Autism: Why can’t my child sit still?
Why can’t my child sit still? The run-of-the-mill doctor might just say they need to get movement out… WRONG! Actually, we need to get movement in. Due to autism, our central nervous system does not work quite right. We cannot interpret all the stimuli our body is exposed to properly, leading to confusing feelings and dysregulation. While sitting still may be fine for a neurotypical person, our bodies yell “THIS IS THE WORST! THIS IS THE WORST” (that’s a line from my favorite episode of my childhood favorite TV show: Henry Danger). This is because our bodies don’t register as much movement as we actually get, so it demands more.
Imagine you pour 3 cups of water into a bowl, but when you look back, there is only 1 cup of water in the bowl. You were absolutely sure you poured 3 cups of water in. This is what the autistic brain does to vestibular (movement) stimuli. Neurons sense input and send it up the spinal cord and to the brain where it enters the thalamus. The thalamus relays, or sorts this stimuli and ships it off to be interpreted in different lobes of the brain. (Temporal lobe for auditory, Parietal lobe for taste, touch, and temperature… etc). Once these different parts of the brain receive the stimuli, they often interpret it as less than what the neurons originally detected. When this happens, our body tells us we do not have enough stimuli by making us feel like there are spiders crawling all over us. (Sorry if you have arachnophobia, but it’s true.) The next closest descriptor I can think of is a sparkler you light on the Forth-of-July. Imagine some child with a sparkler gets too close and it runs over your body, ouch! Anyways… dysregulation is so, so, so uncomfortable! And the more we try to stay still, the worse it gets, until finally, our nervous system forces us to get movement. When I try to be still for too long in a place like church where you’re “supposed to” I start to get shoulder twitches: my body’s way of forcing me to get the movement I need. It starts as that uncomfortable feeling I mentioned with the spiders, only it builds and builds until my right shoulder twitches. Lastly, dysregulation heightens the anxieties we already feel because now our body is in a perpetual state of discomfort AND anxious. Many teachers fail to understand that restricting movement can contribute to “precipitating factors,” the amount of negative factors one can handle before experiencing a meltdown. Not to mention, if I am concerned about the spiders crawling over my legs, am I listening to the lesson on the quadratic formula?
Moral of the story: don’t restrict movement (including stimming) unless it is dangerous to the individual themselves or those around them. In quiet, proper places, you don’t want to be the parent or teacher who looks like you can’t keep your child in order, but as I like to say: ignore the haters, and do what’s best for your child! You are the one who knows them best, not the stranger with the judgy eyes.
August 29, 2022
