Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Stimming.

I am sure that some people read my last post and thought, Holy smokes!  A broken window?!  Flooded bathroom???  What the heck!


A lot of autistic children stimulate themselves through different mediums.  The name for it is actually "stimming" and children on the spectrum will stimulate their five senses through various, repetitive means.  For the five senses, of course, we have taste, touch, smell, sight, and our sense of hearing.  So, how do these children "stim" through the senses?

1. TASTE  They may lick themselves or an object over and over again.  They may enjoy the taste of a particular food and gravitate toward that food the most.  They may eat things they shouldn't be eating.

2.SMELL This is pretty self-explanatory.  They'll smell different objects or their hands or they may actually go up to another person and smell the other person.

3.SIGHT Blinking, hand flapping, gazing at a light or out the window for long periods of time, waving things in front of their faces...all stimming through sight.

4.TOUCH  There are two categories under "touch".  There is actually touching something, which can mean anywhere from rubbing a piece of fabric against their skin over and over to scratching at their skin compulsively.  Then there is the vestibular side of it, which relates more to balance and equilibrium, having to do with the inner ear.  They may rock back and forth or side to side or find some other rhythmic motion to do.  I find this interesting because a lot of children have frequent ear infections.  Since a lot of autistic children are non-verbal and don't really know how to tell you when they are in pain, perhaps the rocking motion serves to ease the pain of an ear infection.  It would be interesting to look into this.

5.HEARING  I left hearing for last because this is a big one with Logan.  Stimming through hearing means making noise.  Snapping fingers, clapping, banging things, yelling....This is the way Logan gets his stim on.  His favorite things to do are yell at the top of his lungs.  Usually it's something that doesn't make sense to anyone else.  For the longest time he was yelling a phrase from an episode of Spongebob:  "Krabs, Krabs, admit it!  Krabs, Krabs, admit it!" Over and over and over again.  In the harshest, loudest voice possible.  We had no idea what he was saying and he sounded like he was trying to bark like a dog when he did this.  Finally one of our other children figured it out.  So, he yells a lot.  He also likes to bang on things.  He knows it's stressful to us.  Hey, don't look at me like that.  He KNOWS.  Trust me.  He loves the noise and he also loves the attention it brings.  So, he will bang toys against the walls or floor, he will hit the front of the tv and computer, and...drumroll, please...he will bang on windows.  Hard.

So, what have we done about this problem?  You can't take a child like this and just say, Hey, quit stimming.  You also can't spank him.  Why?  Because he doesn't understand the correlation between the action he is engaging in and the punishment he received.  To him, mom or dad just got mad and smacked his butt.  He doesn't get why, so it's an ineffective deterrent for this behavior.  So, we take him to a different room.  We distract him.  We feed him.  Nine times out of ten if he's acting like that he's hungry.

The other thing Logan likes to do to stim is play in the water.  He will turn on a faucet and let the water run over his hands.  He will get in the shower with his clothes on because the weight of the wet fabric feels good to him.  (They actually sell weighted vests and blankets at some special-needs stores.  The pressure of these items on the body is actually calming to the child.)  So, one day the water play got out of hand and Logan flooded the bathroom. It's not the first time this has happened.  We try to keep an eye on the bathroom, we really do, but it just happens.  We can't lock the bathroom for obvious reasons and we did once put a child lock on the toilet.  He broke it within a week.

I think, somehow, in my Premortal life, that God must have asked me a question.  He must have said, Do you have anything that you specifically don't want while you're down there?  And I must have answered, I just don't want to be bored.  Because if that was my request, He has obliged in a very big way!