verbal stims or just repeating? | Autism PDD

yep, mine is making chirps and whirrs right now. He just finished an IBI session and is tapping a crayon over and over on the table and "ah whoo, chirp chip" he is de-stressing from having to attend and work for the last 5 hours.

My son does this ,In fact it is his main stim,and talking in strange voices is also constant ,but its mostly at home,he talks all the time,and makes noises with his mouth when he is not talking.

clicking his tongue ,and whistling are his new ones,I try to just let him be,I know he has to hold it in all day at school,he tells me its hard not to squeal in school.

Linda

Wow, my daughter has been clicking her tongue for a year now. I only recently realized that it was a stim.My son also does this. I noticed he does this mostly at home when he is
relaxed. He use to do it out in the stores but not so much anymore.

What are verbal stims? My almost 5 year old ds makes alot of noise! He is often making noises or talking to himself. He used to do high pitched screaming while he was excited but hardly ever anymore. He now stands on his head alot and says letter sounds (he likes cookie monster letter of the day game on pbskids website and they do these letter sounds) He's always been facinated by letters. He is also very quietly reading along with me (echoing) during story time. Sometimes he counts out loud - he can count to 500 so it's kind of annoying. Usually it's not a problem at school or in other public settings. He really only does it when he's not engaged. When he's playing with toys he talks appropriately about them while he is playing. Any way to reduce this, I am worried it will get out of hand. For an autistic child even for an autistic adult
-- "stimming" is automatic and enjoyable, and it can be painful to suppress.
some childrens preferred mode of stimming
involves physically hurting himself, and that's clearly no good, but even
then it's usually possible to deal with the problem by helping the child
change the way that he stims rather than the fact that he stims.

So, why self-stimulation? life can be very stressful
for an autistic child, for any number of reasons, many of which are
unfortunately beyond your control to do anything about. Autistic people tend
to have very intense sensory experiences -- some, for instance, lack the
ability to "filter out" noises, like the hum of the air conditioning or the
sound of cars passing outside, that most people are able to disregard
without even thinking about it. Social situations can be similarly intense;
people are *weird*, and hard to understand. Having so many words and
behaviors coming at you at the same time can be overwhelming, especially for
a nonverbal child.
So why does this stress lead to stimming? Stimming, I think, is a way of
moderating that stress. It creates a single, separable, predictable sensory
experience which is under the autistic person's complete control. The stim
serves as both a channel for all that nervous energy and as a focus for
concentration by which to "turn down the volume" on all that light and sound
and information. (Paradoxically, we can process all that stuff better when
the volume is turned down than when it's cranked up.) I don't think it's an
exaggeration to say that stimming is one way of keeping ourselves from going
insane!
Autism can cause a lot of problems for a
growing child, but stimming, far from being one of those problems, is a way
of coping with those problems. Though you should be aware that I don't have
the colorful certificates on my walls that your therapists do, I encourage
you to think very carefully about this matter before you decide to follow
their advice.
shell