By Marcy Venezia, GleeWorks Holistic Coaching

Stimming is a form of grounding or a way for an individual to deal with anxiety or over stimulation. There are two schools of thought: stop them from stimming, and don’t try to stop them from stimming. Let’s look at the mindset, actions and outcome behind these two approaches to stimming. Then we will bring it together with some easy to do exercises.

Mindset A: Stimming is embarrassing and disruptive. If I stop my child from stimming my child will fit in better. This mindset focuses on the stimming as the problem and what other people will think. We often feel uncomfortable with stimming. This mindset makes the stimming the problem and the child also feels they are a problem. Therapy focuses on getting them to stop stimming. Your child starts to believe that they are defective, and this increases their stress and stimming until they crash. Just telling a child with words, actions and emotions that you think they are defective, and a problem is incredibly difficult and stressful. It reduces stress to focus on strengths, helping a child negotiate a difficult world with love.

Mindset B: Stimming is a coping mechanism and helps children deal with an overwhelming world. It helps them calm down so that they can join the conversation or activity. Stimming is valuable information and an indicator of how a child is doing which can be used to modify environments.

Our job as parents is to help our kids become independent members of a community that honors and supports them. The most important and powerful ingredient of parenting is to love them and enjoy them. A foundation of acceptance, joy and love is an incredibly powerful healer and much more fun than focusing on problems and trying to fix them. Many problems will heal themselves and melt away with time.

Living in the gift is a framework to build a foundation of love, joy and acceptance. As we help our kids grow and find a community that honors and supports them, the most important and powerful ingredient of parenting is to love them and enjoy them. What do you love about your child? Answer this question daily and share it with them. Even if you do not feel it initially. What is positively remarkable about your child? Focus on what they do right and what you enjoy about them. Do fun things with them. Tell them daily what you love about them, how proud you are and what they did right. This is the most powerful healer, not just for your child but for you as well. Live in the Gift together it will transform your lives.

Marcy Venezia is a holistic life coach and RN specializing in a mind, body and spirit approach to healing and change. She reminds clients of their gifts to cope with the difficulties of raising special needs kids. She has 4 kids, one with special needs. She has also been a Special Ed Surrogate parent for those in State Custody.