WP wisdom strikes again!

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There are so many reasons why I love this site.
I was reading over some archived posts about stimming this morning, and one person's words really just smacked me in the face. Sometimes I spend too much time trying to make things easier for Kalli, and I forget that she has her own ways of making things work for her. Granted, her hand flapping and wide open mouth "iyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" stim is a bit much for the kids in her classroom and we might need to try to redirect that to something just as fulfilling, yet different while she is at school, I really think that at home, she should just be allowed to stim away. I find myself wondering if being discouraged is making her stim more.
Anyway, i closed the thread, but to whoever wrote these words, thank you.

"We live in a NT world and being AS/HFA requires
some conformity, but not absolute conformity,
because you are not them, and they are not
you. "

In our case, people trying to suppress our daughter's stims made them much worse. Once we left her alone, she calmed down.

Just came across this and wondered how old your daughter are. Mine is 7 and was just diagnosed. It is a hard time for me. I have been told over and over that she should be treated to be normal. That includes the dont stim crap. So you guys are saying to go and let her stim? I am so confused that I am at the end of my rope.

I have never tried to stop my sons from stimming. I once asked their psychologist if I should try to stop them and she said no.

They rarely do at school. When they get at home I believe their stimming helps relax them.

The more stressed they are, the more they stim. On good days, they don't stim at all.

My diagnosed sons are 9 and 7. (We also have a 4 year old son).

Helen

Fighting_Mom,

I was confused, angry and at the end of my rope earlier this year.

Now I am strong and confident.

You will get a lot of contradictory advice from professionals, teachers and other parents. I suggest you read as many books as possible and keep on WrongPlanet.

I also suggest you read and post on in other areas: General Autism Discussion, Random Discussion etc. Don't just stick to the Parent's Discussion. This way you will get to know lots of people with Asperger's who will be able to give you an insight into your daughter and lots of great advice.

After a while, you will work out what is best for your daughter. No one knows your daughter better than you.

Helen

My daughter is 6. For a long time I listened to the advice that I was given: don't let her stim, encourage her to be normal, etc. All of that made her miserable and made things so much worse. Not only for her, but forme as well. I was at the end of my rope as well.

Once I decided to allow her to be herself, and to give her the luxury of stim behavior, her need to stim decreased drastically. By allowing her to stim when she needed it as opposed to cutting her off mid-stim, the need was no longer so great that she could be compared to a shaken bottle of soda! The hard part now is reminding everyone else in her life that she isnt like them, and that her Asperger's is a part of her. It's who she is, and I refuse to try and change her anymore. Some people accept it, others turn their heads and whisper. I'm now at the point where I dont care. Life is so much easier for her and I now that I have accepted and embraced her AS behaviors.

How does a child with AS stim? I had thought very high functioning kids/adults with AS were tricky becaue they appeared normal but shared many autistic traits. Stimming, the way it's being described on here, sounds like a more affected autistic child. If an older child is flapping hands and lets out a loud noise, I say it's either tourettes or a child more affected by autism with less verbosity. Am I wrong to assume this? I'm basing it on my personal experience and reading. I've yet to see a high functioning autistic person make strange noises and flap their hands or hum. I have witnessed this in more profoundly affected autistic people.

equinn

Stimming isn't a sign of "Low functioning," it's a way of relieving stress.

For those that do it, it is a way relaxing (for me anyhow) and getting rid of 'bad' energy. I would suggest that the main reason why you don't observe so called "HFA's" stimming is because there are other ways of dealing with stress that they may have developed. I.E. different thought patterns, emotional self-awareness, suppression techniques etc... Still if any situation "gets too much," stimming is still the best and most efficient way to "get back in control."

At least, that is my own experience.

same here. Kalli will tell people that ask that she stims when things get to be too much and she needs to refocus.

Lets hope I can get to the point that I accept it that well. I love her and will do anything for her. The thing is that I am finding myself so filled with rage that I am letting it out at the wrong people. OK its not at her which is good. You want to accept it and say it is cool and that is what is so great about all of you here and at the same time I am blowing up and blowing off. Maybe I am the one that needs help.

Thanks for your advise. It is just really been hard. Maybe being on here is actually more for me than for helping her.

Okay, Fighting_Mom, I don't know if this is something you've heard before, but it is, in my opinion, something that it's very important for every parent of an autistic child to not only hear these words, but internalize them, as well.

