Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Spinning, Stimming, Whatever

No, not the exercise class. Ha, hahahaha. As if.

No, Olivia has discovered spinning in place, or more specifically, spinning in the middle of the kitchen while Tom and I are trying to get dinner around each night.

She loves this. She loves to spin to the point that she falls over. She just lays there, dizzy for a minute and then gets up and does it again.

Let me say right here that this could very well be something that has nothing to do with 5p- Syndrome. I currently hold the record in my family for standing and spinning for three hours. My cousins were no competition at all when I was eight years old.

So I hesitate to call this behavior from Olivia stimming. I think she just likes the feeling of being dizzy. And she likes the attention she gets when she’s in the middle of the kitchen and both her parents are trying not to trip over her.

Alyssa just rolls her eyes and goes back to watching Fetch with Ruff Ruffman on PBS.

One habit that I do fear is stimming, though, is her newest thing of twirling her hair. She’s not quite pulling it out again, but she’ll twist huge chunks of hair around her fingers. Seeing her do that stresses me out to no end because it takes me back to the days of pulling. She doesn’t do it often but when she does, I bite my tongue to stop myself from telling her to stop and drawing attention to the behavior.

I don’t mind if she stims, because if she is doing it, it’s because she needs to but I wish she’d leave her hair alone. I realize it’s just hair and we’re in the stage right now where it’s being proven that it grows back but…I don’t have a good reason except that I just want her to leave her hair alone. So there.

But the spinning…so fun for all, except those of us tripping over her while holding a bowl of hot tomato soup. That’s no fun at all.

1 comment:

Just another mom said...

We have a sit and spin that I bought at a garage sale. Hailey barely fits on it anymore but that doesn't stop her from wrapping her super long legs around it and spinning to her hearts content. I love it because she loves to spin in the kitchen too (normally while I'm cooking) so it at least keeps her spinning in one spot so I'm not tripping over her...Just an idea :-)! Also...for the hair twirling, Hailey used to do the same thing and I finally got her a doll with real feeling hair and told her that she could pull that. She still has the doll (7 years later) and she still pulls her hair when she gets stressed. The doll is almost bald now! And I'm not sure the spinning is a part of 5p- either...I love to spin and use to spin in my father's office chair until I got sick. It's just good fun!