Repetitive behaviors: Self-Stimulation

 A number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders perform repetitive behaviors, often self-stimulatory. Some believe that children with ASD perform acts of self-stimulation because they are not able to effectively gain stimulation in a social setting due to their autism disorder. Another possibility is that it is a technique they have developed to reduce their general level of anxiety through sensory stimulation. However, these are only theories, and scientists are not certain why children with autism exercise these repetitive behaviors. Though self-stimulation may seem harmless, it is unproductive, interferes with the child’s learning, and increases social stigmatization, and, therefore, it should be discouraged. No matter how repetitive a behavior is, it can be reduced, and here’s how:

Reducing a child’s self-stimulation is a complicated process, and is definitely not something that a parent should expect to accomplish immediately. The process involves gradually drawing a child away from his self-stimulatory habits and providing him with more productive activities. The best approach is to slowly eliminate the time a child spends “stimming”(performing repetitive behaviors) by interrupting a child during stimming and providing him with another task or chore to do instead. For example, instead of forbidding a child to stim or scolding him/her for the behavior, you can interrupt the child while he/she is stimming and get them to assist you in a chore around the house. Choose a chore or activity to do somewhere near the place the child typically stims or near an object typically involved in the stimming. After the child has completed the chore, he should be allowed to go about his business, even if that business is self-stimulation. In the beginning, the goal is to provide a temporary distraction for the child, and slowly reduce the time spent stimming.

After your child has gotten comfortable completing this one task or chore, add a second task in addition to the first task. Once the child has completed both tasks, he or she should be rewarded with free time. Continue this process of adding more and more chores during times when your child is stimming, and gradually the time spent stimming will be reduced. Not only will this help a child spend his or her time more productively and learn to do basic chores, but the child will also help you keep things in order around the house.

Another great way to decrease self-stimulation is to get a child involved in physical activity, which will require him to move around, learn new motor skills, and not be so stuck in a particular pattern of behavior. When your child begins to stim, take him outside and begin an age-appropriate physical activity. Physical exercise is something that most children need to do more often, so parents should make sure that their children are getting enough of it, whether they are self-stimming or not.

A third possibility for stimming reduction is to replace your child’s repetitive behavior with a more appropriate but similar behavior. This can be tricky since children choose particular stimming behaviors because of the particular sensation they get from their self-stimulation. In order to replace the self-stimulation with another behavior, the replacement behavior must give the child the same sensation. If this is the approach you choose, you should look for appropriate objects, activities, or behaviors that will yield the similar type of sensation for your child. For example, if a child has an obsession with waving a baseball bat in the air, he or she should be taught how to swing a bat at a baseball appropriately.

[Koegel, Lynn Kern Ph.D. and Lazebnik, Claire. Overcoming Autism. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. pp. 113, 115-118]