DS "Watching shows in his head"

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2005
DS "Watching shows in his head"
12
Thu, 02-22-2007 - 9:17am

I am wondering whether to be amused of concerned about this. I have mentioned before that Eric (4) has a rather annoying stim of grinding his teeth while making what I call humming "bird noises." The dentist says the grinding is now affecting his teeth, they are still baby teeth, the we need a solution before his permanent ones come it.

I'm just hoping it will pass, like other stims. Neurologist suggests injecting botox, he says grinding in the daytime is a really hard habit to break. I'm sorry, I'm not injecting botox. I really like our neuro, but we do at times disagree and this is one of them.

Anyway, I asked Eric why he grinds his teeth. He said, it feels good. I said, like when you twirl your hair or walk on your toes, he said, "yeh, like that." Then he offered, when I do this, I am also "watching shows in my head." OK. So I get the stim part and I'm not doing anything about that. Tried various chew substitutes to no avail.

But the "watching shows" part, what do you think of that? Whenever I catch him doing this (which is whenever he has "down" time, riding in car, watching tv, basically any time he is not talking) I ask "what show are you watching?" And he always has a very specific answer. Sometimes when I have asked him to do something, he'll say "wait, I'm at a good part." Then two seconds later, "ok, it's over, I turned it off."

Should I worry about this or what? I mean, he is an imaginative kid and he can "turn it off" so he says.

What do you think? Or do you have ideas about the grinding thing, other than botox!

Katherine

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2004
Fri, 02-23-2007 - 1:26am

Hi, Katherine,

I agree with the other posters that your son has a great talent on which you can build other skills.

Yet my 5 year old son can really get difficult with his detailed memory, and that is disabling because he burns others out with it. In addition, he misses out on some pleasures as in the anecdote below.

The other day he, his father and I were all off at lunch time, and his brother, who is not a restaurant kind of guy, had school. So we went to lunch at a family restaurant. Great opportunity for some fun with our big guy, without distractions of sibling rivlary.

He ordered chicken strips, which came with a sauce, but my son really likes to have a couple of different sauces to dip his food into. So asked the waiter if he could have a cup of barbeque sauce and a cup of ketchup. The waiter said something indicating that he would bring it.

I was trying to help my son learn about how I asked for those things, and how to cope with the dissapointment of not seeing a variety of sauces up front, etc, by modeling and staying upbeat about the process. I said something to the effect of, "Okay, we asked Jim if he could bring you some more sauces, and he said 'Yes!'" Happy ending, so I thought.

My son undoubtedly mentally went back to the video tape, and started melting down because the waiter had said "All right," not "Yes." I tried to stay cheerful, and use one of our catch-phrases designed to teach some flexibility "It's okay, they're both English." but it was tense. He is just beginning to learn that there are alternative "English" answers for questions, but son does not yet understand that his memory and experience is not necessarily the same as everyone else's memories and experiences. He has no clue that I just listened for the bottom line (that he could get sauces) and did not have space in my brain for the exact words. When he gets that, maybe he'll be more at peace with the mis-quoters of the world.

Sidney

APOV on Autism
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-11-2003
Fri, 02-23-2007 - 6:37am

I haven't read the other replies yet. It'll be interesting to hear what the others have said. I believe this is what Kyle is doing while he's stimming also. He hasn't described it exactly like your son but I think its the same. He told his second grade teacher once that he has 12 TV's in his head all playing different channels at the same time. He usually runs his show in his head but on occasion we've heard him scripting shows out loud in his bed at night, laughing up a storm at the good parts. I don't worry about it. Its just part of the package, IMO.

I don't have any suggestion for the teeth grinding. I've been grinding mine at night lately and I know that's due to stress.

Samantha

Samantha

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