Ep. 31: Everything You Need To Know About Stimming
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What is stimming and how is it defined?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift.
We're an SLP couple from California with three boys and a passion for finding better ways to support autistic kids.
I'm Chris. You might know me as Speech Dude. I'm a neurodivergent high school SLP and the creator of the Dynamic Assessment of Social Emotional Learning and I specialize in crafting neurodiversity affirming IEPs through my online course.
And I'm Jessie, a sensory integration trained SLP, owner of a top-rated clinic in Los Angeles, and the creator of the Inside Out sensory communication programs for parents and therapists. Join us weekly to learn neurodiversity-affirming ways to support social-emotional development and regulation in autistic kids.
Are you ready to make the shift?
Let's do it. Hello, welcome to Making the Shift. Tonight we are talking all about stimming. This is something that we get questions about all the time, which is why we wanted to bring it to this show. I think it's something that's really, really misunderstood. And that's why it's so important for us to talk a little bit about. So let's first just talk about what is stimming. which I think most people have a general idea, but stands for self-stimulatory behavior. So usually really repetitive movements that we see in autistic kids, autistic people.
Then that's the topic is really or I mean, that's the kind of idea here is this isn't just about a certain age range. We're just saying in general, because I work with high school students and we definitely talk about stemming and, you know, what it means. And we dive deep into exploring some of those topics. So.
Yeah. So here are some common ones you might see. And some might be, you know, things that we don't even realize someone's doing. And some might be a little bit more obvious, but things like hand flapping, tapping, even like nail biting can be a stim. Yeah.
I mean, you could really, if you think about it, stems can cross all over all the senses. And so, yeah, you've got your visual stems, which are going to be looking at lights, looking through kaleidoscopes.
Looking at wheel spinning.
Wheel spinning. You've got auditory stems, which are maybe listening to a song over repetitively or just parts of a song or maybe pushing a certain button on an AAC device. You've got... smell. So we've got, you know, um, sometimes to get that input, um, smelling a favorite book, smelling the nice pleasures of our skin, um,
licking, licking,
proprioceptive. We have a trampoline at our house. Bouncing on a trampoline would be great. We've got vestibular stuff. So, um, you know, Jesse has her, you know, the chairs here that spin in circles in a, in a circle swing. So it really stemming can cover all of the senses. And so
Yeah. And the important thing to know is why people stim. And someone wrote in the comments, they're excited to hear what the benefits are of stimming. And that's the exact question we should be asking. Because, you know, the reason we even bring up this topic is because there's such a... It's getting better. Maybe it's just because it's our world. But there's like been this underpinning idea of stimming needs to stop. It's getting in the way. It's preventing this child from getting to learn and interact with me. And we're really here to kind of flip that script and tell you, no, it's actually a good thing. It's very natural. And here's why it's important. So you might see, I tend to use the word kids. So I'm just going to say kids, but obviously this goes for all people.
Just what rolls off the tongue. You might see kids stimming because they are coping. So this is a huge self-regulation tool. If something is going on in their life, they're really emotional about something, they might be using stimming as a coping strategy. They might be using it to deal with anxiety or stress. So that is a huge piece of it. is the benefits that stimming has with helping people cope. And the others would be things like, I guess the word isn't cure, but I was going to say curing boredom, like they're bored and they just want to entertain themselves, or because it's fun and it feels good.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is stimming and how is it defined?
0:08–5:19
2
Why do autistic people engage in stimming?
5:19–9:41
3
What sensory modalities can stimming involve?
9:41–14:59
4
How does stimming help with coping, regulation, and boredom?
14:59–20:51
5
When can stimming become harmful and how should it be managed?
20:51–25:08
6
What practical strategies and fidget tools support healthy stimming in school?
25:08–27:53
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)