Even if a child’s stimming does not pose any harm or distraction to the child or to others, some parents may feel inclined to stop or prevent their child from stimming. Sometimes a child’s stims can feel overwhelming to other family members, who in some cases might actually benefit from stimming themselves. While we do not recommend trying to suppress a child’s stims, there are many strategies parents and other family members can use to understand stimming and ensure that the whole family has their sensory needs met.
We spoke to several experts to help us understand how parents can support their child to stim safely, how to keep themselves regulated, and tips on approaching redirection in a neurodiversity-affirming way: Jackie Kancir, executive director of the National Council on Severe Autism, patient advocacy director of CureSynGAP1, and mother to a child with severe autism; Dr. Sarah Pelangka, PhD, BCBA-D, special education advocate and creator of Know IEPs; Jennifer Torgrude, financial planner and advisor for families with disabilities, board member of the Down Syndrome Association of Wisconsin - Fox Cities, and mother to a son with autism and Down syndrome; Breea Rosas, EdS, NCSP, LEP, neurodiversity-affirming school psychologist and autism expert; Dr. Allison Ratto, clinical psychologist at the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, as well as associate professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine; Dr. Sally Burton-Hoyle, EdD, professor and faculty advisor in the Department of Special Education College Supports Program at Eastern Michigan University; and Rose Griffin, speech language pathologist, BCBA, and founder of ABA Speech.
Dr. Ratto notes that some families may want to reduce their child’s stimming due to a fear of bullying or teasing by others or because the child’s stimming in class may cause distraction to others and lead to discipline. In other cases, the child may try to suppress or mask their stims in order to fit in with their peers. Finding a healthy balance of supporting a child’s stims while acknowledging the sensory needs of others is key, but it can take time.
Suppressing a stim, research shows, can invoke a feeling of desperation and discomfort, of “holding back something you need to say.” People with autism surveyed about the suppression of their stims reported negative impacts to their emotional, cognitive, mental, and at times even physical health.
Torgrude encourages families who want to suppress their child’s stims to consider the ramifications to their child’s well-being over the reactions they might get from others in their family and community. “It’s a sensory component firm that builds up, builds up, builds up,” says Torgrude. Just like a neurotypical person dealing with a stressful situation, “we might build up and then just scream, or need to have a beverage — whether that’s coffee or an adult beverage. He doesn’t have that outlet. . . . It took me a long time to realize, but I found that that’s what kept him regulated.”
Dr. Ratto adds that it can seem like the stakes of asking a child to stop hand-flapping or vocalizing are low, but “we’re still in the early stages of really understanding in a definite, research-based way what that means for people. The indications that we have so far are that it increases stress levels. Having to suppress a stim generally feels hard for people.”
Stimming also sometimes helps kids communicate their moods, whether that’s joy, anxiety, overwhelm, or boredom. As Dr. Ratto puts it, “We’ve got 99 problems but stimming ain’t one!” We know that stimming is an essential calming strategy for many kids, but when it really gets in the way and becomes a behavior, what can parents do?
Dr. Burton-Hoyle tells us that stimming begins as a child trying to meet a need. If we don’t pay attention to what that need is, we might tell them not to engage in stimming or try to make them compliant. So figuring out what it means, whether it’s involuntary or based on a need, is very important.
Griffin adds that stimming should be approached on an individual basis: “I would never stop somebody from stimming if it was something that made them feel good. If it’s something that’s completely unsafe in the environment, then I think that we have to look at it that way. Like, is this student unsafe? But if it’s not a barrier to their learning, then I think that we just kind of let it be. And then we enrich the student’s environment to get them involved in lots of different activities,” to meet their sensory needs, such as attending speech therapy, using swings, being more active on the playground or the gym, etc. Griffin says the goal is “just trying to embed all those things across our students’ days.”
First, it’s not realistic to eliminate self-stimulatory behavior entirely — everyone stims in some way. If stimming is a barrier to learning or is self-injurious, it’s important to understand that the goal shouldn’t be to stop the behavior from occurring, as the child will likely engage in another form of stimming that could be much worse. Instead, offer a replacement behavior for the stim, even if it is only temporary or situational.
As writer and parent Jennifer Drew explains in our article Rethinking Stimming: Perspective, “Self-stimulatory behaviors are still largely seen by the medical community as purposeless and mostly harmless — though for some behaviors, like head-banging, they can be damaging as well. But even head-banging gets at a need to manage a feeling or experience that isn’t otherwise being managed. In other words, stimming is not, to the person stimming, purposeless at all.”
