Stimming in public

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My son is 6. He was diagnosed at 4 with Aspergers. They say possibly adhd but are hesitant to diagnose at this young age. He has been at full speed since he came out of my body lol.
His stimming seems to be with him all the time these days. Its been getting worse in public lately. Or maybe it just seems that way because he is getting bigger. It's always big movements like spinning and running and falling on the ground. He hangs on me and makes loud noises. It truly seems like he can't control it.
I'm just so tired. Sometimes I just need to go to the store or run an errand. What can I do to help him control his body in public? Any advice or tips or tools?

First of all, he is a child. Children behaving like children is perfectly OK.

Secondly, he has a super-powerful brain. When all that energy inside his brain has no place else to go, it forms a vortex, pretty much like a mini-tornado, and it loops around the same thought/movement non-stop.

Have you also realized that your words don't work on him? Why? Because he has a super-powerful brain: all the neurons in the visual cortex interact in unison. Your words are not even mosquito bites on a dinosaur. Have you heard something called superconductivity? The thermal fluctuations (your words) have zero effect to the movement of "Cooper Pair" electrons, so, zero resistance. Why? Because those Cooper-pair electrons now hold hand with each other, they move like a gigantic block, and become immune to casual excitation (your words). If you know the right way of developing your son, he can grow up to be able to see things that no one else can see, and solve problems that no one else can solve.

Unfortunately, most parents don't know what to do with those vortices (stimming behaviors). So, instead of developing the brain of their children, parents seek to eliminate those stimming behaviors, or just to ignore those stimming behaviors. Has anyone succeeded in eliminating a tornado or a hurricane? Not really, right? In fluid dynamics, there is something called "Reynolds Number." It reflects the existence of instability: you can't get rid of those vortices, they are not there for you to get rid of. If you don't know how to develop your child, you will get more and more vortices, like the baobob trees on Little Prince's planet, until one day your son's brain is completely infested with them. And that's how we turn potential geniuses into comatose low-functioning autistic adults.



So, what should you do when your son stims? His moments of stimming are also his moments of maximum attention. So, if you are not teaching your son new skills when he is stimming, when are you going to teach him?

I always find it funny that parents complain that their children are stimming, and at the same time complain that their children are not learning. Duh?

What you should ask is therefore not "how can I stop my son's stimming?" but "what should I teach my son when he stims?"

For autistic children, their "Cooper-pair" neurons occur inside their visual cortex. Therefore, there is little wonder that EEG techniques are being developed to detect autism, via reaction to visual signals. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190815113730.htm)

So, it is plenty clear what you need to do. Draw pictures for your son, either on paper, or drawing tablets (some parents like LCD writing tablets, look in Amazon). AND, write down words. When he stims, teach him to recognize picture drawings, and to read.

My son stimmed with playing with a vacuum cleaner. I taught him to read that way. I also taught him to follow some of my verbal commands that way. My son was extremely hyperactive. He couldn't look at any static picture, nor read any single letters. His attention span was only 2 to 3 seconds. Yet, those 2 to 3 seconds were plenty enough for me to teach him to read. Before he was 3 years old, he was reading books. Stimming time is learning time.

I have met up with some autistic children's family in very public places, like shopping malls. When their children spin, I spin, when their children jump, I jump. I mean, I am not ashamed one bit in doing all that in public. Freedom of expression, right?

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Keep this in mind: if you are not teaching your child when he is stimming, when are you going to teach him? Stimming time is learning time.

The alternative is a planet (your son's brain) infested with baobab trees. Genius, or ret*d? Your choice.

Look also the last 30 seconds of this video. Trust me, you don't want your son's brains infested with those vortices. Yet, that's what millions of parents do with their children's brains, by attempting to get rid of their children's stimming behaviors. You can't get rid of those vortices: Reynolds number and/or quantized magnetization (in the case of superconductors) tell you that if you try to nip one of those vortices, they'll just appear elsewhere. Instead, you should ride along those vortices, and use them as tools to develop other parts of your children's brains. (I guess the technical term is "Bogolons," from where vortices can interact with phonons, in honor of the Russian physicist Nikolái Bogoliúbov).

