vocal stimming... | Autism PDD

Vocal stimming for my son is sounds..not words that are repetitive in nature and while doing it he is acting the same way that someone that is doing a physical stim. I call it "blocking" Because he appears to be blocking everything out while doing it. Or maybe the repetitive sound is enabling him to block everything. I have no idea. Anyway Adam's vocal stim's are sounds like " ticka ticka ticka" or Humming. Sometimes (more rare) he will make sounds that are animal like but not specific to any animal per say. And those are repetitive also. Other kids have other types of vocal stims though. These are just his.

Karrie

how do you tell the difference between a vocal stimming and just babbling and making noises (a more loud and vocal child). My son is constantly chattering (he's 20 months) and knows well above 100 words. But, when I put him for a nap (and he decides he doesn't want to sleep) he'll just be back there chattering and making noises constantly, some words and some sounds with some repetition, too)

Is there "criteria" for vocal stimming such as extreme repetition or something like that?

My son is 5,he has always had some kind of vocal stim.he will press his lips together and make a low to high pitch sound.(hard to explain)

He will also make high pitch squealing noises,when he is playing alone.

It increases with stress.

God bless ,Linda

Sharlet vocal stims alot, she repetitively hums is short high pitched sounds of varied tones. She wanders around the house kind of aimlessly while she does it usually. Often on tippie toes with head on the side and sideways glancing all at the same time.

My sons also vocal stims. When he is doing this, I tell him I dont understand use your words, and then he will talk to me. He has great vocabulary and is very clear when he talks. I think he likes the sound he is hearing from his own voice. He also stims with his hands. When he is not doing this he acts and looks like any other child his age. This is something he needs to do to feel better. In a way we all have little things we do through out our day to make us calmer, ect. It just that our children show it to the extreme. With age comes understanding. I think as they get older they will understand that this behavior is not somehting productive and maybe they will learn to do it only at certain times of the day.

Does that make sense to any-one?

My little one vocal stims quite a bit too, he hums and runs (sounds similar to Sharlet it seems, Allegra.)

I hear he does it a LOT in the NT pre-school class he is in. I can't wait until they get him an aid!

Norwaymom, that was a really interesting chart. Thanks for sharing. It
made me think alot about Jasper's (and my own!) behaviors.

He loves to smell things-spices and plants. Heaven for him is a candle
and
bath product store where he can smell all the samples. At the grocery
store
lately, he likes to take the different mint and hard candy containers at the
checkout line and individually shake them next to his ear. All are socially
acceptable behaviors for his age. Only the nosepicking has got to be
addressed

As far as vocal stims are concerned, J hums all the time. He makes
different ticka-ticka or chug-chug sounds--which are his train sounds.
Also, high pitched "train whistles" around the house. He is a tongue
clicker too.

Thanks, gtto, for reminding me that these things are not just self-
stimulating, but also very helpful in self-regulation.Both of my ds make vocal stims. My 5 yo has a buzzing, humming kind of combo that he does often. Almost always while he's eating, and playing with his cars. He also has a train whistle noise that he makes at random. He also sings a lot too. I know that's not usually considered a stim, but the way he paces on his tip toes, and shakes his right hand around while he's singing tells me that it's serving the same purpose as the humming for him.
My 3 yo is constantly making all kinds of noises. He sqeals when he's happy, and hums when he's happy too. He makes humming sounds while he eats. (our house is unbelievably loud at mealtime! lol) He also makes a lot of chattering sounds that sound very much like real words. I'm very enthusiastic that he'll put some of those sounds together someday, and talk! I NEVER discourage verbal stimming, because of that. I'd rather hear him chatter, and squeal then hear nothing at all. Or as gtto pointed out, throw a fit because that's how they self regulate.

I liked this article on stims, with a chart of types (written about deaf-blind children, but fully applicable to autistic children). This might help you identify if the suspected vocal stimming is accompanied by stimming of another type.

http://www.tsbvi.edu/Outreach/seehear/archive/mannerism.html #Chart

Good luck.

I'm a lot older and I still do it whenever I need to do it -- it is productive because it makes me more capable of understanding my surroundings. If I fail to engage in things like that, you'll get screaming and flailing instead. Liam does only when he is eating-- anyone else have a kid who hums while eating??? It actually drives me a little bit crazy LOL. We say "quiet mouth" and he is quiet for about 5 seconds, and then the hum starts again -- I know he is enjoying the food, and it is a sounds of pleasure, but it can be quite loud!!

heather

Donny is a HUGE vocal/verbal stimmer. His vocal stims are typically
words
or phrases. What distinguishes them from functional language is the
level of
repetition, the tone of voice he uses, and how ritualized it gets.

