Autism and Stimming - What is a Stim?

Dr. Mary Barbera discusses autism and stimming. What is a stim? Watch today's video to find out!
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For typically developing adults, our leisure activities, like throwing a ball into a net, bring us joy. The goal is to shoot the ball into the net and we could do that by ourselves. So we can do that for 15 minutes. We can do that for an hour. Another self-stimulatory behavior/leisure activity is playing the violin. We can hear when a note is off or a note is on and it builds joy and excitement.

I learned to play the piano online during COVID. So I know my goal is to get the right notes and when I hit the wrong note I know it but I keep going, I don’t need anybody sitting around saying good job, or that was right or that was wrong. I can just play. And I can know whether I did a good job or not. But kids with autism or signs of autism are often very delayed with play skills and independent leisure activities. They can often stay in a very primitive kind of stimming.

We are not trying to get a child to stop stimming. We are trying to get a child to go from rocking or banging his head to a better leisure activity. This might be stacking blocks over and over again. Or maybe watching the same TV over and over again. That’s stimming but it’s not dangerous, like banging your head, and it looks more appropriate. The child could go to church and sit with headphones on, potentially, and they could be happy stimming.

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🧩 About Mary Barbera 👩‍⚕️

I'm Dr. Mary Barbera and I fell into the autism world more than two decades ago when my first-born son, Lucas, was diagnosed with autism. Since then, I became a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, Host of the Turn Autism Around podcast (with more than 1 million downloads), and best-selling author of two books (including my newest book Turn Autism Around: An Action Guide for Parents of Young Children with Early Signs of Autism).

In addition to free content, I post daily across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. I also offer two online courses for parents and professionals: The Toddler/Preschooler course to help young children ages 1-5 showing signs of autism (with or without a diagnosis) and the Verbal Behavior Bundle course to help kids over the age of 6!

Behavior Analyst BACB CEUs and Early Intervention contact hours are also included for professionals.

Whether you have a toddler showing signs of autism or you're a parent or professional helping an autistic child, I encourage you to subscribe to the Turn Autism Around YT channel and join me for videos almost every day that will help you increase talking, decrease tantrums, and improve eating, sleeping, and potty training!

#Stimming