Stimming question

[Anonymous]

My DD(18) stims and as a younger person we tried to extinguish them and found what replaced it was ALWAYS worse then the original stim. So we let them go. They change over time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to all who have shared their experiences. Have any of your older children given you feedback on your guidance?

Our son generally does his “skipping,” which is more like a little gallop maneuver that he does back and forth 3 or 4 paces, sometime during the first hour or two after we get home for the day. While he does this, he swings his arms in big circles and vocalizes, as I referenced earlier. He usually does this for fewer than 5 mins most days (maybe more like 2 mins?). I am not certain whether he does this at school, but I don’t think he does. A professional told me to redirect him when he starts this behavior, but the timing of it and big movements involved make me think it’s needed self-regulation. Any thoughts on this?

His other stimming generally involves a seated or standing bouncing and arm/hand flapping for a second or two, in relation to whatever has just excited him. So if we’re at a holiday event and there’s a big model train going around in circles on a track, we’d see more consistent stims with bigger motions. Or more routinely, I was watching him at school before pickup - he was playing trains with another child (yay!) and when he put a piece of wooden track in place, he would stim for a couple of seconds. Then, when he found a train to put on the new track to try it out, he’d stim again. Or when his playmate put a new piece of track down or ran his train around the track, he stimmed.

As others have said, maybe his stimming will decrease as he ages, which would be great. If not, what age do you think would be appropriate to raise this? He will definitely be able to understand this as he gets a bit older and might even understand now, if I discussed it with him (but it feels too early for that).

You need a new “professional.” Those are not behaviors of concern for a 4 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks to all who have shared their experiences. Have any of your older children given you feedback on your guidance?

Our son generally does his “skipping,” which is more like a little gallop maneuver that he does back and forth 3 or 4 paces, sometime during the first hour or two after we get home for the day. While he does this, he swings his arms in big circles and vocalizes, as I referenced earlier. He usually does this for fewer than 5 mins most days (maybe more like 2 mins?). I am not certain whether he does this at school, but I don’t think he does. A professional told me to redirect him when he starts this behavior, but the timing of it and big movements involved make me think it’s needed self-regulation. Any thoughts on this?

His other stimming generally involves a seated or standing bouncing and arm/hand flapping for a second or two, in relation to whatever has just excited him. So if we’re at a holiday event and there’s a big model train going around in circles on a track, we’d see more consistent stims with bigger motions. Or more routinely, I was watching him at school before pickup - he was playing trains with another child (yay!) and when he put a piece of wooden track in place, he would stim for a couple of seconds. Then, when he found a train to put on the new track to try it out, he’d stim again. Or when his playmate put a new piece of track down or ran his train around the track, he stimmed.

As others have said, maybe his stimming will decrease as he ages, which would be great. If not, what age do you think would be appropriate to raise this? He will definitely be able to understand this as he gets a bit older and might even understand now, if I discussed it with him (but it feels too early for that).

Older child parent here. She stims at home and we don’t really discourage it at all at home beyond practical interventions like “you can’t decide to pace in front of the television your brother is watching, find another location.”

I do think kids need an outlet for sensory self-soothing particularly if they are restraining stimming outside the home. We don’t really discourage stimming at home unless it is excessively disruptive or distracting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD(18) stims and as a younger person we tried to extinguish them and found what replaced it was ALWAYS worse then the original stim. So we let them go. They change over time.

I’m not even sure how you would extinguish a stim because they are so contextual. But I will say - my kid’s stims have gotten more subtle over time and are now things that appear a little eccentric like carrying around a small toy. His big one at 13 is pacing/running and my goal really is for him to start connecting the dots that the big gross motor movements are calming/feel good but can be disruptive in public unless they “look” like walking. I actually *want* him to connect the dots about things he can do to feel good or better.

[Anonymous]

Stimming serves a meaningful purpose for kids and it can be really harmful to try to quash a behavior that is a coping mechanism for them to self-regulate when they feel over-excited or overwhelmed. As parents of neurodivergent kids, it's really incumbent (unfortunately) upon us to educate the world around us that people take care of their emotions and brains in different ways, and while they might think stimming looks "weird" most of us have coping mechanisms that relate to stimming (tapping pencils, hopping legs up and down, biting nails, twirling pens, etc.). If they're doing something that is disruptive, you can work with them to find a replacement movement or action that will be less distracting to those around them, or have an accommodation that they can go to separate space to stim to release their energy and soothe their nervous systems. Many adult autistics have been very vocal on how harmful and invalidating it felt when their parents and therapists tried to quash (aka "extinguish") their stimming behaviors. Our kids are never going to be neurotypical so we need to shift out of an ableist mindset that we need to train our neurodivergent kids to mask all the time and hide their ND traits. It's not fair to them and not helpful if we want to move the world toward greater acceptance of neurodivergence.