A mother in Westminster once asked me, almost apologetically, whether she should be stopping her son from flapping his hands. A relative had told her it made him look different. She had also noticed that on the days she stopped him, the rest of the afternoon fell apart.
Stimming, short for self-stimulatory behavior, refers to repetitive movements, sounds, or sensory experiences that help a person regulate. Hand flapping, rocking, spinning, humming, finger flicking, repeating a favorite line from a film. For most children, most of the time, the answer to whether you should redirect it is no. Stimming is usually doing a job, and removing it without replacing what it provided tends to make things harder rather than better.
The exceptions are worth knowing precisely, and they are narrower than many parents have been told. Below is how we think about stimming at Achieve ABA Therapy Group, what the research supports, what Colorado law protects at school, and how to tell a stim that needs nothing from one that needs support. The question comes up in nearly every ABA assessment we conduct.
What Stimming Is and Who Does It
The word gets used loosely, which causes confusion in IEP meetings and at kitchen tables. Getting precise about what counts, and what does not, makes the rest of the conversation easier.
A Plain-Language Definition of Self-Stimulatory Behavior
Stimming describes repetitive body movements or repetitive movements of objects that produce sensory input for the person doing them. Clinically it is often called stereotypy. The Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia notes that these behaviors may serve several different functions across settings, which is why two children flapping their hands may be doing so for entirely different reasons.
Common Forms of Stimming Across the Senses
Stimming is not limited to the hands, and recognizing the full range helps you spot what your child is seeking.
- Movement and balance: rocking, spinning, pacing, bouncing, jumping
- Hands and touch: flapping, finger flicking, rubbing textures, tapping surfaces
- Sound: humming, throat noises, repeating words or phrases, echoing dialogue
- Sight: staring at fans or wheels, watching light through fingers, lining up objects
- Smell and taste: sniffing objects, mouthing non-food items
Verbal stimming, sometimes called scripting or delayed echolalia, is frequently misread as meaningless. It often carries meaning, particularly for minimally speaking children, and is worth listening to rather than interrupting.
Why Everyone Stims, Not Only Children With Autism
Pen clicking, leg bouncing, hair twirling, nail biting. These fall into the same category, and most adults do several of them daily without anyone suggesting intervention.
The differences for children with autism tend to be frequency, intensity, and visibility. Stimming on its own is not diagnostic of autism, and it is not a symptom to be counted down toward zero.
Why Stimming Happens
Understanding function is what separates a useful response from a harmful one. Stimming usually serves one of a handful of purposes, and the same child may stim for different reasons at different points in the day.
Regulating an Overloaded Sensory System
This is the most common driver. A grocery store with fluorescent lights, echoing announcements, and unpredictable movement delivers a great deal of input at once, and rhythmic self-generated input helps organize it.
Research from Goldsmiths, University of London found that stimming functioned as a self-regulatory response to sensory overload among both autistic and non-autistic adults surveyed. Our post on sensory overload at school covers how that threshold shifts across a school day.
Managing Excitement and Strong Emotion
Plenty of stimming is joy. A child flapping at the sight of a favorite show is expressing something, and treating that as a problem to manage teaches a strange lesson about happiness.
The same movement can appear during frustration or anxiety. Context tells you which one you are looking at more reliably than the movement itself does.
Focus, Processing, and Thinking
Some children stim in order to attend, not instead of attending. Fidgeting during a lesson can be what makes the lesson processable.
This becomes important at school, where a teacher may read movement as inattention and ask for a stillness that reduces the child’s capacity to follow along.
Stimming as Communication
When stimming spikes sharply, it usually signals something: this room is too much, I am overwhelmed, something changed and I have no words for it.
Reading the spike as information rather than as behavior to suppress gives you a head start on the real problem, which is more often the environment than the child.
When to Leave Stimming Alone
The default in current practice is non-intervention, and that represents a real shift from how this was handled decades ago. Understanding why the field moved will help you evaluate any provider you work with.
The Default Position in Contemporary Practice
Harmless stimming is not a treatment target. A widely cited study of autistic adults’ views, led by Steven Kapp and co-produced with autistic self-advocates, found that participants opposed eliminating stimming except where it was self-injurious or harmful to others. The authors note that seeking to extinguish functional stimming would conflict with the medical principle of doing no harm.
If a program you are considering lists reducing hand flapping as a goal in itself, that is worth questioning directly.
What Suppression Costs Your Child
When a child is prevented from stimming and given nothing in its place, the need does not disappear. It usually resurfaces later, often larger, and often in a form that is harder to manage.
- Escalation into meltdown or shutdown later in the day
- The behavior returning in a more disruptive or less safe form
- Reduced capacity to focus, since regulation is now consuming effort
- Learning that a natural response to distress has to be hidden
Masking and the Longer-Term Picture
Some children, particularly girls and children who present as highly verbal, become skilled at suppressing visible stims in public. This is often mistaken for progress.
