It's 6 am, and Henry has been awake for over an hour. I find this really frustrating- every other day of the week, I have to drag him out of bed for school. But every once in awhile, I'm not sure what makes him wake up so early. He lies in bed laughing and making noises- imagining a scene from one of his favorite movies probably. Since he and Thomas share a room, I don't want to just leave him in there to wake his brother up too.
He asked to come downstairs. We have an extra room in the basement (I hesitate to call it "finished" But it's more finished than the rest of the basement) where the extra tv is, with the vcr attached, and he said he wanted to watch a movie. But now that we're down here, he is just watching The Disney Channel. Actually, now that it's 6, I can turn on everyone's favorite: Noggin.
The computer is in another little "finished" corner of the basement- so here I am.
Reading some of your blogs has raised some questions in my mind about self-stimulating behaviors- how to identify them and when to try to stop them. We have several little stockpiles of things that Henry likes to look at that I have attempted to hide around the house: He has 2 Power Ranger trick-or-treat bags full of various Power Ranger stuff, such as coloring book pages, pictures printed off of the internet, packaging for action figures, stickers, even old Toys R Us ads featuring Power Rangers, and handmade puzzles that various therapists have made for him because every week he kept asking for a "Power Ranger puzzle" and those seem to be hard to find.
I also have stashes of the "papers" that come in DVD boxes, giving further description of the contents of the DVD or advertising other movies. Another type of "paper" that Henry likes to look at are the ones you get in the mail, advertising for the Disney movie club. They show dozens of tiny little pictures of Disney movies. (Eileen, my son loves paper too!)
As I am describing all these things and realizing how strange it must sound to others, I realize that this is all clearly "stimming" stuff. What should I do about it? Up until now I have kept everything that Henry showed interest in. Because, as we all know, our kids don't show much interest in TOYS. I have always latched on to anything that he latched on to.
I put the Power Ranger stuff away for weeks at a time, but then something will make him think about it, or he'll spot the bags on a shelf in the basement and ask for them, and I give them to him, to spread out all over the floor and admire for a couple days. He does hum and dance around when he's doing that, but he also exhibits those behaviors when he's doing a puzzle or watching a show that he really likes. Some of his "stimmy" behaviors seem to be his way of showing pleasure, and his preschool teachers and I decided that we didn't need to try to stop those behaviors unless they were inhibiting another activity. (For example, during speech therapy they would ask him to have "quiet hands and feet" to help him focus on the work he was doing.)
His current teachers play off of his interests- his rewards for a good day are little laminated pictures of Power Rangers or other characters from the weird shows on Jetix. And I keep all of those.
Should I throw away all of this stuff? I welcome any and all opinions on this topic. Sometimes I worry that I am doing harm to Henry, rather than good. I start to question whether to encourage things he enjoys, no matter how odd they may be, or would I be doing him a favor, "freeing him" from the stim, if I got rid of the temptation?
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3 comments:
While all the pictures of the Power Rangers and Disney characters are not stims themselves, it sounds like Henry is using them for some kind of self-stimulatory behavior, esp. when he lays them all out and runs back and forth and hums. Charlie does exactly the same thing with photos. Of course I have not wanted to throw away photos so some of this has gone on far longer than it should have--to the point when Charlie has refused to put away the photos into a box or bag and had very particular ideas about how the pile should be arranged.
So what I have insisted on is that, at a certain time (after a half-hour, end of the day), all the photos get cleaned up. If Charlie won't do it, I do it with or for him. Since I guess I am getting a bit of reputation as an ABA-er, I know that not everyone will agree with this and others will be pointing out you can use the pictures to get some good interaction going.
This can be the case, but you might want to make sure that it is you who are in charge of the pictures, so that Henry's interest in them does not result in him insisting that they have always to be laid out, that he has to take them in the car, or to bed, or the bathtub---that he cannot not have them. He needs to learn that he can both have and not have the pictures, and to not let his life or your family's life be ruled by this need.
Stims can become good reinforcers: spinning, twirling tops, looking at photos for Charlie. The difference is, if Charlie is "working" for spinning (for example), the parent, teacher, or therapist is in charge of when he can spin and when not. Often Charlie has ceased to be so interested in stimming when we help him to establish these kinds of boundaries.
Finally, since it's not too hard to get more Disney or Power Rangers pictures, you might try to thin out the collection. Keep just a few and if Henry ask for them, you could say that you will get NEW ones. And, I always have Charlie ask for these desired items, photos or spinning or whatever--that way, he can practise his speech and also, again, he has to "work" at bit for the stim.
Yes, we've been through a lot of piles of stuff and (aside from the photos) most of it is now long recycled.
I've never liked the language of "stim." It's a term I never use. I should think more about this - there's probably a blog post in there somewhere, but right now I don't really have the words for it. I think it's that "stim" seems to have negative connotations, and because of that it seems somehow disrespectful of Bud to use the term to talk about things that are very important to him.
So, that being said, I also have to admit that I struggle with the same thing. For Bud it's Teletubbies instead of Power Rangers, but I always wonder if I'm finding the right balance between indulging and restricting. I try to figure out as we go along which activities, behaviors, etc. are healthy passions for Bud (the things he uses to calm himself and stay regulated because they really bring him joy) and which are signs of escalating dysregulation. So, for example, when he's scripting from Teletubbies as a part of pretend play, that seems healthy and I try to join in and play along. But when he seems "stuck" in a tape loop and the recitation of a script is preventing him from engaging or seems to be adding to his dysregulation, I try to get him to stop (usually by saying "It's time to turn off the Tubbies and turn on Bud.")
Bottom line, though, I do try to respect that Bud loves what he loves, even if it's not what I might choose for him or what other kids his age are choosing. It seems like trying to remove those things from him (by throwing them away without his knowledge or against his wishes) would be a quick route to pushing him further away from me as well.
As I said, I struggle with this too, so I'm not suggesting that this is the right answer; it's just my current thinking on the matter.
I've had the same question. Oliver loves to look at (and engage with) himself using any reflective surface he can find. He also likes to look at his hands in certain ways -- these two things are very hard to moderate because I can't very well remove them. So my strategy is to try, as much as possible, to engage in the activities with Oliver. When he is doing the hand thing I will put my own hands up in front of his face like puppets or will start playing hand games or whatever else I can think of. With the reflection-gazing I bought a fun-house mirror and try to redirect him to THAT mirror and then I interact with him in the mirror. In this way I hope to intrude on him as much as possible, make it less of a solitary activity, while still allowing him to enjoy the activities. However, he has just started a new behavior -- a high-pitched squeal!!! that I don't know what I'm going to do about. ...
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