Welcome back to Charlie's story. If you missed Part 1, start there — it sets up everything.
Today we're talking about the window before the meltdown.
Charlie’s 4 PM crash out was predictable, but when you were already seeing it play out, it was too late. The key is to catch it earlier — when his nervous system is raising its hand and saying something is off. When there's still a chance to meet the need before it turns into a release. Since it was always right around 4PM, that made it fairly easy to plan ahead.
Luckily, Charlie's mom was a great detective and picked up on a few clues to help us brainstorm some ideas. She noticed two things she didn't have language for yet.
The first one was that his pupils would change.
She noticed that right before he fully tipped into that dysregulated state, his pupils would dilate. She wasn't sure if that was significant or if she was reading too much into it.
Spoiler alert: It's significant.
Dilated pupils are one of the clearest signs of sympathetic nervous system activation — what we know as fight-or-flight. Evolutionarily, when your brain detects danger, your pupils widen so you can see better. So you can spot the predator. So you can react fast.