Sustained masking is effortful, and the research literature has associated higher masking burden with poorer mental health outcomes in autistic people. A child who has stopped stimming at school and falls apart every afternoon at home has not gained a skill, and that pattern is worth naming when it appears.
The Narrow Cases That Call for Support
There are situations where intervention is appropriate, and being clear about their boundaries is what protects children from over-intervention. Three categories cover nearly all of them.
Behavior That Causes Physical Harm
Head banging, hand biting, skin picking that breaks the surface, eye pressing. These carry real injury risk and warrant prompt assessment rather than watchful waiting.
Self-injurious behavior often has a different function than typical stimming, including pain, illness, or communication of acute distress. A medical review is a reasonable first step, since ear infections and dental pain are common contributors and easily missed.
Stimming That Blocks Access to Something Your Child Wants
The question is whether the behavior stands between your child and something they are trying to reach. A child who spends an entire birthday party spinning in a corner, and who wanted to join the game, has a barrier worth addressing.
Note the ordering. The concern is your child’s access to their own goals, not whether the behavior looks unusual to onlookers. Those are different problems, and only one of them belongs to the child.
Safety in Specific Settings
Some stims are fine at home and hazardous elsewhere. Spinning is safe on a living room rug and unsafe in a parking lot.
The goal here is situational rather than global. We teach where and when, not whether, which keeps the regulation strategy intact while managing genuine risk.
How to Redirect Without Shutting Your Child Down
When one of those narrow cases applies, the method determines whether your child ends up better supported or simply quieter. Four principles guide the work.
Find the Function First
Before changing anything, we work out what the stim provides. Deep pressure, vestibular movement, auditory input, and escape from demand each call for a different response, and guessing wrong produces a plan nobody can use. A functional behavior assessment is how that gets identified rather than assumed.
Offer a Substitute That Delivers the Same Input
A replacement only works if it meets the same sensory need. Swapping hand biting for a fidget spinner fails, because a spinner provides nothing oral.
- Oral input: a chewable necklace or a crunchy snack
- Deep pressure: a weighted lap pad, wall pushes, a firm hug
- Vestibular movement: a rocking chair, a swing, an exercise ball
- Hand and finger input: putty, textured fabric, a quiet fidget
Change the Environment Rather Than the Child
If stimming climbs sharply in one setting, the setting is usually the variable. Dimming lights, cutting background noise, or shortening time in a crowded space often accomplishes more than any behavior plan. This is the logic behind natural environment teaching, where we adjust conditions rather than drilling a child to tolerate them.
Build In Places Where Stimming Is Fully Allowed
If a stim is limited in one setting for safety, your child needs somewhere it is entirely unrestricted. A room, a time of day, a routine after school.
Without that, you are asking for suppression rather than situational awareness, and the two produce very different outcomes over a year.
Stimming at School and What Colorado Law Protects
School is where most conflicts about stimming surface, and where parents have more legal footing than they often realize. Colorado has specific statutory protections that apply directly to how staff may respond.
Colorado Limits on Restraint and Seclusion
Under the Protection of Persons from Restraint Act, C.R.S. 26-20-101 and following, restraint in Colorado public schools may be used only in an emergency, and the State Board rules state plainly that restraints must never be used as a punitive form of discipline or as a threat to gain control over a student’s behavior. The Colorado Department of Education publishes the act and its implementing rules.
The practical reading is direct. Stimming is not an emergency. A child rocking, flapping, or humming does not meet the standard for restraint, and a hold used to stop those behaviors is difficult to justify under the rules.
Colorado also generally prohibits prone restraint in schools following HB 17-1276, requires staff who use restraint to hold current training from a nationally recognized program, and requires parent notification on the same day an incident occurs. Parents and guardians may file a written complaint about the use of restraint or seclusion, and CDE runs a state complaints process for reviewing them.
Writing Stimming Into the IEP
If your child stims to regulate, that belongs in the document rather than in a hallway conversation. Useful additions include permission to use a fidget, access to a movement break without having to ask, and explicit language that regulatory behavior is not a discipline matter. Knowing your IEP parent rights makes those requests easier to make and harder to wave off.
Our school-based ABA therapy team supports these conversations in districts across Denver, Aurora, and Colorado Springs, and consistency between the classroom plan and the home plan is usually what makes either one work.
Sensory-Friendly Programs Around the Front Range
Colorado has built out more of this infrastructure than most states, which gives families places to go where stimming needs no explanation at all.
- The Denver Museum of Nature and Science lends wiggle cushions, noise-reducing headphones, and S.P.A.R.K. sensory backpacks free from the information desk, and runs sensory-friendly film showings where guests are welcome to move, talk, and dance
- The Autism Society of Colorado runs the Opening Doors program, training museum and venue staff across the metro area
- Sensory Friendly Denver, funded through Denver Human Services’ IDDEAS Mill Levy Program, gives partner venues sensory assessments, staff training, and support kits
- The Denver Zoo offers free sensory kits with ear defenders, sunglasses, and fidget tools at the concierge booth
Families in Lakewood, Arvada, and Boulder are within reach of most of these. Check current schedules before you go, since low-sensory hours change seasonally.
