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My son is autistic, ADHD, and Tourettes

NAS83659

Hi,

 my son is highly repetitive. He has recently been diagnosed with Tourette’s. I’m use to what he does. I need help to what I can do when he does them on how I can redirect and what I can get him to do something else. He is obsessed with washing machines and he shakes EVERYTHING. He helps me with laundry. I got him a little washing machine but in ABA he shakes everything and wherever we go he finds things to shake. It seems this is a soothing to him when he does it. He does ABA but he won’t stop and it is really interrupting the other children and therapists there. HELP! What things can help him? Thanks

  • You have hit the nail on the head when you note the shaking is soothing for him.

    The shaking of objects is a stim. Most autistic people need to stim to regulate their emotions. If he is stimming more in ABA that is a sure fire indicator that the ABA is distressing him. Unfortunately one of the goals ABA often has is to stop the kid stimming.

    I am 57. I still stim. The big anxiety stim I have is in my feet. They bounce and bounce and bounce from the ankle whenever I am not standing on my feet. Let me give you a very personal example of what happens if this is stopped. In my 50s, not long before I was diagnosed, I was in a desperately anxious state; not in a good way at all. I was lying in bed with my foot bouncing. I hadn't even realised it was bouncing. It was getting on my husband's nerves as he was trying to sleep, so he placed his leg over the top of mine to stop it. I felt my anxiety sky rocket into abject terror within nano-seconds. I snatched my leg away. Only then was I aware my foot had been bouncing. At that point I HAD to recommence the bouncing in order to bring the anxiety down. Nothing else would have calmed me in that moment.

    Now there are stims for other emotions too. Your son may have happy stims, or excited stims. I have a particular stim which only happens when in deep thought - it helps me think. 

    The anxiety stim is what will be going on in those sessions. Now, most stims are absolutely harmless but clearly you don't want your son to stim with anything harmful or disruptive, so the key is NOT to get him not to shake things, but give him things that it is ok to shake to his heart's content, because your observation is bang on. It soothes him.

    Please do take a long look at ABA and the principles behind it. It's not good at all.  You just can't ask an autistic kid not to be autistic.

  • in reply to KJ1234

    An approach to "treating" an autistic child which can be very, very damaging to them.

    It a behaviourist approach that effectively attempts to make autistic children less autistic: stopping them stimming, forcing hugs, forcing interactive play, forcing eye contact. And these drills can go on for hours a day.

    At one time this was based on reward and punishment, even physical punishment like cattle prods, basically for behaving like a natural autistic person. These days it has been modified to not go as far as cattle prodding them, but it is based on the premise that the autistic child should appear less autistic and still fundamentally tells children" 'you are not good enough as you are', whilst depriving them of the mechanism they actually need to regulate their emotion.

    The Americans are still into this in a big way, less of it in the UK. Thank God.

  • Hi, thank you for posting here. I'm slightly confused about the purposes of your post? I think you're looking for ways to redirect some of your sons self regulating stims because they're being disruptive to those around him? But you're also mentioning Tourettes, and I assume tics, and these aren't the same as stims, so I'm confused about which you are referring to. If I'm wrong please correct me. 

    I don't know how communication with your son is, but if you can my first recommendation would always be to talk to him. Stimming in particular can be a response to stress, if he's having particular issues in certain circumstances my conclusion would be that those are particularly stressful situations. It's not a great idea to repress stims, some level of alternative is sometimes possible for some people. If he's having extreme stims in a particular environment and those around him aren't willing to adjust to that, maybe moving out of the environment to have a stimming/regulation sessions and then go back if he wishes to. E.g. if classrooms are difficult, and the other students are being significantly disrupted, leaving the classroom for a period of time to re-regulate may be a good idea. But those around him should also learn to adjust around him to at least a little too.

    ABA has many issues and I'm sure one of the others will pop into tell you about it later but I just want to point out what I just read from your post.

    My son finds shaking things soothing. Whenever he is in ABA he has a very strong need to shake things and can't stop.

    And now I'm going to translate that

    ABA is sufficiently stressful for my son that he can't do anything other than self soothe while in it. 

    First suggestion, stop ABA. At least reduce it in the form you're currently using it and do some research on the recorded long term impacts of ABA. It's not good for your child in the long term, and is clearly causing a lot of distress in the short term

    I'm kind of maybe unwisely assuming you aren't in the UK as ABA is not a common practice here.