My children are "undisciplined" relative to others, so my advice may be minimally helpful. My NT husband and I (Aspie) have the kids in big spaces as much as possible, e.g. one of us takes them outside. My thought for small spaces are alternatives: when my son (NT?) is too out there or too close, I give him piggy-back rides (he's near 6 and I'm late 40s) so his hanging on is in the "right" spot. Thankfully they are both sometimes willing to get in the cart (or hold on) for shopping, usually with a toy, especially if they've been running around beforehand. We gave my son chewlery around age 5 to stop his clothes gnawing. My daughter (Aspie) age 8, flaps her hands a LOT now. We've talked briefly about alternatives (clapping, stimulating the vagus nerve in other ways - you can Google). Her teachers say she does not flap in her classrooms, but once when I picked her up, as soon as the left her classroom, her flapping was so hard up and down she could have taken flight. My NT husband is physically active, so keeps her moving - biking, swimming; I lost weight so I can chase them around on the playgrounds without tiring before them. "Excessive" physical activity also helped a foster child of ours who was ADHD, PTSD etc.

Bottom line: I give my children suggestions, but don't expect "control". That said, if they are too "wild" I will remove them from the situation with as little fuss as possible. Then I ask my NT husband to run the errands.

Kudos for you for looking for ways to ease the situation for you both. I'm sorry I don't have resources on hand; I hope you find some good ones! I know there are parenting books about the strong-willed child, etc.

Stimming is usually an unconscious way of self-calming. It is actually necessary to your child staying in control and functioning. In public, if the stims are bothering you or those around you, I suggest you work to channel them into a more socially acceptable format without trying to stop it. Give you son something to manipulate to keep his hands busy, or engage in a conversation to keep his voice busy (assuming he is verbal). My son was a chewer so I usually handed him straws to chew; something like that may also help with the unwanted noises.

An increase in stims should be taken as a sign that a situation is stressing your child. Consider making a mental note to avoid those situations or find a way to make them less stressful.

If you can't find a way to channel the energy, you might be able to make a deal with him to delay the movements. Or stave off the need for a highly active session before heading out. Keep any time periods you are asking him to intentionally suppress his movements very short. Trying to control the movements will take the full energy of his brain and be stressful of itself. Be sure this is necessary and important with no other alternatives before you ask it of him. It rarely will be.

You will find, as Eikonabridge explained in detail, that your child's brain learns and focuses best while he is stimming. Doing homework it helps him learn; in a stressful situation it helps him cope.

Most important to note is that this is NOT a behavior issue, so please don't treat it as something bad; it is a coping mechanism and should be handled as such. The moment I learned that one simple fact about my son everything got so much easier. I had been fighting a battle that was actually leading to more disruptive and destructive behavior from my child. By letting him engage in the silly little stuff, I had a much better behaved child for the big stuff. Pick your battles.

I found a decent paper on phonon-vortex interaction, which can clarify the mechanism of the autistic brain quite a bit.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305548447_Nonlinear_vortex-phonon_interactions_in_a_Bose-Einstein_condensate

Before talking about this paper, I need to distinguish 4 types of people on the autistic spectrum.

(from http://www.yutopian.com/Yuan/TFM.html)


All the way to the right of the vertical dashed line, above the critical phase transition, is where the neurotypical people sit. They do not have BEC (Bose-Einstein Condensate) blocks inside their visual cortex. Their brain has one single phase: the "normal fluid" phase. Around 10,000 years ago, due to the invention of bow and arrow and the arrival of planned warfare in the human race, new genetic conditions such as color blindness, autism and bipolarity entered human DNA through natural selection (meaning tribes without color-blind, autistic or bipolar people would lose wars and be eliminated). In the case of autism, this meant the possibility of having a new phase inside the brain: the "superfluid" phase. This is a phase transition type of phenomenon. Meaning that you either have autism or not. It's a clear-cut situation. You either have BEC inside your brain, or you don't (in which case you are neurotypical). You are either on the spectrum, or you are not.

However, if your "normal fluid" phase outweighs your "superfluid" phase, you can pass by alright in our society. This corresponds to the case of BAP (Broad Autism Phenotype). In the phase plot, this is the region where rho_s is non-zero but rho_s < rho_n. (region between the center of the X intersection point and the vertical dashed line.)

A bit further to the left of the X intersection point, when rho_s > rho_n, you have the clinical level of autism. We can further classify these truly autistic people into two groups. The first group is where I belong, where the remnant rho_n is still significant and contributing. These people still can interact well with neurotypical folks. But there is a second group (below 1 Kelvin in the plot), where rho_n (the normal-fluid phase) becomes insignificant. And that group is usually what we would call the "classic autism" case.