For example, one of his biggest verbal stims is to say, in a sing-song
whiny
voice (that drives me insame

): "momma. babies. momma and the
babies. momma dog and the baby puppies". I hear that at LEAST 30
times a day or so. Another one at the moment (it is a resurrection from
the past) "the california raisins".

Donny tries to get us to engage in his stims with him, and it's hard not to
sometimes. It's such a habit for us to echo what he's saying back, it's our
weird little autistic conversation I guess - he loves to be parroted.
However, I try not to parrot his stims, as it just feeds into them, and if we
do that, he ends up having meltdowns or getting aggressive when you
refuse to play into it.

Donny will also stim verbally by mixing squeely sounds with various
words in a squeeky voice, over and over and over again. I once timed
him, and he said "Energon", in that high-pitched baby voice over 100
times in 20 minutes.

He pretty much never shuts up, and yet has almost no functional
language. I love my kid, but man he can sure drive me batty!!!

Collin does a lot of vocal stims.

He barks a lot, growls, pants, does a tuuu tuuu sound (kind of like kids do when they are pretending to shoot something), and this really loud high piched scream on and off, a lot of airy sounds, random words over and over again.

Thanks, Donny's Mom, for sharing your observations about your son. I'm pretty new to the concept of stimming (got the diagnosis a little over a year ago, and there has been a lot to learn), and it had never occured to me that my son could be stimming when he was using real words, instead of just sounds.

I'm curious if anyone else has seen stimming similar to the examples below in kids with good functional language.

[Stimming with emotionally-laden phrases]

At 3 points in his life, my son has repeated emotionally-laden phrases:

Age 2: "It's naughty to fight" (or a variation of that)

Age 3: "It's dangerous in the road" (or a variation of that)

Age 6-1/2: "No owies on me" (seemed to be using it almost as a spell to keep him from bodily harm).

Luckily these phases seem to get shorter and shorter as he gets older. Anyone seen stimming like this?

[Stimming as questions to me?]

He also might be stimming when he engages me in questions of the sort what would a certain cartoon character do in various situations. He gets a lot of pleasure out of this kind of interaction, but he also accepts it when I say I don't want to answer any more questions.

This has been an interesting topic. I hope more people can share their observations.

savannah is vocal when she eats too....I didnt realize it was a stimm...she has done it most of her life.

Wow, I hum when I eat....hmmmm

Sandis is a vocal stimmer in places that cause him a lot of sensory challenges, like restaurants. He also does it when he is too excited.

Sandis makes weird animal noises. Sometimes horse noises, sometimes meows, sometimes barks, or sometimes just noises that sound like they could be animals but you have no idea what animal. Sandis also repeats one line from a movie over and over and over and over. One from Harry Potter that really could keep my son stimming for a while, over and over and over, was "Expector Petronis!". Usually he stims animal like noises. And it is most often when we go out to eat.

Ryan is now almost 6yr, he had a ton of vocal stims when he was younger, mostly tv commercials he would repeat over and over

When you describe this it sounds like echolalia. Adam's language was primarily echolalia for a long time. None of it seemed functional and he seemed to enjoy us interacting with it. He would use a lot of delayed echolalia also from even shows that I had no idea that he watched or people that he heard in public ect. When Adam did this I didn't know that they were stims. Adam would still engage himself with me and others while participating in echolalia but when he would make the repetitive sounds he STILL won't.

Karrie

Does anyone one know what this would be

Here is a example of what Ryan does ALOT..

Me.."Ryan,who did you play with at school?"

Ryan.. "Play school...Michael"

Another...

Me.. "Ryan you want to go to the store"

Ryan.. "Go to the store, Yeah"

He seem to always repeat in some way what I say and then answer the question..he rarely just gives the answer alone.

Ryan is almost 6yr..is there any chance he will out grow this , are there anyways I can help him with this??

Answering questions has gotten easier for him. Now he's 8 and he even answered the questions the stylist asked him during his first salon hair cut (his aunt has cut his hair in the past). When he was 5 years old, just the questions or just the haircut would have been more than enough for him.

Hope your son makes similar progress, Ryan's Mom.