"Stimming"--good or bad?

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I have aspergers as well as am a therapist for kids w/ autism and have taken the classes to be a certified BCABA...so I've kind of had both sides--by having it, and by being taught by those who don't on what is "right" and what "should be done" etc. etc. I was wondering what kind of "stims" you guys have and whether you fight them, or just in certain environments, or embrace them, and when it comes to others, namely children, what your opinion is. For example, I have one family that whenever their son stims (moving his fingers in front of his face, opening his mouth wide, etc.) they always say "No stimming." So even in the comfort of his own home, he is not allowed an outlet. Stimming, overall, is seen by behavior analysts, and parents, as BaD, and something to be replaced or stopped. Is this equivalent to asking a person w/ autism to not have autism?

Likewise, when a child has an obsession, the approach is to try to introduce the child to as many other things as possible (I think this is good...) but often at the expense of no longer allowing them their obsession--b/c by society's standards, that is BaD=not normal. Ex. One of my female clients was so obsessed w/ animals all she wanted to do most of the time was pet them and play w/ animals, so one therapist wanted to take all animals away. (Granted, this child did kill a hamster, then feel bad--hard to determine if entirely intentional b/c thoughts are often planted in kids heads by adults.)

Love to hear your feedback!

What is bad or good is so subjective that it is almost impossible to answer. I suppose it might be best measured in the context of life quality. It is an easy sell to convince a parent that the quality of their child's life can and should be improved. What needs to be agreed upon is the measures of that quality. Does stimming at home increase or decrease the overall quality of life? Does it just reinforce behaviors that will create difficulties in social situations. Is the child sufficiently aware of the distinction that they can moderate their behavior according to the context?

Context is everything. I am working towards being a full time artist. I have been to a few receptions and public events that were full people. Normally I don't do well in such situations. But artists are allowed, sometime even expected, to be weird. In that contexts my incessant pacing and moving was hardly notable. It was quite liberating not to have to so actively edit my behavior. But in my day job, corporate expectations force a fastidious attention to my actions, mostly with less than adequate success.

Stimming is how I relax, it's how the creative part of my brain is activated, and it's how I have fun. If I couldn't do it, I'd go mad.

Therefore, I see it as a very good thing indeed. In fact, I actually can't imagine my life without the many hours I spend stimming.

I agree w/ both of you guys. Maybe children are too young/immature to be able to "not stim" at school if allowed to at home...but when they get older they can then make their own life decisions. Perhaps. I don't know. What kind of stims do you have that you spend countless hours on?

If it will cause them ridicule at school, would you think they should be home schooled or try to teach them they can stim but only at home?

In the 60's Asperger's and HFA were not diagnosed. Any stimming by me at that time was ruthlessly suppressed by my mother. So whenever I catch myself rocking or some such thing, I immediately stop. It's a very deeply ingrained response. My hands twitch a lot. I pace a lot. Pacing isn't too badly frowned upon.

I agree. I tried to talk to this parent about letting me write a social story to teach them appropriate times to stim and she feels stimming is bad...I tried to talk about the anxiety NOT stimming could cause and she said, "No, he's not like most autistic kids and doesn't have anxiety." (Um, if it's internalized, how would she know? He's not an expert on communicating it...) Anyhow, I think I lost the battle on that one. It makes me sad every time they tell him to stop. It's like watching a kid be suffocated. But people that don't have it (and they don't know I do) have no clue.

What you have to understand is that stimming is a basic natural thing autistic people do. Suppressing it is like chopping off someone's legs and telling them off for walking.

::Nods:: Thus my original statement of "asking an autistic person not to have autism" heh I guess that will be a revolutionary thing that will need to happen to change "the powers that be--behavior analysts and those in charge of therapy"'s minds.

*waves at wavefreak* I can say the same. My issues went undiagnosed, and any obvious stimming (especially for relaxation) was not tolerated. I have some tics and nervous stims--for example I bite and pick at my nails. For some reason, this is tolerated better than hand flapping. I also drum or tap out rhythms with the tips of my fingers or tap my toes. Only recently have I understood this behavior as stimming.

Rocking was never allowed at our house, my mother would scream at us, saying, "Stop that! Do you want people to think you're autistic?!" hahahaha...I look around at my brother who didn't speak until he was 4, my other brother who had a dreadful temper as a child and speaks in a monotone, my sister who used to rock in front of the TV at night and my other sister who naively gets involved with bad men and believes all she's told...and me the passive who cannot manage words in social situations...and all I can do is try to laugh.

Personally, her harshness allowed me to 'pass' better in the world, and I found a way to stim that wasn't objectionable to NTs. I know not everyone may be able to stop stimming tho...I've found that as my life implodes and I feel less and less safe and more and more stressed, that I'm stimming in more ways and have less control. There must be a middle ground here. Maybe the key is for people to recognize that the environment has a great deal of impact on the need to stim. Instead of telling the person to change, perhaps the environments need to be examined first.

And again...society is much more accepting of typical autistic stims from people who are obviously autisitic than during my mother's generation. The problem for those of us on the 'I appear to be NT but I'm not' end of the spectrum is that folks expect you to behave like them, think you are like them...so when you bust out a hand flap it shatters their expectations. They don't know how to think of you or how to deal with you, and react badly much of the time. It's not that they aren't tolerant...it just overwhelms them if they don't know this about you. So...you either learn to disguise or suppress the stim or 'come out' to everyone you might stim around. It's something I'm still working on...and so far, it's a case by case, person by person solution.

Maybe they mean well and maybe they don't, but I think it's too drastic to taboo stimming like that, and it smacks of an unwritten assumption that "fitting in" with the mainstream is the only way to be. Better to just let it happen and try to enforce tolerance in those who have to be around it. But they need to be warned that it'll annoy some people, and that they'll be laughed at.

Not that I'm particularly OK about having to witness stimming myself.....it can make me go yeuk.....but at least I know that any aversion to it is purely psychological - if having to see somebody stimming was the worst thing that anybody ever did to me, I'd count myself very lucky.

I think my mum would have stopped me doing any overt stimming (or "fidgeting" as they used to call it), as all my stims are hidden things that I do inside my mouth or with my toes when I'm wearing shoes. There were also teachers who would pull anybody out who didn't keep still...I recall one of them sarcastically accusing a kid of having "St. Vitus Dance" - they really believed in education by humiliation in those days.

Totally feel ya on that. And on just realizing moving my legs super fast while sitting and tapping toes etc. are stims. There are times I CAN'T stop. Like at church a lot--if I have to sit there, I HAVE to move something. I'll try to channel it to something less obvious, like tapping my toes, but usually my energies won't have it and I HAVE rock my legs back and forth. ::shrug:: It is what it is and if anyone asks then I'll tell 'em.

They suppressed my stimming when I was a kid. I learned to do it surreptitiously. Then I replaced it with self-injury.

So, yeah, suppressing stims is a bad idea.

I've talked about all of this before, so maybe I should just redirect you to my blog post, here--
Squishy!: All About Stims

If you want the short version:
1. We need stims to control stress, control sensory input, and sometimes simply to play. Without them, we're not going to be able to do as much as we would with them.
2. Re-directing stims when they are harmful makes sense, but you have to figure out what the function is and how to find something else that fills that same function.

I pace,hand flap,wring my hands,rock and I used to hide it more but it can be exhausting to do that all the time so I just let go and and do it-it doesnt hurt anyone and helps me-it is what I will do.