Visual stimming - why?

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My son is a huge visual stimmer. He will be 6 soon. He takes the bottom of his shirt and wiggles it around constantly and watches it. He does this all the time. I've purchased a cheap vest for him from Walmart (a children's "play" vest) and put some beanbags in it to make a homemade weighted vest to reduce the shirt stimming and calm him a bit. It does seem to work and he doesn't mind wearing it. He also does some finger stuff in front of his eyes (and usually gets a palm lick in there at the same time). I'd love to hear if anyone can think of some other replacement behaviors. What is odd to me is that he is so fixated on visual stuff, but when it comes to visual perception, he seems to have great difficulty. Examples of this would be copying a simple block design from a picture, doing puzzles, or imitating someone else's block structure or toy arrangement. This is simple stuff that you would expect someone younger than him to be able to do - and he is bright. I've had his eyes checked, both by a mainstream pediatric ophthalmologist and and a behavioral optometrist and they both say his eyes are great. Not sure if I buy into the whole visual therapy thing. Anyway, any suggestions or help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Has he been assessed by an OT? He may have sensory processing issues, including visual processing problems which wouldn't show up in an eye test.

Yes, he has been assessed by an OT and we used to go privately for a while, until I got crappy insurance and can't afford the co-pays now. I will google visual processing problems...

Is what he is doing to his shirts ruining them? If not, I'd probably just let it be. I took issue with DS chewing on his shirt collars because it was destroying good clothes and while that's not the end of the world its one thing that as a mom really buggged me.

This is a good website, Sensory Processing Disorder, which I found a while back and my son's OT has copied me information from it. There's a lot of information about all sorts of sensory processing problems.

I did visual stimming. I would move my hand in front of my eyes while facing a light over and over. I don´t remember why I did it, but I didn´t view it as a problem or see it as strange. I still manipulate objects in front of my eyes-- spinning a pencil over and over. Again, don´t know why.

If your child is in the same boat, let it be.

Buryuntime, how much visual stimming did you do and do you remember how old you were when you did it most frequently? I'm not concerned with the actual stimming, if it doesn't hinder his learning. The problem is he does it so much, he doesn't do much of anything else, and this worries me. Does the visual stimming have anything to do with visual processing? Or how the brain interprets visual information?

I would do it for hours at night, I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep well so this is what I did instead. Maybe it calmed me down so I could sleep better. I must have been 10 or under.

When I would twirl pencils in front of my eyes for hours it seemed to be because I didn't know what else to do, I couldn't ask for help with things so when I couldn't I just sat there twirling pencils instead. I think it gave me something to focus on, so I didn't have to focus on all the noise around me.

It might just be how he plays as well. Not playing with toys right is kind of hallmark, and so are things like turning toy car wheels over and over. It's easy for me to get lost in doing things like that, it's just fascinating. Sorry if that didn't help any, because again it just comes naturally to me.

The stimming is a result of having visual processing difficulties. He is trying to stimulate his visual processing center in an attempt to 'calibrate' his senses. It is somewhat of a long story.

And this actually brings me to my first book plug
I have written a book all about this sort of stuff, you can click on the link in my signature, and download the book. It has a chapter about stimming, so you can go to that one first if you are really curious about the cause of the stimming.

Also, get him a lava lamp for his birthday, he will probably enjoy that a lot and spend hours watching it.

Oh yes! I watched lava lamps all the time too.

My son is now 13 and for awhile about 2 or 3 years ago when we were watching a DVD he would periodically wave one hand in front of his face over and over - he has since stopped doing it and he had no explanation for why either. My (maybe incorrect theory) is he was trying to make sure he was still "there" or get his bearings. The room was usually dark and all there was was the light from the tv so maybe he was disoriented. He seems to have grown out of a lot of that but he still sometimes like to touch objects randomly in an unfamiliar place and he does stim his fingers when excited.
Jane

Thanks, I will try the lava lamp. That's a good idea and his birthday is coming up. The kids at preschool were playing with a disco ball, it spins with different colored lights. I thought he'd be interested in that but no. I have a fake "aquarium" that moves around repeatedly and is bright with colored fish. He kind of likes that....