Coping with invasion of personal space when stimming

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Recently I've been experiencing problems with my son stimming. If he is not sat in front of a screen, which I try not to allow too much of, he stims. Solitary stimming is fine with me, however, he likes to do it in a way that invades my own personal space. He will flail and squirm and poke and hit me continuously for minutes. He usually does not stop when first asked. Being a sensitive person myself, especially to touch, while this doesn't hurt me, I have a very hard time coping with it as it continues through an entire day. The attitude of my husband and some of his relatives are that as my son is nine and just releasing his energy the only way he knows how, I should just suck it up. He does not often behave this way towards anyone other than me. Does anyone else have problems with this? I don't know how to intervene appropriately.

It doesn't sound like stimming to me. I'm assuming your son has limited verbal ability. Let me offer a possible alternative explanation -
1) perhaps your son is stimming as a coping strategy when upset about other things.
2) perhaps the poking is also a strategy aimed at getting you to meet his needs.
3) if both are true, then they would coincide often: your son is upset and wants something, so he starts stimming and poking you.

If that is the case then you can treat the poking as a problem behavior. I would recommend consulting with a behavioral therapist in order to address this, but the most crucial component would be to teach your son alternative and effective ways to communicate his needs to you. This alternative method needs to be as effective or more so than the poking.

Regarding what you said about others, telling you to tolerate this, don't. You are not a punching bag, and you deserve to have your personal space respected. It is important to teach your son how to do this for his own sake and yours. It is especially important to do this before he grows strong enough to cause real damage to others when engaged in these behaviors. I'm not advocating punishment here, just saying that changing these behaviors is definitely a worthwhile goal.

My son is in fact very verbal, which is all the more reason I find the behavior unacceptable. If he had needs he's more than capable of making them known. His autism is mild. The hitting and poking is something he seems to do only when he is very bored or excited, and especially when there are unfamiliar people around, as if he is showing off. Nobody seems to think this is a problem except me, and when I discipline him for not stopping when asked, he gets very upset and the rest of the family thinks I am overreacting. I don't like having to resort to punishments but I think personal space is very important. I just wonder if there's not something I can do to displace the energy he is taking out on me- something he can do with his hands instead of slapping at me? It happens everywhere- at home, on the train, in public, and as I said, especially when other people are around. At times it blows up into something bigger and causes something of a scene.

My little guy(4) does a similar thing. Not hitting but squirming literally on top of you and he will grab your face and try to squish his into yours. I believe it is a stim too. At two is was just adorable and we nicknamed him Monkey because of it. I still like it for short burst, esp the face part. I don't have personal space issues, but now that he is getting stronger he sometimes accidentally hurts me with a flailed arm or knee or pulls my hair when grabbing. Even for someone who likes to cuddle it can be too much after a 5-10 minutes esp if it is intense. He does it to both of us though. He is even rougher with his dad because dad will wrestle with him. He too gets extra clingy when around new people. It seems like I am a security blanket and he is making it clear to the new person that I am his mommy. It is sweet and cute, but once again that is at 4. I might not feel that way when he is 8 or 9.

Right now we try to redirect to a cuddle or give him his ipod to listen to music or a book and have his sit next to us. If he is too intense, we usually just get up from where we are and find an activity that takes his hands, blocks, coloring or puzzles. Maybe for public you could find some good stim toys for him to fidget with when he gets like that.

Someone in one of the threads talked about chinning which he does when he is on us and I tried the pressure on the jaw and it helps calm down some of the activity.

in that case, redirecting him to an alternative seems like a good plan. What does he do to stim when you're not around? That should be acceptable. If he wants you involved, there could be acceptable forms of physical affection (like asking for a hug). A consistent rule that you can simply reference. like "get your squeeze ball" or "nice hands" may also be helpful. Then the key is consistency. The rule is, poking is never ok, instead do this... (fill in the blank there with whatever socially acceptable thing might work).

My 8 yr old does something very similar. I redirected it to snuggling, but it ends up being this very rough climb all over you kind of snuggle. I also think it is a stim based on when he does it. He does it when overly excited, either in a good way, or when he is upset. He does it to calm. I am in the process of trying to get him to ease up on the intensity of it, but he has a lot of trouble gauging intensity, especially --da da da--, when he is agitated. He will tone it down when I remind him, if he is calm enough, but it would be better if he did something else KWIM?

