🧩Parent Toolkit

Autistic Burnout

Long-term exhaustion from masking, sensory overload and constant adaptation. Looks like loss of skills, shutdown, or refusal to do previously easy things.

After a busy school term your child stops getting dressed independently — that's burnout, not regression.

Demand Avoidance

Anxiety-driven avoidance of everyday requests, even preferred ones. The nervous system flags any demand as a threat to autonomy.

“Time for ice cream!” is met with “No!” — the demand itself, not the activity, is the trigger.

Echolalia

Repeating words, phrases or scripts (immediate or delayed). It is communication — soothing, processing, or expressing meaning through a borrowed phrase.

Gestalt Language Processing

Learning language in whole chunks (scripts and phrases) rather than word-by-word. Many autistic children process this way.

Interoception

Sensing internal states — hunger, thirst, tiredness, needing the toilet, emotions. Often delayed or muted in autism.

Your child melts down at 5pm because they didn't notice hunger building all afternoon.

Masking

Hiding autistic traits to fit in (forcing eye contact, suppressing stims, mimicking peers). Costs huge energy and contributes to burnout.

Meltdown

Involuntary nervous system response to overload — not a tantrum. The child cannot regulate or learn in this state.

Monotropism

A single, deep attention tunnel. Autistic minds focus intensely on one interest at a time — switching out of it is hard, not stubborn.

Predictability

Knowing what's coming reduces anxiety. Visual schedules, first-then boards and previews give the nervous system safety.

Sensory Diet

A planned set of regulating sensory inputs (movement, deep pressure, quiet) woven into the day — proactive, not reactive.

Shutdown

An inward meltdown — going silent, blank, motionless. Same overwhelm, different shape. Still needs less, not more.

Special Interest

A deep, joyful passion. Not a problem to limit — a regulating resource, a learning channel and a route into connection.

Stimming

Self-stimulatory behaviour (rocking, flapping, humming, fiddling) that regulates the nervous system. Don't suppress unless it harms.

Transition

Any change between activities, places or people. The hardest moments of an autistic day — needs warning, visuals and time.