"Stimming"--good or bad?

Post Reply New Topic

I rock back and forth, flap my hands, squeeze my hands, crawl on the floor and move my fingers in front of my face. It's unspeakably calming. I never show my parents, because they don't want me to stim.
Mostly I stim when being alone with an unfamiliar person. I wouldn't be able to live without stimming.

So what is hand flapping? I move my hands a lot. But I wouldn't call it flapping. I have trouble since the word flapping invokes an image of a profoundly disabled person curled up in a corner rocking and thrashing. It's a terrible, hurtful stereotype, I know. Part of the "I'm not a freak" defensive mechanism I've developed over the years. It's an "if I'm not peeing myself and smearing crap on the walls then I'm normal" attitude. Too bad I'm not normal.

Erg!! !! !! !

It sounds like his parents have absolutely no theory of mind and had not clue what it's like to be in their own child's position. It's either that or they don't want to be embarrassed by the stims. That's the impression I'm getting. The parents seem to care more about what other people think than they do for their own child's happiness. They are leaving the kid absolutely no outlet.

Maybe you can teach him some less noticeable stims and do it in a way that wouldn't contradict his parents. Something like : "sometimes, when I have too much energy, it helps to wiggle my toes inside my shoe like I'm playing drums with them. Nobody see's it, so it doesn't bother them, and it helps me get the energy out." Donna Williams talks about teaching a young girl to finger tap a rhythm on her arm when she's overwhelmed. Since the parents want a perfect robot that won't draw any negative attention to themselves, maybe the stim has to be hidden.

Have you ever seen a very excited two year old? They will often wave their hands in the air because they just can't contain their excitement. That's something like what they're talking about, except that autistics still do this after they are no longer toddlers.

I flap my hands like a bird's wings. And I use to curl up in a corner while flapping.
I surely look very disabled when doing it. But I don't care about that, because I can't help it.

Stims are pretty neutral. Mine are an annoyance so minor that literally anything at all that could be done about them is overkill. Literally anything at all. Like, I wouldn't snap a rubber band against myself a single time to deal with it forever. Wouldn't be worth the pain. Sometimes they're even pleasant.

Obsessions pretty much always should be allowed. Most of the time they're a good thing. Even when they aren't in and of themselves, they, like stims, serve an utterly vital function. I won't say never ever try to eliminate them, because maybe it could happen that one is harmful, but...

I like my stims.

Good, as long as they aren't self-injurious or as long as they don't damage anything/injure others.

Theory of mind requires an adequate frame of reference. When most people see another person smile, they know what that means because their mirror neurons cause their own facial muscles to mimic this action very slightly. The nerves in the face then send a message back to the brain, informing it of the muscles' movement. The brain knows that this smiling movement is the feedback it usually gets during positive emotional states of its own, and the person is consciously reminded of the feeling of happiness. It's only a slight, usually invisible movement so the message is weak enough that the person knows the emotion is not their own but a 'taster' of the other person's, just as when you remember something you've seen, you know that you're not really seeing it again but are experiencing a memory of it, because memories aren't as vivid as the real thing.

People who don't have any need to stim, or who stim in different ways or for different reasons, won't be reminded of any feeling of their own by seeing someone do it. When I see an autistic child hit their head on the floor, I don't have any idea of what that feels like for them. But when I see someone rock or run about appearing to half-talk to themselves in an excited way, I IMAGINE that they're experiencing what I do when I do that, though of course I can't be sure because stimming happens by a different process than facial expressions do and could vary in meaning far more.

I thoroughly concur with 'Erg!! !! !! !'

Stimming: sometimes good, sometimes bad, always necessary.

I found it impossible to stop stimming completely, so instead I've given up the form of stimming that was causing the most trouble (socially and physically - was damaging and hurting my ears), and when I get the urge I use another stim. It's been surprisingly successful, after going cold turkey on it for about a week cold turkey, I only occasionally got the urge any more anyway; it's as if my brain started to forget the positive effects it has and it stopped being an automatic habit. I still get the urge if I put my hands in that region or do anything that reminds me of it.

I do not have autism, my daughter does. Her stim is finger wiggling. I don't interfere with this at home and she is allowed it at school so long as it does not interfere with schoolwork. They allow her to do it as a break after she completes an academic task such as writing her name or counting with objects. I think this is reasonable.

Her psychologist one day told me that if she didn't stim, she would have more time in the day for doing productive things such as more typical play such as dolls or puzzles. He said that I should redirect her stims and eventually she would replace them with coloring, dressing dolls and things other kids do instead of stimming. And I believed him!! ! I believed him for about one week and then accepted that he was wrong. The "redirect the stim" project backfired in ways predictable to anybody here. Her meltdowns increased dramatically. Stimming wasn't replaced by doing puzzles and coloring. It was replaced by inconsolable screaming. Who could have seen that coming? Everybody here. I don't know where the psychologist got the idea that stimming would be replaced by "typical kid" playing. I can't imagine that this actually worked with any other autistic children he sees.

