I had a parent come to an ESDM assessment recently. While they were watching me interact with their child, they noticed and asked, “I see you’re copying his stims. Is that okay?” In another life, I would have said “not at all,” but as I have read, listened, and learned about autism, I now better understand the importance of stimming and definitely promote it's use.
You may be asking yourself, “what is stimming?” or you may have a good understanding already. Stimming means “self-stimulatory behaviour.” When we observe stimming, it is a repetitive action or sounds. Some examples could be: saying “mmmmm” and flapping hands, rocking back and forth while standing, flicking switches, or echolalia, and there are many more presentations as there are many different autistics in the world.
Stimming can be important for your child to regulate their emotions, meet sensory needs – either needing more stimulation or less, or cope with situations. Stimming can also be used as a sign of stress, when autistic children are happy, anxious, sad, frustrated or excited or just because. The reasons for stimming will be different for each child.
When I first learned about stimming, I was told stims are done by almost everyone. Many people will bite their nails, twiddle a pen or bounce their foot. Autistic people tend to stim or show their stims more than neurotypical people. This may be because an autistic child needs to stim for one of the reasons listed above or because neurotypical people are more socially aware of other’s reactions to their stims, so have transitioned to what they think may be more acceptable stims such as the ones I've listed above. One new thing I’ve learned this year is that children may need to stim to be able to listen to what I’m saying. This can help the child concentrate because they are not focused on “sitting still” or “keeping their hands quiet.”
With all of this in mind, I acknowledge the importance of stimming for autistic children. Stimming should be allowed for all of our kiddies unless on the rare instance it harms your child or others. Generally stimming will not be harmful, so allowing your child to do it will be of benefit to them. One thing that I try to work with parents about is how and when it might be used, not to prevent stimming, but as another way of helping parents to understand their child. Stimming may be used for all of the reasons above, but different children may stim for different reasons. Like, if one child stims when they are excited, another child may stim when they are anxious. Both are valuable for a parent to put language to and support their child where they can.
Now that we know that stimming is useful to autistic children for many reasons, we can circle back to the intro question above. Should you stim with a child? My answer has transformed over time to: yes! When I’m making the same noises or movements as a child, they often recognise this as engagement. The child will likely look to see what I’m doing. Sometimes this results in trying new things to see if I’ll do it to, but sometimes it remains the same. Overall, I love imitating my client’s stims to let them know I’m listening.
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