This is an interesting planet

Stimming, masking, wonder

Stimming

“Stimming” was one of the first signs our son was autistic.

We were out to dinner one night, when our babysitter texted Emily and said, “I’m reading Sam a book and he keeps shaking his hands in the air. Just letting you know.”

For the uninitiated, stimming is short for “self-stimulation.” It’s a way to deal with intense sensory input.

For our son, it’s hand-flapping and jumping up and down when he’s stimulated. For others, it’s rocking, or head-banging, or pulling hair. It is a way of dealing with the sights / smells / sounds of reality, and the subsequent emotions they produce inside of us.

Everyone stims. For example: probably, in your nervousness, you shook your knee up and down during the four hours you took the SAT. But autistic persons stim more, for two reasons.

• First, because they process sensory information in a heightened, more intense way. So it’s way harder to stop it.

• And second, because they often lack the social cues to know they are supposed to stop it.

what therapist bob newhart tells client who’s afraid of being buried alive in a box

Masking

But as they get older, some begin to catch on.

They realize that hand-flapping, or rocking, or jumping up and down for “no apparent reason” isn’t exactly the best way to make friends. In fact, it will get you bullied—stat. In the words of Kieran Rose, an autistic advocate, “We learn that in order to not be excluded, marginalised, invalidated, and ill-treated, that we have to be ‘acceptable’ and project a personality that gives others comfort, so that we aren’t treated that way.”

Let’s pause for a minute to consider that last line. Are we not obsessed with ensuring those around us live in a way that makes us feel comfortable? Slash. Are we not obsessed with making sure we perform in a way that comforts others? Studies have shown that masking comes at a huge cost to the autistic person. But by all means—make me feel comfortable, plz, and stop doing the weird stuff.

It’s not that I’m better. When Sam stims at church, and I watch other kids turn around to look at him, I would do anything to make it stop. Heaven forbid he be stimulated by the sound of a guitar, or hundreds of people singing “Abide with Me.” Child, makest thou thy father comfortable.

the reprise of Station Eleven: “to the monsters, we’re the monsters”

Wonder

Thankfully, my son is still four, and unaware of the ways his stimming makes other people feel totes awkward.

When children call him a “monster,” he doesn’t hear. And when adults (note: not kids) at the grocery store stare and whisper, he doesn’t notice. As a parent, I worry about the day when he will.

But bullying isn’t the only thing I fear. I also fear that masking could cut Sam off from wonder. That he will lose the porous connection between his body and the world’s beauty.

Of all the created things, Sam’s favorite is water. Luckily, we live near a creek, and in the summers, we wander down to the water and skip rocks and watch the ripples. With each splash, Sam’s hands shake—violently and uncontrollably—with wonder.

As the novelist Marilynne Robinson (who also happens to have a thing for water) says, “This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

So really, I envy Sam—and his ability to feel the interestingness of the world. The reality is that he is more attuned than most. We, too, should find the beauty of our one spoilt Eden more or less unbearable. And if our own bodies do not vibrate at the music of the spheres, perhaps it is not because we are “normal,” but because we are not.