What is stimming?

Transcript

 Stimming defines repetitive movements that neurodivergent folks use to find calm, ground themselves, and to even express happiness. And as someone who stims myself, I would explain it as gaining some type of control in an ever-moving and ever-changing world. Some examples of Stimming might include flapping your hands, rocking back and forth, twirling your hair, and repeatedly clicking a pen.

And because Stimming is a tool for self-regulation and self-expression at times, it's really important to not punish if your students, if they are Stimming. And it's important to not encourage the suppression of stims. For example, you know, if you came home from an exhausting day at work and suddenly your Netflix, your couch and your dinner were just all taken away, you'd probably be pretty anxious and overwhelmed, right?

So in terms of if a stim is distracting or harmful for others, then you would want to understand the underlying need that that stim is meeting, and then redirect the student to a stim that is a little bit safer or less distracting. So for example, if a student is humming very loudly, it's distracting other students.

You'll maybe find that. They're humming because it's drowning out different background noises. In that case, you'd wanna replace that with some concert ear plugs with, uh, some noise canceling headphones, or with something that provides a consistent and stable rhythm like a spinner ring. If this was super helpful to you, you will really like our professional development that we have for schools and districts, which you can find at socialcipher.com.

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