongs them for me). With my meltdowns, it usually helps calm me down if the room is really quiet and not too bright (the bright thing could just be me, I have an issue with light).

Interesting. So that would suggest that when someone blow up and storms off into another room, it's closer to a meltdown than a tantrum, because storming off into another room is very definitely the opposite of seeking attention.

I've generally tended to think haven't had meltdowns (a few times that may or may not have been minor shutdowns), but now this makes me wonder. I can definitely recall being taught, when growing up (and not knowing I had Asperger's) to go to my room if I needed to blow up, and this definitely continued to an older age than is typical.

But doesn't everyone just need to let off steam once in a while?

They most certainly do.

Autistics need to more often because of the frustrations of being autistic in a world not built for them, sensory overload an other conditions that commonly occur with Autism.

A meltdown is often baffling to outsiders because while it may be set off by a seemingly innocuous thing it is result of a build up of things.