http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6063982
Are you kidding me?
The night before Christmas Eve, Michael threw a tantrum in the parking lot of a grocery store in Fremont because he was hungry. Anyone who knows someone with autism, they know that they have occasional tantrums that include irrational screaming, cursing, and sometimes aggressive behavior (hitting, throwing objects). These tantrums can be very rare in high functioning people like Michael, but given the right circumstances, if the autistic person’s mind gets “locked,” they will feel backed in a corner mentally and the ensuing episode can be likened to that of a trapped animal — they are fighting for their lives, rationally or not. The tantrums usually last for a few minutes, with the beginning being the most intense when you’re not sure of the level of aggression the tantrum will feature, whether he will be screaming/cussing only, or if he will swing at you. The major things that need to be controlled to mollify the tantrum are 1. Noice Level (people talking, loud noises, and 2. Eye contact. You can not make eye contact or the tantrum will escalate. You have to pretend you don’t notice him. The cycle of a tantrum begins with him yelling and cussing, daring people to look at him. But if you do look at him or say anything to him, it escalates the tantrum even more so it’s a really wicked cycle. The hardest thing to control are strangers. Crowds will look, which will escalate the tantrum and draw it out longer. It’s much easier to handle for us in private than in public, where the circumstances usually cause the tantrum to escalate, and we can’t give him his space to cool down because we are trying to shorten the scene.
In this instance, the parking lot was fairly empty, though cars would come and go for last minute shopping. My mom went to talk to Michael while Reggie and I took each side, blocking his eyeline so he couldn’t make eye contact with other people. If he sees them, he’ll usually flip them off and ask them what they’re looking at, and with the wrong person, you have a confrontation (a young punk at a movie theater trying to prove something to his hoochie girlfriend once stepped up and tried to pick a fight, and that resulted in the police coming out). Anyone who drove up and tried to look, we intercepted and explained that Michael was autistic and to please not look at him. I talked to the manager of the store who had come out and I explained that this was a tantrum cycle–it starts with cussing, etc., and usually ends up with him crying because he’s embarrassed and doesn’t understand what happened and why he couldn’t control himself. At that moment, a car alarm nearby went off and Michael yelled, “Shut up!” The manager laughed and said, “Did he just tell the car alarm to shut up?” I said, yeah, people with autism don’t like loud noises. The guy was cool and said Merry Christmas and walked back into the store and most people were understanding and just walked away. There was one old lady who drove up, and by then, Michael had calmed down and was just talking heatedly with my mom. She got on her cellphone and Reggie thought she might be calling the police, but when we got close to her, she dropped her voice and started talking about “dinner.”
My mom finally talked Michael down and we got back in the car.
Usually after a tantrum, we don’t speak and we wait for him to talk about it. He usually needs time and space to gather his understanding of what happened. We got home, took the groceries upstairs and started dinner, while Michael gathered himself in the car.
Michael finally came upstairs, super contrite, and I went to change. I heard a loud thump which I didn’t think anything of, but when I came out about two minutes later, there were a couple of cops standing in our entryway. Apparently, that old lady had been calling the cops, and thinking that it was a domestic dispute, they traced our license plate and showed up at our house.
I missed the bulk of what happened–the cops had rang our doorbell, Michael had answered it and when he saw they were cops, he had tried to slam the door on them. The cop blocked the door (thus the THUMP) and yelled, “You can’t close the door on the police!” Michael ran away. Luckily, Reggie and my mom had run in and blocked the police as they tried to chase after him, yelling that Michael’s autistic and afraid of policemen. The police stopped in their tracks and said they had gotten a call about a man threatening his wife. Reggie explained that it was Michael throwing a tantrum and my mom was calming him down. My mom said they were welcome to talk to Michael to show him that the cops are his friends, but when he yelled, “Michael? You wanna come talk to us?” Michael screamed, “Nooo! Go away!” Reggie and I kind of laughed about it like, “haha…well…this is what we deal with” to make it seem like this was routine and no big deal. They were nice about it, saying how hard our house was to find and how they had gotten lost going down the wrong street. As they walked out the door, they yelled, “Merry Christmas Michael!” and Michael yelled, “FUCK YOU.” We all laughed, wished them a Merry Christmas, and closed the door.
We were scared shitless.
The tantrums are hard to explain, and can be scary if you’ve never seen one and don’t know they are short-lived and non-violent with the right type of handling. If he does hit anyone, it’s usually one of us, because he’s a coward and knows we won’t hit back in public. Michael is also a big guy, and when he throws one, most people don’t understand and can get scared. This has been a great burden on our family, and something that keeps me up a lot of nights. I don’t understand why Michael has never thrown a tantrum when he’s in LA with us, but he’s like an emotional landmine when he’s with my parents. My greatest fear in life is those confrontations with the police. The first thing we do when he has a tantrum is surround him, and we explain to people that he’s autistic, and he’s just throwing a tantrum. A handful of times, a security guard has come over or the police have arrived, but they have been mostly understanding, and Michael usually runs away from them, apologizing later. But I worry about the wrong police officer showing up, the one that’s trigger-happy. Michael’s tantrum behavior is completely irrational and verbally aggressive. Michael is always carrying something in his hand, be it his keys, his toy cars or his toy airplanes. All it takes is for him to have something in his hand to justify a police shooting, and for them to say that they thought he had a gun.
The scariest thing about that night was that we had left Michael alone in the car to cool off and think. I didn’t go change until he had finally come upstairs, and I heard that THUMP about two minutes later. If those officers hadn’t gotten lost trying to find our house, they would have probably arrived while Michael was still alone in the car and confronted him there. No one would have been there to explain to him that he’s autistic and unarmed, outside of toys in his hands. Who knows what would have happened, because Michael would have freaked out, being trapped in the car with nowhere to run, and acted irrationally. I still stay up late, wondering if I would have heard pops instead of a thump that night while I was changing. It really, really terrifies me.
My mom says each time gets closer and closer. I really don’t know what to do. I’m trying to move him to LA, not knowing if I can handle having him here, or what he’s going to do to fill his days–all I know is he’s NEVER thrown a tantrum here without his parents around and that’s the only hope I have. But what if he throws a tantrum down here? What will that mean? And what will happen, knowing that LAPD is so much more reactive than
the police back home? We know that if he’s in the middle of a tantrum and the police come, we have to take him down and pin him just to show that he’s subdued, which is so fucked up but the only thing we can think of to make sure that the police don’t do anything stupid. But what if we’re not there?
I spend so much of my time looking up specialists, researching his medications and trying to figure out the best way to work with him to allow him to bypass the impulse to throw a tantrum. Every time he comes down here and does so well, I hear about him throwing at tantrum at home. I don’t want him to get killed by the police. Knowing my parents, they’ll jump in the way and get killed, too. Will moving him away from home, away from his past and his emotional scars be the answer? Do his medications help or hurt? Where is the answer for this so I can sleep at night?