So I instead followed the school's lead that stimming was fine so long as it was compartmentalized into times when it didn't interfere with things she needed to be doing. I told her not to do it in his office (I didn't get rid of him because she actually apparently enjoys her appointments which as far as I can tell is just playing with toys) so she does it in the car there and back and that is enough for her. She does it at home for about an hour a day on ordinary days and more if there is something stressful like a dentist appointment or shoe shopping. She does it at school as a break between academic exercises. This seems to be working out.

Since you are in a unique position to understand the true function of stimming, maybe you can talk to parents about the positve benefits. I have a feeling that my daughter's psych isn't all that unique and that the doctors are spreading the idea that it is a functionless waste of time that would be automatically replaced by all sorts of diverse activities. I think the teachers (at least in her special needs school) are more aware of its relaxation benefits than doctors are because they spend far more time with the kids than doctors do and so they have seen that it functions as a stress release. Parents have seen that too but even though on a certain level I knew better, I still got taken in by a professional's opinion that it served no function and wasted hours of time. It is easy for parents to fall into the "he's the expert" trap if they have no personal experience with autism and are completely clueless. Parents who are on the spectrum themselves will know when the doctor is just wrong. But parents who are not will not know. You may be able to do a little educating of the stress release aspect of stimming to parents because you are now one of the professionals yourself and so they'll listen. I never actually told my daughter's teachers what the doctor said so they didn't get a chance to debunk his theory (assuming that they would).

My daughter does not have any sort of overriding obsessions at the moment. When she was obsessed with water, her psych (the same guy who was anti-stim) recommended embracing it and using it as a teaching tool. We used water in cups to teach full/empty. We used water bath toys to demonstrate how gears work (the water turns the gears). We did trips to fountains, ponds, rivers and compared water in all these different enviroments. Now she doesn't much care about water that way anymore. But I thought it was a good idea. I think perhaps this good idea of his about using obsessions to teach all sorts of diverse things was also why I believed his "stim replaced by coloring and puzzles" theory. At school, many of the other children have obsessions and the teachers merely work within those obsessions to teach academics. They teach reading with books they make about the obsession (geared to both the obsession and where the kid is academically) and teach math by using the obsession too. If the kid is in the object counting phase, they use the obsessed-upon thing for counting. They also have a software program that generates math worksheets with anything that you plug into the program so they just plug in the obsession and generate specific worksheets for each kid.. I think this is a great idea. If a girl is obsessed with animals there is a whole world of things she can learn using animals as a teaching tool.

edited to add: I read your follow-up posts and see that you did try to educate the parents on the stress release aspects and they didn't believe you. That's a shame. I liked the social story to teach compartmentalizing it.

Last edited by Janissy on 08 Oct 2010, 10:23 am, edited 2 times in total.

Stim toy story topic

I want one of those key chain squishy balls that Alex demonstrated on his TV Network.

I pace when I am on the phone, or I do it without realizing if I am waiting for something.

I rock sometimes without realizing it, and to shut out things around me.

...I wish I had enough faith in humanity to call you a liar, Janissy, but I believe every word.

Seriously. You'd be so much more productive if you didn't waste time sleeping, eating, socializing, using the restroom, bathing, daydreaming, playing or visiting WP.

But his idea about making use of special interests is good.

Personally, I can be productive and stim at the same time (it even makes it easier), so that just sounds like nonsense to me.

I am trying to visualize what that would look like. I sometimes relax my wrists and shake my arms in front of me, but I don't do that very often because it tires my arms out. I do frequently shake my legs side to side in opposite directions with my ankles relaxed which causes my feet to flap I suppose. I often like to move my arms in a fashion as if I were directing the music playing in my head, but of course the only one hearing the music is me, so that can get me some funny looks sometimes. I like to tap my foot to the music in my head, but that can really irritate folks, so I have learned to tap my toe inside my shoe so there is no noise, or bounce my heel up and down to the rhythm of the music.

When I was in high school I would cross one leg over the other, and shake my foot up and down, to the amazement of other students around who had no clue how I was able to move my foot so fast for so long without seeming to tire at all.

I am not autistic either, but being autistic is not required for one to have stimming issues. My parents worked diligently to end or redirect my stimming all of my childhood with no success, and I put extended effort on my own during and after college to end my stimming myself which was also a splendid waste of time. With great effort I might end this habit, but something else always replaced it. Also I often am not aware of my stimming when I am doing, and I get frustrated when people point it out to me and ask me to please stop, when I wasn't aware I was even doing anything. The only way it is possible for me to remain completely still is for me to be mentally exhausted, and I'm not always successful then.

No, I think that the people who make fun of it should be taught how moronic it is to have a problem with harmless behaviour.