The Daily Reality: Common Behaviours and Challenges of Autism

If you look at an Autistic person from the outside, you might see behaviours that look confusing.

  • Why are they crying over a sock?
  • Why can’t they just start their homework?
  • Why do they ignore me when I call their name?

Behavior is communication. When you understand the why behind the action, the frustration often turns into compassion.

Here are the most common behaviors and the hidden challenges that drive them.

1. Meltdowns vs. Tantrums (The System Crash)

This is the most critical distinction for parents and partners to learn. To the untrained eye, a meltdown looks like a tantrum. But they are opposites.

  • A Tantrum is a power move. The child wants a candy bar, you say no, they scream. If you give them the candy bar, they stop immediately. It is goal-oriented.
  • A Meltdown is a biological overload. The brain has received too much input (sensory, emotional, or social) and has crashed. It is the “Blue Screen of Death.”
    • The Behavior: Screaming, crying, hiding, or becoming non-verbal.
    • The Challenge: They cannot “stop it” any more than you can stop a seizure. They don’t want something; they want less of everything. Giving them a candy bar won’t help; they need silence and safety.

2. Shutdowns (The Internal Crash)

Not all crashes are loud. Some Autistic people experience Shutdowns.

  • The Behavior: They go quiet, stare into space, or retreat to their room for hours. They may be unable to speak (selective mutism).
  • The Challenge: The brain has pulled the emergency brake to protect itself. They aren’t ignoring you; their audio processing is offline. Pushing them to “snap out of it” will only make it last longer.

3. Autistic Inertia (The Physics of Doing)

Newton’s First Law applies heavily to Autism: An object at rest stays at rest; an object in motion stays in motion.

This is called Executive Dysfunction, but the community calls it Inertia.

  • Getting Stuck (The “Can’t Start”): You might see an Autistic person scrolling on their phone for 3 hours when they want to be showering. They aren’t lazy; they are stuck in “waiting mode.” The gear stick is jammed.
  • Hyperfocus (The “Can’t Stop”): Once they start a task they love (coding, painting, gaming), they cannot stop. They might forget to eat, pee, or sleep. Breaking this flow is physically painful.

4. Sensory Avoidance and Seeking

Sensory processing issues drive a huge amount of “behavior.”

  • The “Ick” (Avoidance):
    • Behavior: Refusing to wear jeans, cutting tags out of shirts, or only eating beige foods.
    • The Challenge: A stiff collar or a slimy mushroom texture doesn’t just feel annoyance; it triggers a fight-or-flight panic response. (This is why Spectrum Threadz focuses on tag-free comfort—to eliminate that panic trigger).
  • The “Seek” (Seeking):
    • Behavior: Crashing into sofas, chewing on pens, or listening to the same song on loop.
    • The Challenge: The body is “under-stimulated” and is hungry for input to feel grounded.

5. Elopement (The Runner)

This is a terrifying one for parents. Elopement means wandering off or running away.

  • The Why: It isn’t usually an attempt to escape you. It is often an attempt to escape a sensory overload (too loud!) or to pursue something fascinating (water, trains). The impulse to move overrides the safety warning.

Summary

Most “challenging behaviours” are actually stress responses. The Autistic person isn’t trying to give you a hard time; they are having a hard time. When you reduce the stress (sensory load, demands), t