What has befallen your daughter is not your fault. Not yours, not hers, not some doctor's - it's just that one or both parents carried a genetic legacy that included a tendency toward autism. There was no way to predict it. Nor is there any "treatment", per se - her brain is wired differently than the norm. Specifically, noted differences in autistic (and aspie) brains include excess grey cells in the parietal lobes, particularly in the areas normally concerned with regulating sensory input, as well as dysfunction of the so-called "mirror neurons" (neurons that, when the subject watches someone else do something, fire in the same way they would if the subject him/herself did that thing). There are also differences noted in the amygdala (implicated in emotional control) and the hippocampus (memory formation), as well as, in some cases, weakening of the corpus callosum, the "bridge" between cerebral hemispheres.

When she stims, it's because her senses are being overwhelmed by levels of input that others around her filter out as a matter of course. She's feeding herself a stimulus at a rate, and an intensity, that she can handle and control. It's not a bad thing, and permitting it does not make you a bad parent, no matter what others might say (or whisper behind your back).

My six-year-old daughter marches in place. She spins, she yammers incessantly, she cries when her routine changes. When she sees something yellow, it impinges on her vision so hard that she has to make a fuss over it to force it to make sense in her internal world. She screams if she's forced to wear anything other than cotton (or certain blends), or if someone tries to make her walk outside without a jacket (we're working on summertime). She has yet to figure out what it feels like when she has to potty, so she's still in disposable pants.

And I love her, and wouldn't change anything about her. She points out things I never would have seen, she reminds me to take delight in the simplest matters, she's clear and honest and true. When she knows the rules in a given situation, she's more responsible about following them than most adults. She can be a handful, but I feel the tradeoffs are well worth it.

I always feel weird saying it, but I was angry for awhile there as well. I think that's perfectly normal. I wrote. Alot. I let it all out on paper. For me, I was angry that on top of being a single parent, I now had to be strong enough to step up and fight for my daughter (school can be a complete b***h!), and that my little dream world was going to be replaced by something unpredictable and less than fairy tale like. I felt like everything was somehow my fault, that I had given this to her, and her life would be that much harder because of me. I still have moments where I'm angry, because I don't know how to help her. But I write, I vent, and then it's better.

The important thing is that I was able to push past that and let my love for her shine through. She is my baby girl. My angel. My entire world. And she wouldn't be who she is without her AS. And I am learning so much by seeing the world through her eyes. Sure, it's tough. Every day is another fight. But it's all worth it. Kalli and I talk. Alot. When she has a particularly "stimmy" day, I'll stim with her. We have fun with it. She sees me stimming with her, and she smiles, knowing that someone understands. It makes thing easier for her. I think it just takes some time to push past all the reall tough emotions. You'll get there.

Stimming feels good. It takes an otherwise overwhelming moment/day and dissipates the stress level. It's like taking the lid off a pot that is about to boil over. When you stim (remove the lid) all the ferocity of the steaming and bubbling settles right down. Curbing the stimming is to try and hold the lid on that pot no matter what is going on inside.

My son has a thing where he walks around saying "EEEEEEYYYUCK!" I think he just likes the sound of it. He only does it when the house is "busy" with noise and movement. I woudn't think of trying to tell him to stop, I know how he feels.

Hang in there.

It's pretty clear from this thread that stimming is a safety valve: It may be a bit annoying/embarassing when it goes of in public, but try to force it shut, and you'll wind up with an explosion at some point...!

And as missa points out, the more opportunities an aspie gets to "get that stuff out of the system", the easier it gets to manage. I reckon that the best thing would be to make it clear that stimming is an OK thing to do in the safety and privacy of home. When you have visitors, or when you're going out, stimming needs to be kept in check as best you can. Nobody is perfect, but practise sure helps a long way.

Perhaps, if your little aspie uses some calender to keep track of everyday activities, maybe even put ten whacky minutes of shear and utter stimming on that calender somewhere

Just for the record, I'm 19 and I am a stimmer. I've gotten to the point where I don't do so in public, but whenever I am in my room, I go right ahead. Granted, most of my stims don't involve vocalizations (and those that do are very low-volume that they are almost unrecognized), so I do luck out there...

Stimming is not just something for the autistic spectrum, however. The next time you are stopped at a traffic light and notice that you're reflexively checking your hair, tapping the steering wheel, etc, seemingly without purpose... that is a stim. Granted, it may be much more subdued than what autistics are known for, but the concept of stimming is in no way restricted only to autistics.