Stemming?
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Stemming?
| Wed, 05-24-2006 - 2:13pm |
Is your AS child stemming? My son is constantly twisting his hair with both or one hand at almost all times, regardless of what he is doing. In most all of the reading I have done on AS, I am not reading much on this as to how to handle it. Are you suppose to try and stop them from doing it? Are there special techniques to use to try and help them stop?
Thanks
Melissa

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Melissa,
My son does another form of this too. He pretends that he has a car in his hand and will pretend drive. I noticed that he does this when there is too much noise or he is too anxious. Our Physcologist told us to not stop him as he might not know any other way to cope it. When he gets older, she asked us to teach him to remove himself from a public situation and find a private place. But I don't think Sravan still relates to his action.
take care,
Anandhi
Edited 2/19/2008 9:51 pm ET by littleroses
My feeling on the matter is that I only interfere with stimming if it is disruptive to themselves or others. And then I try to help them replace it with something else. They often are trying to regulate themselves in some way (see LR's ideas why. I like all those!). But if their neurotransmitters are off or they are seeking that input then they may need it in some way but you can give them a replacement for it that is more appropriate.
Kids still need thier stim time, at least many ASD kids. I don't interfere just because it looks different. I tried to make my son normal for years. It just made him a stressed out angry little dude. So if he needs to spin and "shoo, shooo" around, go for it. Sometimes Mike is supposed to be doing his checklist or homework and he is stuck in a stim thing. Then I have to interfer to redirect him back to what he is supposed to be doing. He can stim to his hearts content during free time so long as he doesn't get so nuts that he is breaking things.
Caits is this finger stim that isn't that noticable or annoying to others. She can focus on work and still do it. So I have been letting her do it. The problem is that it is becoming so constant that I have been told the way she is moving them can affect the development and use of her hands causing possibly even deformity. So now I have to intervene. I can do so with deep pressure massage on her hands and providing more fidgets(so says my OT friend). Going to get a referral for OT as well.
Renee
Hi Melissa,
My son does this too and I agree with LR and Renee, but in our case it got to the point that he started pulling out his hair and had a bloody bald spot. We still don't have the answer, but here are some things we've tried, although none have worked totally.
When Eric was a baby he was obsessed with my hair and would run up to people to grab their hair too. But he didn't bother his own hair. My mom got him a gnome-like doll with lots of hair and he carried that thing around for awhile. Then lost interest in that particular stim in favor of spinning things. Nothing with hair for about 2 years.
About a year ago, he started with twirling his own hair. Because he was pulling it out and drawing blood, we cut his hair short. This stopped it for awhile. In the meantime I have him tassles, coosh balls, told him to twirl his shirt etc. as subsititutes. When his hair grew back, he's started again, but we told him not to pull it out. He seems to want to not pull it out on some level, but of course gets knots. I invested in spray and have to use this from time to time as his fingers get stuck and then he does get upset.
We've tried to talk about it. I ask if he knows why he does it and he says no, but he says it feels good. If it is really bad, I've tried sometimes asking him to "give me five" or sticking something in his hands. And that does break the cycle, and he is a bit OCD but I can't tell if this is OCD or stim.
I let him do plenty of other stims, spinning things, his humming and tooth grinding I cannot control. As long as he doesn't pull out his hair, I guess this is ok, but it's a hard one.
I'd be interested in other people's ideas too.
Katherine
So, if I were to manage to get him to stop- it is likely that he would stem in some other way? If that would be the case I would be afraid to have him stop as he could stem in a harmful way or something like that.
How can you tell if it is OCD or stemming? I am not sure what it is with him. I do believe it makes him feel good. I am not sure what that means though.
That is awful about your child twirling his hair until his head was bleeding. I keep looking at my son's head to make sure he isn't pulling hair out and it doesn't appear that he is.
My son has been wanting a mohawk all this past year. My dh (NOT ME) told him he could have one when school ended. Today is the last day of school and dh is taking him to get it. In the past I might have fought dh tooth and nail on this, however considering my son's stemming I am wondering if he will be less like to stem with his new hair do- which will have gel in it I am sure.
However, I am nervous that if he were to stop that he might stem in some other fashion that is worse.
I also have worries about stimming being replaced by something more bothersome. My 8 year old son has had various stims throughout his life, but the worst was a 6 month period (before AS diagnosis) when he did very obvious hand-flapping. It made him look so autistic, and he is really a very high functioning boarderline AS kid in my opinion.
However, the stim he has had for the last 2+ years has been his hand in his pants--- almost constantly.... Obviously not socially acceptable at all, but no matter what we say or do he simply cannot stop. I don't want to pressure him into returning to the hand flapping, but really nobody has given me good advice that works to stop the pants stim. Please help us!!
I hear you! In all that I have been reading, it just doesn't seem like stemming is being addressed and it is a huge thing. While I know his hair twisting is so obvious, I do know it is minor in the scale of things.
You know last night I said to my husband that we are lucky to still be married and he asked why and I told him that "We have a son with ADHD and AS and a daughter who is gited with ADHD. Our house is never peaceful!"
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