There must be some exact moment when a child stops being tiny and becomes something more. A handful to an armful. A perfect scoop in your lap to too many bones and limbs to too long and pokey to arrange against your middle. I’m glad that moment passes silently, tip-toeing behind you, while you’re looking at something else. Because I know I would mourn it, even as I celebrated the next step. The child shaped like a boy, with tufts of hair on his forearms and a solemn gaze.
Last night, my older son climbed into my bed in the middle of the night. He snuffled and snored and burrowed and kept me up for nearly the whole night. I tried to keep my arm around him, and he’d push it away. It made me recall shrugging off the same snuggles. I’ve rarely been able to sleep with someone touching me.
Before dawn, my younger son climbed into the bed too. He said, “I want to cuddle.” I said, “Ugh, go watch Nick Jr.” He said, “I want to sleep.” He never sleeps once he wakes up, but this time he shifted a few times and held his blanket to his lips and sucked on his invisible pacifier and fell asleep against me. Small, but more than a handful, more than an armful. Not yet bony and still enough to fit on my lap.
I couldn’t sleep any more after that. I held as still as I could, listening to them breathing and moving, knowing that I’d never been in bed with both of them sleeping before, and that it might not happen again.
I spent so many hours Googling videos of stimming when Chipmunk was two. I’m serious. Hours. It was so scary seeing him seemingly possessed by these unfamiliar, repetitive movements. Every single day–during play, during mealtime, in the bath–he’d stim. He’d squeeze and arrange. Squeeze and arrange. The most upsetting thing was that I couldn’t find any kids online doing the exact same thing. It would be similar sometimes, but not similar enough to soothe my upset (hormonal, pregnant) brain. When his first 15 minute appointment with a developmental pediatrician ended in a curt non-diagnosis of, “No, he doesn’t have autism,” it was even scarier to me. Then what was it, if not stimming?
Four years later, we know that’s exactly what it was. And I understand now that stims can take many forms. While hand flapping is one that nearly everyone recognizes as a sign of children on the autism spectrum, stims can be much more subtle that that. They can be vocal, they can involve movement, then can be an imperceptible tensing of a muscle. My son stims with his toys and obsessions, almost as if he’s playing. It started with cars and French fries (admirable obsessions), and progressed to dinosaurs and other small toys, and then to Legos, and then went a little freestyle with his hands alone. His Star Wars hands.
We know not to worry about his stims, and the only time they’re “controlled” at all is at school, when he’s told that his Star Wars hands have to be quiet so they don’t bother his friends. He can move his hands and squeeze things and do what he needs to do as long as he doesn’t growl and whoosh loudly. (It’s pretty damn loud.)
If you think you’re observing stimming behavior in your child and you haven’t had an evaluation or gotten a diagnosis yet, my advice is to film your child whenever you can. Try not to draw too much attention to it or make a big spectacle out of it. Just grab a small camera (your phone is fine) and save those videos. I uploaded them to a private account that I could link doctors to. Every doctor we’ve seen over the past few years has been very grateful for visual documentation of behaviors that have continued from 18 months to now, at almost six-years-old.
I took this video today, when I was really surprised to see a lot of stimming crop up while we waited in the waiting room at the immunologist. Chipmunk is severely allergic to oak and it’s oak season in a major, ugly way around here. I’ve noticed that when he’s itchy and uncomfortable and his allergies get bad, he stims more often. In this video, you can see a subtle, body-clenching, breath-holding stim (every time the Angry Birds hit the pigs.) Looks like we have another stem-obsession correlation on deck.
When I can’t do anything, I hop onto Craigslist and look for jobs and cheaper rental homes that might be able to hold our family with room for me to work. I don’t think we’ll end up moving, not yet, but it gives me a sense of power to look. While my husband job searches, there isn’t much I can do but help him search for jobs and cheerlead and network. (Which is actually a lot, but doesn’t feel like enough when I’m mostly waiting.)
That sense of searching, of needing to do, has me feeling restless. Last night I had a vivid dream that’s been echoing at me all day. In my dream, I was looking at a house to rent. It was perfect. But I kept trying to call my husband and my mom to tell them to come over and see it with me, and my phone wouldn’t work.
The house had a view of the water and a big deck on a second story. It had a huge bath tub and hardwood floors.
That’s about all I really remember, because dream details are always a mess, vivid while you’re in it and then surreal and scattered later. What remains is that sense of wonder and peace. I don’t know what it means, or if it means anything. But I feel like I’m in transition, and standing still. I’m at home, but drifting.