I have tried in the past redirecting it to squeezing toy balls and smushing pillows; but they evidently make poor substitutes. This, of all things, apparently has to be a social activity. LOL

I am almost at the point when I set up my summer incentive system for behaviors I want to target to see if incentive modification will work on them. Thank you for posting this, because I think this might make a nice addition. I think I will try my texture box again, for this and see if that will work.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one dealing with this. The squirming and face squishing sounds similar to what my son does at times as well. I've bought him stress balls in the past, but he's always broken them. Maybe I can find a more durable one. In the meantime I spoke to my husband, and I told him I absolutely can't accept the behavior passively. His mother strongly feels, having raised two boys, that to some extent "play fighting" is just something boys do, and given that he has autism and no siblings to play with, to some degree it's normal for him to be physical with me at home. In the meantime we've decided that I'll try to be more patient with him and try redirect his energy instead of giving consequences as much as I can, and my husband will do more play fighting with him so I don't have to take all the hits. We did buy him a kids punching bag this evening, hopefully that helps.

Even when they are verbal, it doesn't mean they can verbalize things all the time. My son could talk for hours, literally, about his special interests. If he is hungry, more often than not he will bring me the food to open, rather than tell me he is hungry. If he needs his shoe tied, does he tell me? Generally he prefers to shove his foot at me. Anything having to do with emotional states---if I am lucky he will tell me he is upset. Most of the time he just acts on it. Some things can be really hard to communicate. There is no way he could articulate why he stims, for sure. I doubt he knows. I digress, anyway, I guess I just wanted to add that verbal does not equal being able to explain what one needs.

You probably know all this, but sometimes being reminded of it helps keeps getting too frustrated. This is true for me, anyway, so I hope I am not out of line in saying this.

In this case, I don't think you know as much about this as you think you do.
My son does something quite similar and often does it while he is asleep. I also did something like this--I would push my feet under the legs of my parents and sometimes grip their achilles tendons with my toes. Now that I have studied it a bit, I am pretty sure this is a form of stimming.


I think your perspective on this is warped by behaviorist training. It really can be that the contact is the stim and the jabbing or whatever is not meant as a way of evading something or or getting something (other than the incredibly good feeling of that particular contact.)


You can probably make it stop that way, but not for the reasons the theory posits.

This makes abundant sense, regardless of the cause. He has to know that it is not acceptable. My children know that I am uncompromising about some things so they don't try to wheedle when I lay down that kind of law--you can't poke my face, period. There are negative consequences, because I need to protect my face. If my son climbs into our bed and starts jabbing my face with his fingers, He is going straight back to his bed and I am locking the door of my bedroom so he can't get back in.

Also, I am going to add, we had problems with this when he was in PS because he would try to snuggle other students he liked, when upset, and naturally this was not OK, and they could not (didn't bother to try hard enough) redirect it. Telling him to stop, didn't help b/c that did not make the need go away. Punishment did not help, either.

So, no, you should not tolerate it, because they have to learn that their needs do not trump other people's right to personal space; but you have to figure out what he will do instead, which, again, we need to work on too.

I am going to look at my texture box, again...

Yeah, I changed my mind a bit after some clarification from the OP. The detail that had me thinking in that direction was the fact that the behaviors are limited to her. He doesn't do them with other people, which is odd for purely self-stimulatory behaviors, since they should be nearly as effective with various people (of course some children will prefer familiar people). In either case, the fact that he is able to specifically target his mom with these behaviors is a good sign, as it shows that he has some control over it. So he should be able to further control it; first by asking permission before physical contact. That is a crucial skill with this sort of thing, because if he slips and starts being overly physical with another caregiver (like a TA at school), or peer, it can get him into some trouble. Secondly, as ASDMommy suggested, find an acceptable approximation, like a snuggle, and try to make it something that you and others can tolerate in the long term (remember, he's going to get bigger!). Third, spread the love around...why should you have all the fun?! You should be able to redirect your son to your husband on occasion. This is really one of those roles that fathers may be especially well-suited for. For instance, I know a kid who stims off of having his hands squeezed and squeezing other's hands. He has learned to ask first, and he mainly asks the big strong male teacher, because he's learned that the woman teachers and TAs don't give him permission to squeeze their hands.