Rather than what sources call an elimination approach to stimming, the question parents should ask first is, “Why is my child engaging in this behavior?” Starting with curiosity about what’s driving the behavior is always the most helpful first step. From there, we can begin to explore the different reasons for stimming or needs that stimming may be meeting. When you start to notice patterns, like more vocal stimming during transitions or when your child isn’t feeling well, it can offer important clues about what they need in that moment. Both Kancir and Torgrude add that their children’s stims can intensify or become challenging due to a need or want not being met, such as needing to use the restroom, feeling overstimulated in crowded settings, or not having consistent access to desired items or locations.
As Stanley Greenspan, author of Engaging Autism and developer of the Floortime method, explains, “The overall principle is to offer the child experiences that produce the same sort of sensations as the self-stimulatory activity but lead up the developmental ladder of regulation, engagement, and interaction.”
If you are in a situation where it would be helpful or even necessary to reduce the number of times and duration of stimming (but not completely eradicate it), here are some tips.
Create a sensory diet
If your child is sensory stimming, such as flapping their arms/hands, spinning, rocking in place, or making noises, that might be a sign that your child is hyporesponsive, or sensory-seeking. Your child could also be hyperresponsive, or sensory-avoiding, and using stims to self-regulate. Sensory issues, regardless of their cause or nature, can make it extremely uncomfortable for kiddos living with these issues to navigate the world. A well-designed sensory diet can help alleviate that discomfort and provide some self-regulation so they can actually function. For example, a sensory diet could include keeping fidget toys on hand for your child to play with when they are understimulated. A sensory diet can also be included in an IEP and 504 plan as an accommodation.
Identify holistic redirecting behaviors and alternative stims
Dr. Ratto tells parents that there are few situations when a stim needs intervention or redirection. But there are ways to accommodate the stimming in situations that warrant calm and focus, such as standardized testing at school. Working with your child’s school and medical team to investigate potential triggers for behaviors and how to anticipate them with accommodations and redirections can be effective without causing the child to suppress their stim. This can be done in a number of ways.
For example, if a child has a vestibular or more physical stim, they can be given adaptive seating or a fidget toy to help them redirect their sensory needs temporarily. If they cannot be accommodated with an alternative location, such as for test-taking, Dr. Ratto suggests creating a situation-based plan. “Can we vocally stim to our heart’s delight before and after the test, and go in with a plan of an alternate stim that’s not distracting [and] going to work during the test, like working with a quiet, squishy ball?”
Another thing that parents can work on with their child’s care team, particularly their OT, is identifying stims that engage the same sensory system. If a child has a loud vocal stim, for example, Dr. Ratto says, “We might need to think, ‘Would drinking water from a water bottle [create] that same sort of throat stimulation?’ We want to think creatively about what’s going to work and not just throw a fidget [toy] at a situation where a fidget is not going to help. Can we manage this when we know that that’s going to need to happen, and can we really keep that to a must-happen situation, as opposed to routinely asking people to suppress stims?”
Talk to your children’s doctor
Sometimes, especially for children who cannot communicate their needs, stimming may indicate an underlying condition or negative experience. The Child Mind Institute notes that children experiencing invisible pain, such as a migraine or internal injury, may stim as a coping mechanism; addressing medical needs can thus lead to a lessening in frequency or intensity of stimming. Dr. Ratto adds that parents shouldn’t shy away from discussions about potential medications for their child to try if they feel like their current therapies, services, and accommodations aren’t improving the child’s quality of life and their stimming reflects consistent distress. “For harmful behavior, we can absolutely think about psychiatric medications, and particularly if those [stims] are being driven by someone who’s really upset, overwhelmed, anxious,” she says. “Making them less anxious with the medication can help start to address the behavior.”
There’s another piece to this conversation that doesn’t get said out loud enough: sometimes, stimming — especially loud, constant vocal stimming — is really hard on the people around your child, including yourself. It can be overwhelming. It can dysregulate siblings. It can even affect pets or lead to real-world consequences, like complaints from neighbors or having to change your living situation.
And if you’ve ever found yourself thinking, I support my child, but I am losing my mind, you are not alone — and you’re not a bad parent. Neurodiversity-affirming support doesn’t mean pretending these challenges don’t exist. It means holding two truths at once: your child’s need to stim is real, valid, and often essential for regulation AND the impact on others in the environment is also real — and matters too.
