Urgent question : Visual stim excessive ! !

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Hi,

Please give me some urgent advise. I just realized that my son's visual stimming has gradually increased to the point that he now stims with everything available on hand. I had not realized just how disruptive this had become until his teacher gave me a heads-up today that he had been spinning his learning materials and got very angry when redirected to his work.

Please help ! ! He is barely getting started learning and it looks like this visual stimming is going to destroy even that little learning he is getting in a day. Help ... I don't mind him stimming, per se, but it is getting excessive to the point of sabotaging his attempts to learn even a little.

Please, please, please... Any advise is deeply appreciated. I am slowly losing any shred of hope that my baby will get better some day... Help.

My ASD son is 3 yo with communication delays. He used to do a lot of visual stims, toe walking and spinning. He still has visual stims but it is has been reduced greatly. I am not sure if this is the reason why, or if he just out grew it, but we would take him to the park and push him on the swing for about 1 1/2 hour almost everyday. Then we would walk the length of the park that took almost another hour. We then bought a swing set and put it in the yard. He would swing and go for a walk in the morning and in the evening. Poor guy was too tired to stim after all of that. Now that he is in school, he has OT, ST, PT and Play therapy. When he comes home, he is too tired to swing. He still swings on the weekends.

I would experiment and see if you can find a more appropriate activity for your son so he doesn't have to stim as much. We were in a bad place about 8 months ago. I read everything and tried everything people suggested (even tried swimming but little dude wasn't up for that). I am so sorry you are feeling so overwhelmed. I really do believe that in time, your little guy will find his way, with your support and his therapists.

First you really need to figure out the reason for his stimming. Usually it is for comfort. Then you work from there. I used to stim because of the fact that I really didn't understand the outside world, and this gave me some control over a little part of my life. If you provide him with a "safe place", that should help. Also give him times and places to stim, set some rules.


Too much to really explain on here, but if you PM me, I will give you my phone number and we can talk. I have Aspergers, so I've been through all of this. Don't give up hope, he can be a completely, normal functioning person. What grade is he in?

My son goes to a special needs school and is in a 8:1:3 class so he is closely monitored. When he is in a new environment, he wants to touch, turn on, look at, etc everything in the room. His major issue is, he wants to do his own thing and is pretty persistant with getting his own way. So, my boy was in a time out chair quite often the first few days. He decided now that he doesn't like the timeout chair so when they want to get him to settle down, they use the timeout chair to get him to listen. Also, he is pulled out 8 times a week for therapy and he gets outside playtime everyday. He is too tired to stim.

His stim is looking at his fingers and certain objects at a certain angle behind various posts. His stim is kinda hard for a 3 yo to maintain so he mostly waves his fingers in front of his eyes. I often lay down next to him and make the same getures with my fingers. For some reason that is very funny and it makes him laugh. I also will stick my fingers into his fingers to add to the image he is creating. At first he resisted me but now he allows me to join him and sometimes he finds it funny. He also sucks his thumb and stim with his fingers to put himself to sleep.

I don't know if it's the right approach but I join his stims because it makes him laugh and he seems okay when I join him. I don't let him stim for more than an hour in the evenings. I break it up with hugs, kisses and tickkles. His communication is delayed so I can't ask him any questions beyond multiple choice or yes no so until he can explain why I should leave him alone, I trying to play with him on his terms. I do also encourage him to play in my world also.

They often stim to relax. He is probably stressed from adjusting to a new place with a schedule he is unfamiliar with. Do you have consultation OT in your IEP? Even if you don't, you might want to suggest since the teacher is unable to redirect him, to have an OT come in and help figure out what is bothering him and what can calm him that is less disruptive.

I was just wondering how old he is and how much communication do you have? So could you have a simple discussion with him about the stimming to get some answers? If not then, as others have mentioned, it is time to play detective. It seems you have ruled out boredom. What about anxiety? tasks seeming too difficult? overwhelming visual stimuli in environment? Overwhelming auditory stimuli in environment? poor proprioception? You said exercise helps... maybe a weighted blanket/toy/vest. Maybe a small trampoline that he can jump 5 min then work 15... something like that. Or maybe it is something else.