Stimming: why it helps

What stimming is

Stimming, self-stimulatory behaviour, is repetitive movement or sound: hand-flapping, rocking, spinning, humming, tapping, twirling hair, flicking fingers, repeating a word. Everyone does some of it. Autistic people do more of it, and need it more, because it does a job.

The jobs it does

It regulates. A rocking body is calming a nervous system that has too much input. A flapping pair of hands is discharging excitement that has nowhere else to go. It focuses: a small repeated movement can hold attention steady the way a fidget does. It communicates: a child who starts humming in a shop is telling you something about the shop. And sometimes it is simply joy, and joy is allowed.

What to do about it

Mostly nothing. Do not try to stop it. Suppressed stims come back as something worse, and teaching a child to hide their body's way of coping teaches them to hide. The exceptions are stims that cause injury (head-banging, biting) and, rarely, stims that genuinely stop a child taking part in something they want to do. In those cases the answer is to meet the need another way, with an OT's help, not to remove the stim.

The social bit

Other people will look. Your job is not to make your child smaller so that strangers are more comfortable. Where it matters, say at school, a quiet word with the teacher that flapping is how your child regulates, and that it should be left alone, does more good than any amount of coaching the child to stop.

Educational content, not medical advice. Concerned about your child? Speak to your GP.