Do you let your ASD child 'stim' or not?

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When your child with ASD is doing his/her stimmy thing (and I mean in particular playing with the same toy, reading the same book, watching the same video, singing the same song, etc.), do you just let him/her be, or do you try to 'intrude' on it by joining in, or do you positively try to make him/her stop by saying 'five minutes of this, then something else'? I ask because different approaches to ASD will suggest different strategies.

Personally, I do something obsessive either because I'm trying to concentrate on the finer points of whatever it is and need total concentration to be able to understand it...or because I'm stressed out and desperately need to calm down. Either way, someone telling me to stop it seems awful.

If a stim is damaging to the child, yes we need to help them stop it or convert it to something non-damaging. But people have often misunderstood stimming and thought it was just random pointless repetition rather than extreme specialisation and concentration.

As with all things, you'll have to negotiate it to make it something that works for the rest of the family/fits into the child's other needs and education, but mostly I say that stims have a real purpose even if NT people don't understand why.

mmm sometimes i do stop him before he starts
simply because it drives me nuts
I know i know...

Plus i am slightly frightened of him coming through the ceiling

I stop him when it becomes too much for him. So if he's puce and sweating and gone into muscle spasms then it's stopped. Otherwise, if I think its relaxing him or occupying him then it's fine.

Most of the time I let him get on with it. If we have to go somewhere though, I give him a countdown to let him know to change to doing something else.

My instinct is that for my son itis a release and a destressor so I tend to let him get on with it - he does so much for us already that it seems unreasonable to stop him.
Just going to school and putting his clothes on etc etc is a huge complaince for him so I think of his stims as the same thing as my kicking my shoes offf and having a glass of wine.

If he seems to be getting too worked up then I may didtract him into another activity.

I let mine get on with it, think they function better if I let them.

Thanks for the useful insights. Interesting that there is something of a consensus here (so far).

I don't stop the stimming (flapping, running, random noises and complex whole body twisting), but I have asked myself if I should be at times. I too feel that it is an important part of his ability to cope.

He is completely obsessed by Spiderman though, and I have explained to him that he must not imagine he is Spiderman when he is doing his learning at school, otherwise he would be in this world 24 hours a day.

I think you have to ask if the stimming is getting in the way of other things.

It's just normal for us. I make a mental note if the stimming is more or less frequent and try to relate that to what is happening in our lives. I find it quite reassuring.

'I think you have to ask if the stimming is getting in the way of other things'
That's a very useful way of putting it, thanks. It's a tough call - DS's main stim is counting. It is not physically dangerous, it's useful (to the extent to which numeracy is an officially acceptable skill - I long for the day when Spiderman skills will be part of the curriculum, a day of liberation and freedom), and he is keen to have me 'play' it with him. BUT all the attention and time he puts into it, are also attention and time he's not putting into other things (especially at nursery) - things that would help him cope better with the world and especially school, when the time comes. This morning I hid all his number books (DH said to throw them away, but I couldn't do this to DS)

SC13, I don't know if this will help or not...

Our brains are wired totally differently in a lot of bits. The bit that normally has all the info about people is replaced by information about our favourite hobbies.

To us, our main hobby is therefore as emotionally rewarding as any relationship with a person.

To him, a parent hiding his hobby from him is the same as someone hiding every friend you have, suddenly and without notice, and you finding yourself all alone in the world. If you can imagine for a moment how distressed and shellshocked and alone you'd feel, that's how it feels to us if someone removes our special interest. As for throwing them away completely, imagine someone saying you could never speak to a friend again, ever.

As annoying as our special interests are to people who aren't ASD, we need them the same as you need people. We certainly do need to learn our people-skills and do our work etc, yes, but please please let him have his precious things from time to time...

I let DS5 get on with it, after all hes only 2.10y and whatever he does is generally adorable anyway

But i am a bit concerned about DS4 and his 'habits', do you think that constant- mindless-repetitive-chatter is a stim of some kind?

It's probably a special interest/skill-building exercise. Trouble is, we can hear tiny variations and see tiny variations that you can't.

I was reading something the other day in which they showed page after page of what looked like identical letters that had been written out by a person with an ASD. To NT people, it looked like a pointless repetition. I could see that every one of them was slightly different - they had been experimenting with tiny differences in the style. Invisible to most people, not to us.

It might sound like mindless repetitive chatter but I'd bet a computer analysing it would be able to spot the tiny variations he's probably trying all the time to see exactly what it sounds like and how he can alter the sound of it in that room, corner, hallway, etc.

I think its always worth bearing in mind that a stim can flip over into a compulsion though. And then I do act to stop it if ds1 can't (he's got a lot better at that though in the last year, will ask me to lock the kitchen door to keep himself away from the washing machine when its on for example).

This sounds similar to where I was with tv and singing at a similar age - true to form, here's one of my links!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=behaviour_development&threadid=600616-is-ds2-s-musical ity-hindering-his-speech-development#12241740

there's nothing wrong with counting (or singing) but if a retreat into counting involves so much of his mental resources that he doesn't devote enough time to developing essential skills then you may feel you need to address it.