Dr. Ratto acknowledges that, while stimming shouldn’t be discouraged or met with judgment unless it leads to harm, it can sometimes take a toll on others, including parents and siblings. This is an example, she says, of competing (or conflicting) access needs, where the needs of someone with a disability to make a situation accessible and comfortable can create friction with the needs of other people, both with and without disabilities. “Your child's need to do a vocal stim really loudly might compete with your need to have a quiet space at the end of a long day,” she says. “That's valid, and there's a way to acknowledge that and not feel like you have to go and vocally stim with your child if that's too much for you, without trying to say ‘you have to go away, [or] you have to stop this.’”
As a way to stay well-regulated as parents and for other children in the household, she recommends carving out time to decompress, and even stim yourself, if needed. “We can give ourselves time out as parents. If that stim is really bothering you, but you don’t want to shame your child about it, you can take a break. It is totally fine to head to your room and listen to some music, give yourself a little meditation break, go for a walk.”
For children who require consistent supervision, she says that their special interests can be used to do some parallel play. “[If] they have an interest that they’re really passionate about or a screen that they can focus on, set them up for a few minutes. Honor that break. Just because you’re not trying to shame your child for that stim, [that] doesn’t mean that you have to lean into it 100 percent of the time. You can acknowledge that sometimes they’re hard to be around without shaming your kid.”
In this clip, Dr. Ratto emphasizes how important it is for parents to honor their own needs for regulation when it comes to stimming.
Here are some more practical tips for how to manage your own mental health and well-being when your child has disruptive (but not necessarily dangerous) stims:
Kancir adds that a parent’s self-regulation is crucial to the well-being of the entire family; creating a routine and outlets as early as possible equips everyone. “We learn over time how important it is to regulate our own nervous system and our own responses.”
The conversations around stimming and how to support it, rather than dismiss it, have come a long way in the decades since it was called a “garbage behavior” by psychologist and ABA pioneer Ole Ivar Lovaas. Furthering the normalization of stimming and recognizing it as a part of a child’s healthy sensory diet starts with parents looking at their own beliefs and preconceived notions when it comes to their child.
“The first thing is just accepting your child the way they are,” says Rosas. “They don’t have to look like everyone else, and they don’t have to do everything that everyone else does. What we want is for everyone to live authentic, happy lives where they feel like they can meaningfully contribute to a community, to a classroom, to their family in some way. So if stimming helps them do that, that’s amazing. Figure out what works for them, [don’t] suppress it. As long as they feel regulated and comfortable, that’s the most important thing.”
In this clip, Jennifer Torgrude explains how she implements a neurodiversity-affirming approach into how she raises her son:
This is easier said than done, and not everyone in your community might agree with supporting a child’s stims. For Torgrude, acceptance and embracing her son’s stims wasn’t immediate but was made easier by finding spaces that were open-minded and willing to learn and accommodate her son. Of course, Dr. Ratto and Rosas add, stimming like masturbation in public should be redirected for safety reasons, and stims that actively impact a child’s quality of life warrant intervention. But letting go of conventional definitions or expectations of normalcy can be incredibly freeing.
Dr. Ratto encourages the families she works with to look at their child’s stimming as information that can be used not only to help identify their child’s emotions and sensory state, but also as a means of connecting with them, like finding activities or ways to use the stim collaboratively.
“At those times where it is more joyful or fun,” she says, “explore that with your kid and figure out what are the sensory pieces that they get out of it, and where can you provide some of those same sensory outlets? A kid who loves splashing in water repetitively and is making a mess all over your floor . . . maybe your kid is destined for swimming. Can we find swim lessons, or can we set them up with water in pots and pans or a water table on the back patio in an outdoor space? That can be a really fun way of playing and relating with other kids and playing with you.”
With the increased discussions of autism and disability advocacy at large come more nuanced conversations about the services available to families with children with intense stims — namely, discussion around applied behavioral analysis (ABA). As we’ve written about before, the goal of ABA is to “to improve or teach specific behaviors in areas such as social skills, communication, self-care, and academics,” which can involve looking at the triggers and consequences of certain behaviors that are considered “challenging” and how to change them. This can get thorny when it comes to a child’s stimming.
Research papers and organizations like the Child Mind Institute have indicated that ABA therapists can sometimes structure their interventions for children rigidly around compliance and the elimination of stimming behaviors that do not necessarily address the dysregulation that stimming helps with.
The National Council on Severe Autism, Kancir notes, has an explicit stance on ABA and is largely in favor of its use as a potential therapy and service for certain children with disabilities. However, she says, on an individual level, not all ABA providers are equal, especially in this day and age. “You might have 10 options for a PCP in your area, and you’re going to find one that has the approaches that you want. It’s the same thing with ABA. When I would have a therapist come in, I always leaned into ones that were there to educate. They would do really thorough evaluations before they ever did anything.”
