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| Stimmy toolbox. Photo by Anne Lesserknaus |
"Stimming is self-stimulating -- usually with repetitive body movements or actions. Stimming is common and can range from tapping your pencil to twirling your hair to jiggling your leg to pacing. Neurodivergent folks may stim more often or in different ways.
Stim toys are self-regulating tools that help with focus, attenton, calmness and grounding.
Stimming helps us to:
- Manage sensory and emotional input;
- Manage internal emotions like excitement and stress; and
- Navigate our surrounds and ground ourselves."
-- CAU's Stim Toy Library (Simon Fraser University)
For a long time, stimming was seen as a bad thing just because not everybody does it. Unfortunately, ABA providers still use aversives to "extinguish" stimming --despite mountains of evidence that it is a useful activity and an important form of communication.
But luckily, many other people realize that our stims are an essential part of who we are as autistics. We hope that by celebrating stims we can continue in the direction of acceptance, because our stims are:
- helpful!
- fun!
- awesome!
- something to share!
