For a child with autism, stimming is a shortened term for self-stimulation behavior.
It is a necessary element for the autistic child in the sense that it seems to be a way of making sense of everything that is going on around him. It can also be referred to as zoning.
Stimulation can manifest itself in many ways. It can show up as flapping, an obsession with a particular item or the way you move, or self-injury like hand or knuckle biting, to name just a few.
No two children with autism are the same, so it’s quite natural that there are many forms of self-stimulatory behaviors.
For the autistic child, this is a necessary outlet, and if the stimming takes a form that is not inappropriate, it should not be restricted. It seems to act as a method of self-control to calm them down and even, in a way, to digest information.
Stimming seems to manifest on a larger and more intense scale when the child with autism is in a situation they are not entirely comfortable with, which could be as small as a person walking into an unfamiliar room or an assembly hall that could be crowded and noisy.
For a child with autism, stimming is a necessary outlet. It can be reduced somewhat by controlling the external environment, for example by dimming the lights or lowering the noise levels. However, trying to eradicate it entirely may not be the right thing to do, as it may be replaced by the autistic child with another stimulus that may be less appropriate.
It may be much more beneficial to both the autistic child and the caregiver to develop a means to encourage the child to use their cues at home or in privacy, thus decreasing the risk of being socially ostracized by peers if they were to use them in public. .
Some children with autism are not even aware of their flapping, but if gently reminded, they will try to stop it themselves if they are in a place where it could be seen as an abnormality.
With some autistic children, their stimulation can be used as a positive tool to encourage social interaction.
For example, if the autistic child’s particular stimulus is tearing paper, then if you joined in and ripped paper as well, after a while, you would notice that the autistic child will look to see what you are doing. This is especially true when in the past you have tried to discourage stimming.
Each glance should be responded to with positive feedback, for example, “Great, you looked at me” or “Wow, what pretty blue eyes you have” or something similar. Over time, this will open the door to more social interaction with the autistic child, sometimes giving you paper to tear or looking for you so you can participate in stimulating her.
Every time the autistic child spends interacting with you, that’s less time spent in their own world, which should be the end goal. A paper pulling session today could turn into a puzzle next week with slow, positive guidance from you.
The three main areas in which children with autism have problems are: communication, play and social interaction. If you can increase your socialization skills, then you can only help the other two areas to increase as well.
