by Ditte Young
Updated on April 30, 2025
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
As a telepath and family therapist, I help several families with children with autism spectrum disorders handle their child’s spiritual abilities.
It is my experience that many autistic children are gifted with spiritual abilities. Many of them come to our world as pure souls. They cannot manipulate, and they do not have an ego either.
Many autistic children are fond of animals and nature; some can even see souls that you cannot see. They tell you about it as if it is the most natural thing, and the parents start to doubt if it is their imagination or if it is a possibility that these children are truly gifted.
In this article, I will explain more about the spiritual abilities of autistic children, how they relate to meltdowns, and what you, as a parent or caregiver, can do to help the child.
Autistic children are super sensitive and experience a sensory overload faster than “normally functioning children”.
They do that primarily because their brains aren’t as developed in their frontal lobes, and they are more sensitive towards the noise you and I have gotten used to over time.
Noise comes in many forms, not just as a sensory challenge but also as all the stimuli we are surrounded by every day. We have radio, TV, tablets, cell phones, and people who constantly ask us questions and give us things to learn or give.
Many of the autistic children I help can find peace in their own safe spaces. That is often found in a room with something that interests them, such as a book or on YouTube on a tablet, computer, or cell phone. In their safe place, they can control what kind of stimuli they want, how high the noise can be, or the volume of what they see, and they do not want to be disturbed.
The autistic children I help in therapy can read other people fast. They scan them with their eyes or other senses, and they feel other people’s intentions immediately.
That’s why I always support the children’s selectiveness: They are always right. They see it before the adults do. These children’s positive behavior is rooted in their trust that their senses are better and more well-functioned than the rest of us.
Some of these children appear shy at first. Yet I encounter parents who force their shy children to be well-behaved and shake hands with people they know or do not know because this is “what we do when we behave”.
We, as adults, can relieve that pressure on the children and tell other people that the children will say hi when they are ready.
The parents I work with who have a problem with this are often afraid of what other people think of them and their upbringing, rather than speculating about what’s best for their child.
In those cases, I always remind the parents that if we don’t support an autistic child in what they feel and need, it can quickly turn into a temper tantrum, where the child must act out or let out steam, which consists of high-pressure and built-up energy.
Parents often ask me: “When is my child misbehaving, and when is my child having a hard time?” Deep down inside, you know the difference even though it can be hard to differentiate.
Your child will try to push your boundaries, which is healthy. If you give in all the time, however, your child will naturally have difficulties accepting when you say no in the future.
But there’s a big difference between a child who wants something and a child who needs something.
Your child, spiritual or not, wants to fit in and be as normal as possible, just like you. Your child is aware of the energies around them and collects the emotions around them, both good and bad.
If you feel grief or frustration over having a different child, you must know that your child is so gifted that they know this.
They sense you; they feel you; some read your thoughts without telling you about it. They will never stop loving you. They want to adapt and will try to cooperate with you if they can, as long as their nervous system can take it. These children will just be loved as they are.
In my practice, I help children who explode on the world around them and children who implode into their inner world.
The children who explode in the outer world have gathered energy and frustrations long before they are triggered, and a meltdown occurs.
A meltdown could look like the children throwing themselves on the floor and starting to cry or scream. They will find objects and throw them at you or something else in desperation for letting go of energy. In some cases, the children get so frustrated that they need to take their energy out on another human being and become violent.
The children who implode often get self-destructive and start to hurt themselves by banging their heads into the wall, beating themselves with a fist in the head, or biting themselves in the arm or other parts of the body, to let go of the steam.
Both temper tantrums and meltdowns are hard to watch for the parents and their surroundings because it seems you cannot reach the child when they get into that stage.
Many of these children cannot postpone their needs, and one reason they have a meltdown is waiting and not knowing how long they must wait. Many parents say, “Yes, I will be there soon.” But what is “soon”? It is not structured or confined to a time frame.
If your child must wait, please tell them how many minutes.
