My teacher assistant told me to stim at home!

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What should I do?

Need more info. What kind of stim is it, is it disruptive to class and did she say NEVER do it in school? Can you control it at all? What does the teacher say?

Tell him to breathe at home.
Ask someone to talk to an administrator for you.

Ask for Sensitivity Training for him and Reasonable Accommodation for yourself.

Last edited by 1401b on 03 Sep 2014, 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Er.....What???
That's like telling a Deaf student they're only allowed to sign at home.
It's inappropriate and shows a lack of understanding. Do you have a case manager? I would report this.
If your stimming is disruptive I could see a problem, but simple acknowledgement, anxiety management strategies and redirection should be used in this case.
I would never tell one of my students to stim at home.
Sorry, this makes me angry!
Are you able to talk to someone about this?

The situation was probably like this:
You were stimming. The teacher saw it and thought you are playing instead of listening to him. So he told "Classroom is not a place for that, do it at home!" - or something along the lines.
He didn't really tell you "not to stim" since he probably had no idea you were stimming. He was thinking you think his lecture is boring and consider playing a better idea. You unintentionally pissed him off.

What should you do?
Either tell him you are on the spectrum and you need to do it in order to focus or find a stim that doesn't look like a play and doesn't look weird. Fidgeting a pen could be good.

Somehow the way we on the Spectrum stim is consider 'bad,' 'disobedient,' 'distracting', or some other negative label. And I think the solution is engagement. Assume this teaching assistant just needs to be brought up to speed on Asperger's-Autism Spectrum and do so in a brief and respectful way. Maybe say something like, people on the spectrum stim to maintain concentration. And leave it at that.

And people not on the Spectrum stim, too. They fiddle with a pen while talking on the phone, they fiddle with their chips at the poker table, and then silently bounce or wiggle a leg during a math test.

So yes, be open to experimenting with less obvious stims, but it's not a hundred percent deal. If you stim in less obvious ways, say, 70% of the time you stim in school, that should be good enough. But here's where you need to take a lesson from both business people and politicians. You don't need to fight the battle alone. Yes, you can brieflly explain what the Asperger's autism spectrum is. But it might also help to have a parent or school administrator explain to this teaching assistant, yes, you will try to stim more discreetly the times you need to stim at school, but this is not a hundred percent deal, nor should it be expected to be.