Reply to 8 year old stimming/self-soothing with hands in pants. Advice?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "8 year old stimming/self-soothing with hands in pants. Advice?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]OP again.

Thanks for all of these great ideas, the bike shorts/tight underthings seem like a good suggestion as does the fidget in pocket.

Just some backstory, we had her in Infants and Toddlers with an IEP that mostly focused on social emotional skills; things like building relationships with peers, regulating her emotion, and as school started and we moved from IFSP to IEP some goals on working past frustration/being perserverant on acadamic tasks. Last year she was exited from Special Ed and the IEP was closed, her academics were very high and the team determined that her social emotional deficits were not preventing her from accessing the curriclum. On that they were right if only technically, she thrived in math and reading and on standardized tests.

I pushed for a 504 so she'd at least have something in place, documentation that showed she was in fact Autistic and did need help in some areas, things like visual supports to break down tasks into smaller parts, social stories to help her understand how to relate to peers...it is a robust enough 504 though who ever knows how well it is implemented. I did not include anything about monitoring or reducing stims or self-soothing behavior because at the time (the end of last year) they did not seem to effect her well being at school.

Now though that has changed, and the idea of her being regularly teased and bullied and called 'gross' because of these soothing behaviors pains my heart. To the poster who asked it is entirely possible there are anxieties at school that are causing her to seek this 'soothing' more often, but at home she does it when she is contented too, it just calms her and puts her in her zone.

Likely alternate calming activities or a 'calm down area' need to be provided in the classroom to help her, and I think her peers would benefit from some empathy training...especially since this is a school that celebrates Autism Awareness month with blue outfits every friday in April. Awareness is great but I'd rather have awareness that leads to compassion myself.

I'll investigate the pocket figit idea as well as some of the rest of the suggestions here.

Thanks so much, this community is so helpful and it is great to have a peer group of moms and dads online that have been down roads like this before. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics