Never have we had a verbal conversation.

                 Stimming is a common topic when it comes to autism and one of many clues for parents when autism is in question. There are different forms of stimming but most common is hand flapping, spinning, which we thought was Phillip just being silly, and repetitive verbal sounds.

                Phillip doesn’t flap his hands or spin anymore, but he did both of these things daily for some time. Once we were able to get a handle on some bowel problems many of the stimming habits just stopped but the verbal repeats are still there. Sometimes he will take a quick breath and make a click sound. It’s quiet and most of the time it goes unnoticed, to us anyway, but this would be considered a stimming habit to a therapist.

                For the last three to four months Phillip has been making a very odd sound. I would compare this to a sick lion roaring and roaring loud. He will run around doing this over and over and I will be the first to say it’s obnoxious and loud. I have even asked him to stop at times even though I know you can’t just simply ask a child to stop a stimming habit. When I need the world to be quiet around me it seems that little bare sickly sounding lion will let out his roar, and then we repeat it over and over full speed through the house. This is when my eyes look up and I say in my mind, Lord…help me!

                If was to take Phillip to a therapist and ask why this madness is happening I assure you the answer would be, he is stimming. He is self stimulating or this is his way of coping with his sensory issues and I would take that answer and go with it, question it, but go with it. I question everything when it comes to these things because we know no two kids are alike, we know the entire spectrum is a mystery, and we know no one knows for sure.

                Here is when I tell you why the questioning everything is not only ok to do but important. Yesterday I was in the kitchen preparing to mix up my daily smoothie and Phillip was behind me in the dining room playing. I put all of my ingredients in the blender and hit the button, when I stopped the blender there was strong echo behind me. That little sickly roaring lion had just become a blender and I simply shook my head. How on earth did it take me months to realize my son was mimicking my blender, which I used each and every day?  He hasn’t been stimming at all, just creating the same sound he hears every day and mom was just extremely slow picking up on this. A day later I am still shaking my head at just how long it took my simple mind to put this together.

                Now I am going to take you back to that quick breath and click sound he makes from time to time. This friends comes from a Discovery movie he watched for a few days about dolphins. He mastered the sounds of a dolphin and continues to do it. In all of this he can’t communicate like you and I do and that is one of the most baffling things about my son’s autism by far. Sometimes he is a dolphin and sometimes he is a brave little blender but never have we had a verbal conversation.