Stimming

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Hello everyone....

New question for everyone..... I know stimming is a repetitive movement. My question about this is can that repetitive movement take place in the form of making sounds with your mouth. Ever since we started this journey with my son one of the constant complaints at school is that he is constantly talking or making sounds with his mouth. Being home with him over the summer I understand what they were talking about he can't be quiet he is constantly making noises with his mouth or making rasberry sounds it what I have always called it. Does anyone have any good ideas of how to help him stop that or replace it with a more appropriate behavior. I will take any help I can get!! !! Thanks!

I drove my family to distraction with the ol' Bi-Labial Fricative, as George Carlin called it. I partially outgrew it and partially learned to keep it to myself in public as I got to be a teen, but I'm still a human noisebox. It also eventually extended to voice impressions, mimicking sounds and people I heard on radio, television and the movies.

Authority figures ragging on me for it didn't stop it, it was so spontaneous, I usually didn't realize I was doing it until somebody gave me a dirty look or yelled at me. After a while it just got to be kind of a joke - I really had very little conscious control over it, and everyone else getting so bent about it just seemed funny, so in a sense all the kvetching may have only made it worse. But I came out of it with a healthy sense of humor, which gave me certain creative job prospects.


I know that's not really what you were hoping to hear, but its the truth. From what I've seen here on WP, talking to oneself seems to be a very common trait for AS, and I think that's neurologically probably related to the noise making, maybe even being similar to whatever brain wiring causes Tourette syndrome.

My brother is the same way. He is constantly making sounds. It is either squeaking, or humming, or beat boxing, or playing the drums on the table, or something. He doesn't realize he is doing it most of the time until you point it out to him. He will stop, but about 2 minutes later he is doing it again without realizing it. Mind you that he isn't very autistic per say, but this happens to be one of the few autistic traits he inherited from my family.

Overall, there isn't much to do about it, he is 26 and is still beat boxing. What you can do is give him something else to do that takes his concentration. He never does it when he is conversing other people. Just mostly when he is sitting there bored, or working on something by himself. So, what I do is just engage him in conversation. And if he is working on something (say reading a book) while beat boxing then I just go someplace else and leave him to make noises alone.

I've heard some people have had success replacing one stim with another. I replaced clicking my fingernails together with playing with one of these: Tangle Jr. (click here)
I don't know if giving your son a small object to fidget with would stop the noise making, but I think it's worth a shot.

Hi Glynny-

Yes, the noisemaking is verbal stimming. My son started it when he was about 4 yrs old and he is now 6. I wish I had answers for you, but I don't. We have tried everything. At school they noticed that he was doing it as a way to get out of doing some of his work. They also thought that he was doing it when he became overloaded. However, at home, his environment is pretty stress free and he continued to do it. We have just continually asked him to please keep it down, or told him that he can make his noises, but he needs to go into his room to do it. Most of the time he does not want to go into his room. I truly do not have any answer as to what you can do to make him stop. To some degree, you will need to let him do it at home so that he can control it better at school or other places.

My son can control it in certain situations. For instance, we go to church every Sunday, and he sits quietly through the service for 1 hour without making the noises. We started working on this by offering him a reward if he could sit quietly through church. Over time, he has just learned that this is a time to be quiet.

At school they did the same thing. They would offer him a small reward for being able to sit and do his work for small increments of time without making the noises. They reported that the noises have gotten better, but haven't stopped altogether.

I don't know how verbal your son is or how old he is, but the more verbal my son gets, the more we can talk to him about it.

My son has also started a new stim of hitting himself in the head. He has always flapped his hands, but he has just recently started this a couple of months ago. So it seems that as the noises are getting somewhat better, now he is hitting himself in the head.

Wish I had more help for you, I can definitely relate and feel your pain, because this stim is quite problematic........

According to my job training I had to go through like 3 days ago, stimming will start going away as the world of the child with autism opens up. Like the more comfortable they are, the less they stim. And yes, I know this is not always true from personal experience. I doubt this is any help, but I don't know how to say it without rambling on and on.

Also, switching stims worked for me. I had to stop hand flapping because it was starting to hurt so bad. Sure I look like a ditzy Valley Girl now, but at least my wrists aren't broken!

I've never really noticed my son stimming. Hmm.. He does bounce up and down on his toes a bit when he's excited. He'll make murmuring sounds and odd noises when he's super excited. Is this stimming?

P Boy [my brother 19 years] has always been musically inclined. He too use to make sounds, till we got him his first instrumet the violin. He now spends most of his elusive time playing and composing music. At least he doesn't make sounds with his mouth any more.

The stimming varies from one person to another, and can be related to any sense. Yes, I do think what you son do is stimming. Has he been diagnosed? If he had not, I would recommend you to approach to an autism centet to get him tested. He needs behavior modification therapy. My daughter's stimming was also very disruptive, and we had serious issues with the school. She was in different schools from 1st to 3rd grade because of this. We tried everything and nothing worked. When she started behavior midification therapy she stopped stimming and behaving inside the classroom like in 3 months! It was amaxibg. The idea of the therapy was replacing the stimming for anothet one less disruptive, but she did not pick a new one (you cannot decide for them). She still have issues, but she is doing way better now. And by the way, they do not use the stimming conciously a oid working. It is the result, but it is not concious.

My brother stims with sounds. (He's BAP, by the way.) As a small child, whenever he was concentrating he'd make this monotonous 'ehh' noise - I remember one time we were playing a game where each person pretended to be a different family member and we'd guess who it was, and I made that noise while playing with a pretend toy truck. Now, he tends to talk to himself, narrating and commenting on whatever he's doing. (My Mom keeps asking me if he has his friend over when I answer the phone while he's video gaming, because he talks so much she assumes he's having a conversation.) Or else he chews on something, like his finger or one of his toys.

He's told me he feels like he needs to do something with his mouth when he's concentrating. And often he doesn't notice he's doing it. Fortunately we've never had complaints from his school about it, probably because he generally does it when he's concentrating on something fun. But if your son does it for the same reason as my brother, my suggestion would be to get him to chew gum instead.

i just purchased some chewies, and while my autie isnt a huge vocal stimmer, when hes got a chewie in his mouth it does cut way down on the noises he makes.

some vocal stimming is about sound, some is about the sensation in the mouth or head from making the noise. both could probably be redirected into a quieter stim like chewies or gum.

I definitely think my sons verbal stimming is related to music. He loves music and we listen to a lot of different types of music. It seems like some of the sounds he is making is a distortion of the music. I have found that when my son is engaged with something else that he is interested in, sometimes the noisemaking subsides. We tried gum. It worked for a few days, and then he stopped chewing the gum.

if his stimming is related to music; is he doing the vocal stim if there is music on or is there isn't.
if it is the latter, then it might be the need to hear music, or organized sounds in general, rather then the stimming itself.
i do notice this about myself; if there isn't any music to be heared, i start humming or in-mouth whistling to fill the 'void'.

have you tried giving him earbuds and an mp3-player to listen to music at any time? this might also clear up the stimming greatly

Glen Gould (famous pianist) was a big vocal stimmer - if you listen to recordings of him often you can just barely hear the sounds he made over the piano music. He said he did it when the piano was slightly out of tune, trying to make it sound right.