Should You Stop Your Child’s Stimming?

Stims are repetitive motions or behaviors that many autistic and other neurodivergent individuals do with their body as a self-regulatory mechanism. Despite it’s benefits, it has often been seen as distracting, “weird” and thought by others to serve no “real purpose” to the person performing them. Many observers think that stimming behaviors interfere with a person’s ability to function.

But this could not be further from the truth! For those of us who look at stimming through a neuro-inclusive lens, we already know the inherent need to stim for some individuals, and now we have a research study to back it up.

In this post, I’ll be breaking down a study about autistic and non-autistic adults’ experiences with sensory sensitivities and stimming. You can find the article for the study [here].

Charlton, R. A., Entecott, T., Belova, E., & Nwaordu, G. (2021). “It feels like holding back something you need to say”: Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults accounts of sensory experiences and stimming. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 89(101864), 101864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2021.101864

Overview of the Study

Researchers studied a total of 340 adults through online surveys that asked questions about their experience with sensory sensitivities and stimming.

The Participants’ Lived Experiences

While it was once a widely held belief that stimming and repetitive behaviors had negative side effects on autistic and neurodivergent people’s lives, the study actually shows something wildly different than this.

Participants in the study describe intense, negative emotions and effects on their body from the sensory sensitivities that they experience regularly. These sensory sensitivities caused confusion, headaches, and difficulty in focus and comprehension which also lead to feelings of anger, frustration, and anxiety.

During these times of sensory overload and experiences of stressful sensations in their body, these people found that stimming allowed them to express their emotions and self-regulate. But this was only the case for them when participants felt they could freely stim in the ways that their body naturally gravitated towards.

Stims Can Sometimes Be Harmful

My best advice for parents or professionals supporting children with self-injurious or physically harmful stims is to start by ruling out any medical reason for the behaviors. Once anything medical is ruled out, it’s helpful to figure out what type of input their body is seeking from the stim. Determining this helps us identify safe alternatives that will hopefully still meet their nervous systems needs. Most commonly, I see self-harming stims relating to deep pressure or tactile input.

Ideas for replacement stims can look like:

• If they are picking their skin, then they may like a “picking stone” fidget
• If they’re biting their skin, they may like mints, gum, or chewelry (whatever is suitable for their oral motor abilities) 
• If they are hitting their head, they may like wearing a tight hat

However, it’s important to note that even with good intent to help a person replace a painful or physically harmful stim with something non-harmful, they may not be willing to or able to change something that feels natural to them. In these cases, you can focus on the environment and the task that seems to trigger these stims, and look for ways to decrease the overall stress to their nervous system.

The Overall Takeaway

The more that we can normalize stimming as as self-regulation tool and not a distraction, the more comfortable neurodivergent people will feel to stim in the ways that work best for them.

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