When considering working with an ABA therapist, families can ask clarifying questions before treatment begins, such as:
Dr. Ratto believes that ABA can provide families with a lot of valuable information about the root of their child’s stims and behaviors, but it boils down to the child’s individual provider. “We need to think carefully about any kind of therapy. We also need to treat ABA therapists just like we would any other therapist, meaning there are good ABA therapists, there are bad ABA therapists. There are so many complexities to it,” she says. “It’s often been treated as this kind of singular magic answer for every autistic person, and it’s just not, and I don’t think we should treat it that way.”
In some cases, parents may feel that their child’s stimming is a reflection of their parenting, or they may worry that a child’s stimming can lead to bullying or social isolation. As opposed to what Dr. Pelangka mentioned in our article Stimming at School about “safe hands” as a means of telling a student to suppress stimming, “loud hands” has become a rallying cry for people with autism and other disabilities associated with stimming. The Loud Hands Project, a grassroots online effort to collect direct testimony from people who stim, can offer parents a wide spectrum of insights about stimming that may assuage their worries.
Additionally, Dr. Ratto says, the social repercussions of stimming that parents anticipate may never actually appear. “Let’s check [the situation] out first before we assume that the stimming is going to cause teasing and bullying, because if it’s not, then maybe we just let it go. Maybe that’s a moment where we’re checking in with ourselves as the adults in the situation to see, ‘Is this really about me?’ versus ‘Is this the child actually experiencing teasing and bullying?’”
In this clip, Dr. Ratto discusses how parents and other adults can collaborate with a child whose stimming may attract negative attention:
As a school psychologist and an advocate for families, Rosas admits that ABA isn’t her first choice for children who stim and that it’s far from the only option for supporting that child in an affirming way. Dr. Pelangka and Rosas both encourage parents to seek out therapies that can help a child build up skills in communication, relationship-building, and self-regulation, rather than taking a corrective approach. “What skills is the kid needing? So seeing an OT, going to a sensory clinic, working with sensory providers, working with speech-language pathologists, and trying to increase communication and building those skills,” says Rosas. “Maybe you want to do some Floortime therapy. There’s parent-child interaction therapy. There’s acceptance and commitment therapy, which you could do from a parent coaching model. If ABA doesn’t align with your family’s values or just doesn’t feel right for you . . . there are other ways to find support.”
Dr. Ratto adds, “Occupational therapists are really good at doing sensory evaluations and helping us understand what an individual’s sensory needs and preferences are; that can be a really useful tool to have in the toolkit, and that can be done by folks working in more classic behavioral psychology that’s not necessarily ABA.”
For parents struggling with understanding the wide spectrum of their child’s stimming, they can also consider adding Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) to services they may also be receiving from a psychologist or therapist. Rather than changing a child’s behavior, RDI helps both the parent and the child develop skills that benefit their relationship, such as more flexible thinking, better recognition of each other’s emotional cues, and better-informed responses to behaviors, including stimming.
Here's what our experts recommend for parents who want to manage their children's challenging stims in a neurodiversity-affirming way.
Find affirming environments
At the end of the day, the most affirming environment for your child to stim is also one in which you as the parent feel safe, affirmed, and supported. If friends, colleagues, or strangers are creating pressure on a child to suppress their stim or on the parents to discipline a child for stimming, it may be time to reconsider some of those connections. But in some cases, it can also be a learning opportunity.
When Kancir meets someone who doesn’t understand her daughter, she chalks it up to lack of information rather than judgment. “I think we take it as a rejection of our perspective or experience when we haven’t participated in the process to show them that experience or that different way of life.” But, she says, “a lot of times they’re very receptive to it. They’re like, ‘Oh, I never thought of it that way. How can we help?’ I would encourage families to participate, and not to automatically take it as a rejection just because it doesn’t have your child’s inclusion in it. Part of our charge is making sure that we are informing the community of why our children’s needs are a little different and why they might do this, so that they can be included more in those environments.”
Recognize that not all providers are the same
As all the sources interviewed for this piece have said, not every occupational therapist or speech pathologist or ABA provider will understand a child’s individual stims or have the same affirming approach to them. It’s absolutely worth it to try out many forms of support and services for your child until you find one they respond positively to. The first options a school presents for supports for a child are not the only ones.
To learn more about stimming, head over to our articles What is Stimming? and Stimming at School.
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