For those unfamiliar with autistic lingo, "stims" are stimulating behaviors, which are a common feature of ASD. These can manifest in many ways.
My younger son likes to line things up. He can literally do that all day long. He likes to open and close doors and cabinets, fridge, oven, dishwasher, as well as kick same and pound walls. We have a big hole in our laundry room door and a hole in the drywall in every room. One of the kitchen cabinets finally broke off. I've been trying to think of a creative, crafty way to make it look half decent, since redoing the entire kitchen isn't an option right now. Even if we could afford it, he would just destroy the kitchen again anyway, and that would really suck. Murphy's law, it's never the thing on its last legs they break - it's the new thing, like my new stove. :) The past few weeks, it's been water - turning the kitchen faucet on and off and on and off and eventually filling cups and bowls with water that is subsequently dumped on the floor.
Right now my older son is looping the preview that "Barney is coming up next." I don't know what's more annoying, the Barney preview looping or the actual Barney show. :) My husband is thankfully at work. If he was here, the repetition would drive him IN-SANE! I have a much higher tolerance for annoying sounds. Anti-depressants are a beautiful thing. :) He also likes to loop You Tube videos, most recently videos of the show outside Cinderella's castle at Disney World. He found video of the exact same show we saw this summer. Watching him re-live it again and again is actually kind of charming. :) Brings a little tear to my eye to know how magical that trip to Disney truly was for him. The Disney music goes through my head all day at work, "find your dream, find your dream..." He also sings the same phrases over and over. This changes daily. It isn't so bad because he has a very nice singing voice. Well, not bad for me. That sends my husband over the edge, too.
My youngest brother, who does not have autism, used to love to repeatedly loop videos on the VCR when he was the same age. He told me years later when he was taking film-making classes at Columbia College in Chicago that this came in handy for film editing. In class, they had to repeatedly watch video loops and listen to sound loops to detect subtle differences when editing material. Maybe he has a future in film production?
Anyway, back to our day...right now we're looping, "here on sproutonline.com..." nope, just switched, now we're watching Chica on Sprout do a finger painting over and over...definitely spending some time outside later!
