WHAT THE HECK ARE STIM TOYS?

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Basically any sound that you come across in your travels. Literally a sound that you have found that you think is cool.

Can be anything from a squeaky door hinge, or park bench, to a engine or electric motor that you think produces a cool sound, all the way up to various industrial sounds.

Back in '86 I was walking though the expanding buisness district of San Francisco at night when I happened upon a piledriver at work. I was surprised that they were doing it at night, but it was pretty cool, and I watched the crew working for about 45 minutes enjoying not only the sound of the piledriver at work, but the reverberation bounceback off of other buildings, as well as feeling the ground shake.

A freind of mine from Ohio knew people who would go out into heavily industrialised areas at night and literally dance to the sound of heavy industry.

Conversely, the German Industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten utilised a lot of found sound in their earlier works. On their compendium CD "Strategies Against Archetecture Vol.2, You will hear found sounds ranging from spanner wrenches being dropped on a concrete floor, to an electronically manipulated electric jackhammer that has been further manipulated via tape loops, as well as their percussionist entering a large (Empty) water tank in Berlin, and temporarily appropriating it as a musical instrument . One of the coolest sounds on the CD, though, has to be the electronically processed sound of a NYC Tunnel Ventilation shaft with a very loud fan in it.

Perhaps this is a bit more mainstream, but Pink Floyd incorporated found sound into their music, most notably the tape loops of Cash registers, loose change and money bags to set the introductory rhythm of 'Money' as well as the telephone system, and TV that helps to carry and accentuate the story on their album 'The Wall'.

I have my cats. I could pet them for hours (if I wouldn't rub off all their fur, that is).

I carry rocks to rub. If I happen to lose one, I can usually spot another.

Oooohhh Shiny!

Nomaken: When those squidgy balls deflate, well, the ones I have/had, the rubber bits tend to look and feel like tentacles.

With all this discussion of tentacles, it makes me think of something:

I used to adore Koosh balls, especially putting them on my face. Mm. Great memories there. Haven't done anything with them in a while.

Kind of exciting. I was using stim toys, and I didn't even know it!

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1332330

Spinning Tops, Swing Sets and Yo-Yos.

I enjoy the sounds (and the vibrations) of GRTC busses. I love the sounds of the city. Have no idea why.

Maybe the term "fidget" ought to be used in place of "stim" to avoid the double entendre confusion when talking about the subject to people who aren't acquainted with PDD lingo.

It doesn't sound so different from the kind of fidgeting that I and some other ADDers do. I tend to use necklaces. I have broken many a necklace from fidgeting, having slain my first victim, a rough amethyst on a cord that I got at one of those science stores, when I was 12. In recent times I started making them, at least a few of them designed to be especially good to fidget with - beads you can slide, twist, or spin, hanging wire-based parts that you can braid or rearrange. So far I've destroyed one of my necklaces, but it wasn't even one of those I wore or played with most...I guess I just didn't build it well. I can also enjoy, in a subdued way, moving around refractive, reflective, or iridescent objects as a sort of visual fidgeting. Putting pretty stuff in my necklaces, or wearing already-made necklaces with pretty stuff, can allow for this.

I also tend to pace when waiting around. Sometimes it's driven people nuts. My first roommate in college thought I had OCD, 'cause my pacing seemed kind of metered to her. I told her about my ADD and said that the pacing was what's left of the hyperactivity I had as a toddler (yes, all toddlers are hyper, but I was probably moreso than average, or at least moreso than my sisters), which had mostly retreated to my head when I was 4.

Another thing I have to wonder is to what extent people who are neither ADD nor PDD fidget. It almost seems like one of those things that could be part of the human condition. Does everybody pace while waiting for their water to heat up so they can make tea? Never cared to look or ask them about that or their neuropsychology. I do remember that for a spelling bee in 5th grade, everyone was given rubber bands and/or paper clips to play with. Tantrumed after that one 'cause I lost. 5th place, one spot shy of "placing." Also, stress balls and harmony balls are marketed to the general population...could it really be only ADDers and PDDers buying them? Doubt it.

Very good point. NT's do fidget, when emotional or stressed, or bored, this list could go on forever, they do fidget. Twiddling thumbs, biting nails, same as us, but I do think with us, and this is just my opinion, that most things are aggravated and/or exaggerated with us. We fidget/stim more, (I prefer fidget, stim brings 'interesting' thoughts to mind.) because this world is harder for us. We have to work harder, put in more effort, in order to get the same result an NT can do normally, with little or no effort. In order to just keep ourselves under control, we fidget. It's a technique we've adapted for ourselves to make our lives easier, and I don't think the NT world we live in respects this.

I have multiple items that might be considered "stim toys" including (but not limited to) a gel stress ball, a cork-screw thingy, my mobile(cell) phone, etc

I don't think I've ever encountered hell for my fidgeting. I don't think it's something that's commonly noticed. But maybe I just don't fidget quite enough for it to be noticed.

Perhaps the thing with fidgeting is that it has a sort of calming, grounding, or soothing effect on people of all different neurologies. That could imply that fidgeting works on an aspect of neurology generally shared by PDDers and non-PDDers. I often think of fidgeting as discharging static electricity that's built up in my nervous system. It makes sense that people with PDDs might build up more of this psychological static, on average, than people without PDDs (although there are subsets of the non-PDD population, such as the ADD population and people with anxiety disorders, that can be exceptions).

My daughter has quite a collection, including the tentalcle balls, koosh balls, those squeezy-tube things, and her current favorite...the lighted spinning fan thing from the Disney store (Cinderella of course), the more unbalanced the better.

The other day as I was leaving for work, she yanked a tentacle off her ball and gave it to me, "you need this Daddy". She was right. That day was extremely stressful with lots of unexpected task changes. Strumming that tentacle like a guitar string kept me from going into a full tantrum (I'm 40yrs old, 6'1", 215lbs. A tantrum is not a pretty sight). Currently, I'm using an "Autism Awareness" elastic-band bracelet I got from the Alabama Autism Society. My watch face and cell phone are also good.

Magnets are a good stim toy. You can buy strong neodymium magnets (usually nickel or chrome plated) and ball bearings to make polyhedrons, molecules, stick figures, fake piercings, or whatever. A long chain of them makes a kind of rope which has a uniquely stimulating tactile quality which is hard to explain.

You can make necklaces too, however I suggest using stainless BBs for that purpose. Neck sweat easily corrodes any plating, as I found out the hard way.

(Neodymium magnets also have a linear strength rating ranging from N36 to N50. You can get, say, 200 small N48 ones for around $15)

Bags of bulk jellybeans tend to be a great stress reliever for me.People alwayd tend to return a bag or two a day at the customer service desk cuz they are expensive, so I get cheap stress relief at work everyday.

way better than the way others relieve stress

Last edited by Tory_canuck on 09 Aug 2009, 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.