How We Approach Stimming in Our Programs
ABA has a complicated history on this topic, and parents deserve a straight answer about it rather than a defensive one. The field’s older practices and its current standards are not the same thing.
What Changed From Older ABA Practice
Earlier approaches did target self-stimulatory behavior for reduction, sometimes with the explicit aim of making children appear less visibly autistic. Autistic advocates criticized that goal for decades, and the criticism was correct.
Contemporary practice treats regulation as a legitimate need and reserves intervention for harm, access, and safety. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and it is a fair question to put to any provider you are evaluating.
Where the Teaching Happens
Sensory needs show up in real rooms at real moments, so that is where we work. Our in-home ABA therapy teams observe what happens in the actual kitchen at the actual hour, in Fort Collins, Pueblo, Thornton, and communities across the state.
For younger children, early intervention ABA therapy focuses on building regulation strategies before school pressures arrive. Our full range of ABA services also includes weekend sessions and daycare-based support.
Questions Worth Asking Any Provider
A few direct questions will tell you a great deal about how a team thinks, and any good clinician will welcome them.
- Under what circumstances would you target a stim for reduction?
- How do you decide whether a behavior is harmful or simply unusual?
- What would you replace it with, and how do you know the replacement meets the same need?
- How do you involve me in that decision?
These are the same conversations we work through in parent training, because you will be making these judgment calls far more often than we will.
Letting Your Child Move the Way They Need To
The most useful reframe I can offer is this: stimming is usually a solution your child has already found. Before changing it, it is worth understanding what problem it was solving.
For the large majority of children, the right response is to leave it alone, make room for it, and pay attention when it changes. For the narrow set of cases involving injury or a real barrier, good support adds something rather than only removing something.
The boy in Westminster still flaps his hands. His mother stopped apologizing for it somewhere around the second month, which she later told me was the part that changed her afternoons.
Talk With Our Colorado Team About Your Child’s Stimming
If you are unsure whether a behavior needs support or simply needs acceptance, that is a reasonable question to bring to a clinician. Achieve ABA Therapy Group works with families across Colorado, including Westminster and Centennial, with no waitlist. See how we get started, or check whether an autism diagnosis and insurance coverage are already in place.
Call 720-463-9000 or send us a message. Tell us what your child is doing and when it changes, and we will tell you honestly whether we think it needs anything at all.
Frequently Asked Questions About Stimming
Should I Stop My Child From Hand Flapping?
In most cases, no. Hand flapping is a common regulatory and expressive behavior that carries no physical risk. Unless it is causing injury or preventing your child from doing something they want to do, there is no clinical reason to target it.
Does Stimming Mean My Child Is Anxious?
Not necessarily. Stimming accompanies excitement and concentration as often as distress. What tends to be informative is a change in pattern, so a sudden rise in frequency or intensity is worth paying attention to.
Will My Child Stim Less as They Get Older?
Patterns often shift with age, and many people develop stims that are less noticeable to others. That is not the same as needing it less, and it should not be treated as a goal in itself.
What Do I Say When Relatives Comment on It?
A short factual line usually ends the conversation: this is how he regulates, it helps him, and we are not working on stopping it. You do not owe anyone a longer explanation, and children hear how their parents describe them.
Can a Teacher Physically Stop My Child From Stimming in Colorado?
Restraint in Colorado public schools is limited to emergencies and may not be used as discipline or to gain control over behavior. Stimming does not meet that threshold. If restraint or seclusion has been used with your child, staff must notify you the same day, and you can file a written complaint through your district and with CDE.
My Child Bites Their Hand When Upset. Is That Stimming?
It may be self-injurious behavior, which is a different category and warrants prompt assessment. Start with a medical check to rule out pain or illness, then ask for a functional assessment. This is one of the situations where waiting is not the right call.
Is It Harmful for ABA to Target Stimming?
Targeting harmless stimming for reduction is not consistent with current standards, and the concern behind the question is well founded given the field’s history. Appropriate targets are behaviors that cause injury or block a child from something they are trying to reach, and even then the work should center on adding a workable alternative.
Sources:
- Colorado Department of Education, Protection of Persons from Restraint Act and implementing rules (1 CCR 301-45): https://www.cde.state.co.us/spedlaw/restraintact
- Center for Autism Research, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Stimming: What Is It and Does It Matter?: https://www.research.chop.edu/car-autism-roadmap/stimming-what-is-it-and-does-it-matter
- Kapp, S. K., Steward, R., Crane, L., et al. People should be allowed to do what they like: Autistic adults’ views and experiences of stimming. Autism, 2019: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362361319829628
- Colorado Department of Education, Autism Spectrum Disorder resources and eligibility guidelines: https://ed.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/sd-main/sd-autism
- Charlton, R. A., Entecott, T., Belova, E., and Nwaordu, G. Sensory experiences and stimming in autistic and non-autistic adults. Goldsmiths, University of London, 2021.