Assuming for a moment that you are going to give Hanen-ish techniques a go first before turning to ABA, can you identify any time in his day that is calm but relatively number-free? bathtime? mealtimes? Because I think that might be your way forward - think of those times as potential skill-building moments. Of course, my kids are only borderline (I think!)and I don't know how a more strongly affected child would react.

I still have to avoid too much music or rhythm and people find it hard to understand this as these are his strengths - but he came home from nursery the other week after a rare afternoon session saying "ein zwei, drei, vier, funf" then "un, deu, trois, quatre, cinq" and it hasn't stopped yet. That one exposure to a counting exercise (they only do it in the afternoons when he isn't usually there) has resulted in counting taking up mental space that could be spent getting his pronouns sorted.

Amber its mainly when hes playing with something that hes really into (although he sometimes does it when hes just pottering round the house), and its usually a sentence about 8words long that has some connection to what hes playing with, and is repeated over and over for as long as 10mins sometimes, other times im lucky and its only a couple of minutes. But i have to admit his repeating usually has differing tones to it and differing speeds... suppose its stimming then.

I have only just begun on this 'journey', our first Paed appt is at the end of the month to discuss my concerns over DS4's (3.10y) actions and behaviours.

However im quite aware of the 'norms' stimming too - pen chewing/tapping, foot wiggling, hair stroking, fingers drumming... goodness its a wonder any of us get things done sometimes!

misscutandstick, there y'go - he's using different tones and speeds. To you, annoying. To us, fine-tuning that most amazing instrument - our voices/brains. Think of it like a piano tuner endlessly pressing the C note and adjusting the piano strings. You might not hear a thing that's very different, but they can hear the tiniest change in note.

In later life, these'll be the people who test-drive cars thousands of times to make sure they're safe. And test building designs thousands of times to make sure they stay upright. That same obsession for tiny detail is immensely useful in the right places.

I recall Temple Grandin and her cattle handling designs. She'd be able to visualise the whole of the factory machinery in her head, from any angle, before it was built. A good look at a set of plans would tell her instantly if it would work or not, and she was right every time. Obsessional practice on mechanical detail paid off. Now, a very very well respected international engineer.

Just because you can't see what we're doing doesn't mean we're not doing something important

he is a stickler for 'perfection' needing EVERYTHING to be 'just so'... now whenever im in a life & death situation that requires the SAME sentence to be repeated in at least 20 different ways, i know a man who can

I believe that EVERYONE has at least one amazing talent - half the job is finding it. Perhaps like you mention he may need this exact talent for his future career. DS1's obsession fascination was tying stuff up with string... perhaps a butcher in the making? either that or a master at BDSM

I'm new to mumsnet so hello everybody.

My ASD 6 year old has just finished a year and a half of psychotherapy (was referred before we had diagnosis and has been very traumatic for him but that's another story).
Anyway - was at the "debrief" this morning and I asked the very same question of the psychotherapist. She told me that these activities / behaviours should never be taken away or prevented as that could cause much more harm than good. In my sons case this "stimming" (I have never heard this expression before), is used not to cope with things but to completely escape them - therefore when doing this he is not making progress at all, not developing and it is certainly affecting his ability to focus and progress at school. She advised me to try and distract and gently encourage him on to other things and where possible try to prevent him from doing this - although never force him not to. Common sense really.

so screaming "for the love of everything thats holy, and my sanity, would you please desist that infernal noise!?!" is not appropriate then?

Ahh miscutandstick, if you say it a couple of times we may think its a "stim" & then youare allowed to say it

Oh & ds2's thing at the moment is a fascination with rubber, rubber gloves, dummies, teats etc... he's sniffing them, licking them rubbing them around his face & neck... Not sure what his special grown up talent will be but I hope its legal

Hi sersi
Welcome to mumsnet

as long as the stim isnt social unaceptable and in public....harmful to self such as head banging or risky

theres no harm in it
ocasionally as an adult ill stim usually ater a stressfull bus ride or something like that, its not just a physical thing its mental the brain has a chance to process the waitng info in a way its comfortable with.

the usual stim for me is either blankfaced staring.... yes i know or watching the same film over and over until the data dump is complete.

as for tactile facinations
rubber isnt that big a deal, but it may be worth finding out what types of rubber is it laytex or just sot materials that go squidge.

facinations are all in the details, sometime what seems like the right material to a nt as being sot, may have the grain going the wrong way or have nontwisted threasds leaving it hash aganist skin these things aspes and autistics and others are more aware of

I think you make a good point Wraith, sounds like its all "in the detail" as you put it.

I want to publicly apologise to Amber after re-reading my posts, it sounds like im making fun, im sorry i didnt mean it to sound like that - I was just lightening the mood, or trying to, and it just came out rude. Sorry Amber. XXX