Going back now to the paper. "Phonons" are what our brain use to communicate between our visual cortex and our frontal cortex, they correspond to low-frequency part of our brain waves (e.g. alpha and theta waves). In superfluid, they are often called "Bogolons." In the case of BEC (superfluid, or Bose-Einstein Condensate), there are actually two types of "Bogolons." One can happen in the equilibrium situation, and these bogolons/phonons happen through quantum fluctuation of bosons into fermions. In a sense, these are "fermionic bologons." In the two-fluid model, they happen within the "normal fluid" phase of the BEC. That's how engineers (BAP) people use to emulate neurotypical behavior and communicate with the neurotypical people. There is nonetheless another type of bogolons: bosonic bogolons. These bogolons can interact with non-equilibrium BEC, namely, they can interact with vortices.

It's very interesting that depending on the nature of the phonon-vortex interaction, the vortex either subsides or grows. When a vortex grows, it can lead to further vortices. What does this mean? This means that, when you used the "push" method to teach your autistic children, you are actually sending more and more noise into their brains. Parents/teachers are the very ones causing problems in their children's brains. The way they approach their children is the ultimate reason why these children become low-functioning, with their brains infested with tons of vortices.

The good news is that, if you do proceed with the "pull" method, the energy around the vortices can dissipate by emitting bogolons. This gives some hope that one day we will eventually be able to bring even the low-functioning folks into certain degree of "normalcy." But what you need to do would be some "rapid-fire" way of synchronizing your interaction with them and catch up with their ever-shifting attention focus at second-by-second level, while teaching them additional skills all at the same time (like image recognition and reading). At this speed, I guess modulated animation videos would work out better than hand drawing. Unfortunately, this approach is out of reach of most parents/educators, because these adults do not possess enough animation video production skills.

Sure, vortices can move. This is what some people use (behavior substitution). But you are not solving the root problem by using behavior substitution. This is what I mean by Reynolds Number: you nip a vortex, it will appear elsewhere. Vortices will disappear only if you connect children's interests/stimming behaviors to something else. And at any rate, vortices are not the issues: underdevelopment is the issue. Once the brain is developed, there are so many other ways of coming back to address the vortex issues. It's like jumping off an airplane with parachute: sure, everyone has instinct of fear, but rational thinking can overcome that fear. Rational thinking helps to solve a lot of issues (including anxiety). But for that to happen, the brain needs to be developed first.

Parents and educators are ultimately the cause of their children's low functioning. These children are fine, they were all originally destined to become geniuses. Autism is part of normal, it has been with us for 10,000 years. What's not normal is our public education system (200 years of history?), where we assume that everyone needs to be developed the same way. We have turned things upside down, and all we want is to mold our autistic children into a neurotyical paradigm so that they can be educated in our public schools. We don't realize that our effort is precisely what is making these children low-functioning. We create problems where there were none. Instead of having fewer and fewer vortices, we end up creating more and more vortices inside our children's brains. Pull, not push. I wonder when people will ever learn. You see parents leaving their children to play with sand on the beach. You see parents describe their children drawing cartoon pictures. Yet those parents do exactly zero effort to teach their children additional skills through their children's interests. Same with stimming.

Interesting.

My daughter's Interest is bugs. So I could "pull" her with those, e.g. "As we go around (this grocery store) you look for foods that the bugs would like, in addition to us." Warning - none of it may be edible (referring to "over" processed foods).

This is not directly relevant to the immediate issue of the post, but perhaps indirectly or else related to a future situation. I wonder if this would work on me. I am having major reluctance to job search (I could draw similarities between myself and a 6 year old entering or in a grocery store, or -gasp- at a festival). I'm trying to "push" myself to do it and encountering resistance (anxiety, ruminations), but I have an inkling of what you mean by "pulling" myself towards the goal (a new employment of Interest). Pull, pull ... pull. I get it, how to implement. I need a list (to write it down).

Yes, that's the way to go.


The way neurotypical people handle this is ... by having a meeting. It's much easier if you can assemble a team: your team. The team members could be anyone that can talk intelligently: your friend, relatives, etc. The hardest part is to get it started. Once it starts, then it's all easy.

I don't have a magic pill there. (I don't refer to job search, but I can relate to what you are saying in other situations.) I sometimes would just stay up until get things done. Sure, getting out and decompress a bit is OK, but often one ends up spending too much time just in decompressing. So, at the end of the day, the best thing to do is to have your team, or at least someone else to talk to ... just like how neurotypical people do it. Being married has its perk, as you already have a team member. But, any other friend or relative would work just as well.