Rocket Science!

Phew! What a night!

I've mentioned on occasions in the past about my grandchildren -Maya and Kurt -and some of their little quirks and/or obsessions and I know too I've mentioned from time to time about the meltdowns that can -and do -occur, often at the drop of a hat.

Once in a while, when one -or both of them -happens to have a meltdown, we can actually figure out what caused it and sometimes, we can find a relatively easy way to redirect the child, calming the fire before it gets out of control completely.

But most of the time, with a massive meltdown such as the one we experienced tonight with Kurtis, you might just as well ask me what I know about rocket science or have me tell you the history behind a Bluetooth headset and what I know about those topics would be about the same as what I could possibly tell you happened that caused this meltdown tonight!

He was tired -that much we knew and usually when he is overtired and launches into a meltdown, after a little bit of fussing, we can generally appease him with a sippy cup of milk or some other little treat. Yes, it's a form of bribery but when your eardrums are under assault for anything over a half-hour of the crying, kicking and screaming -trust me, you too would resort to bribery of the highest caliber too!

With Maya and her occasional meltdowns, we usually can get to the bottom easier simply because her speech patterns are much better than Kurt's.

And sometimes with Kurt, if we can get him to calm enough that we can get him to say a couple words, we can work from there to try to figure out the root cause.

But tonight -no luck with him in the speech department as all he would do was scream and if we asked him to calm down and use his words, any attempt he made at that all came back at us as pure jibberish.

What worries both Mandy and I when he gets this worked up and can't or won't try to use his words, is that there is always a remote possibility that something may trip a trigger in his mind and he could regress and lose the vocabulary he has built up by this time.

And that is something that we -all of us here -along with his therapists, have worked way too long and hard to get him to being able to communicate much of the time with us now and the last things we'd want to do is to start all over back at square one all over again!

It took us close to an hour tonight to finally get him quiet enough that he finally laid down on the sofa, clutching his Bear-Bear (a big furry pillow that looks like a big old teddy bear and is his main "comfort" item) before he finally closed his eyes long enough for the sleep to take over and he was then able to be safely picked up and taken up to his bed!

After this one tonight, I really hope he sleeps long and very soundly tonight and when he wakes up in the morning, none of this will even remain in his memory just as I'm hoping I'll be able to relax and go to sleep and forget this happened too!