The same thing goes for disturbing your child, or you need to change the scene for your child. That could be if you were visiting other people and had to go home.
It is relevant to let your child know when you’re going home. You can tell them: “In thirty minutes we are going home,” and again “in ten minutes we are going home,” and then “time’s up and we have to go home”. Many of these children don’t tolerate a surprise that they are unprepared for, which also goes for changing the scenario. From one house to another. From home to school. From school to the soccer field, etc.
Imagine your autistic child as a can of soda. Then imagine that every stimulus around your child is like shaking the can. Each time the wind blows, a noise in the background, a different smell in the air, someone touching you, someone asking you a question.
Your child finds the balance and can calm down the inner pressure if they get time, peace, and rest for themselves. But if you don’t give your autistic child that possibility, then they can have an overload of energy. You and I can take away that pressure naturally. Your child cannot.
Imagine the meltdown that happens when your children can explode because the pressure is too big. After the built-up energy has been released, your child is calm in the nervous system again. As a parent, you might be overwhelmed and shocked to see your child react in a meltdown, and the very minute after it is over, your child is calm again. Then, you are overloaded with anger, built-up energy, and grief over what you just witnessed.
One of the main reasons for an autistic child to have a meltdown is that you didn’t mentally prepare your child well enough. You can mentally prepare your child with board maker cards or make a weekly schedule for your child to see and hang up on a wall or the fridge.
The more consistency and continuity your autistic child has, the better.
That could mean eating dinner at the same time every night, doing the dishes the same way, putting your child to sleep the same way every night, and turning down the lights simultaneously each evening. Most autistic children download information and stimuli so fast that they do not have the energy to focus on the structure of their everyday lives.
You can compare this reaction to imagining that you had to start a new job daily. And you were never told what you had to do during the day or for your assignments. That would frustrate you over time; in the end, you would come sick or quit your job. But your autistic child cannot leave life. Remember that if your child is fighting you, at least they didn’t give up on life.
I meet many parents or grown-ups working professionally with autistic children who don’t get it.
If a child resists doing what the adult wants them to do, many people tell the child that they are misbehaving, are not a good child, they do not want to be around the child, the child is not charming now, etc.
The child has locked their idea on something.
It could be “I don’t want to get into that car because I don’t know where we are going or how long the drive is”.
The child often refuses to make the change from one place to another. It could be going from school to the house, from the room to the living room, from having clothes on to taking them off. All these examples show considerable differences in the child’s life when we investigate it from a sensory perspective.
The duration of a meltdown often depends on how quickly the adult knows which information the child needs before any change, AND how quickly the adult helps the child out of the energy and makes a scene change.
Some children are calm for 15 minutes, and then it starts all over again because the nervous system cannot find the rest of the explanation.
To avoid meltdowns, I highly recommend you be aware of any changes that an autistic child needs to be aware of, as it will cost them a lot of energy.
It will be beneficial to tell the child what the plan is. No autistic children like surprises, and no children do. The more predictable you are, the easier it is to build new experiences into your child’s life. Being predictable could mean telling your child every morning what the plan is for the rest of the day.
If you are going out of the house to visit a grandparent, you tell your child when you are going out in the car, how long the drive is, and how long you are staying at the grandparents before you drive back home again. Fifteen minutes before you need to go out the door and sit in the car, you start to prepare your child that 15 minutes from now, you must get dressed and go out in the car.
10 minutes before you do it again. 5 minutes before you do it again. And then you can ask your child to come with you. In that way, your child has had the time to adapt to the change and mentally prepare himself to go out the door and into the car.
You can repeat this with every change you and your child make during the day.
Yes, autism meltdowns improve with age because the child will learn to be more spacious over the years and find a way on their own to balance and calm down the nervous system.
The adults around the autistic child must learn that they cannot change the child. For the meltdowns to stop, the adults or society need to change around the child.
With age, the parents and the adults helping the child have learned what works too.
If you want my professional help and get more tools in your everyday life, you are welcome to join me in my Masterclass for parents.
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