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9:10pm July 27, 2014
autistic-mom asked: I used to have a vocal stim. I'd hum the song Alouette while flapping, until I realized if I hid while flapping and didn't hum, people wouldn't know I was flapping. As an adult, I developed palilalia.

My biggest vocal stim was to click my ears (to amplify internal sounds) and then make a monotone humming sound over and over.  I got so that I am pretty sure I could do it without other people hearing, because of the clicked ears, it didn’t take much humming.  But I didn’t deliberately set out in the beginning to make it inaudible to others, I just happened to have my ears clicked to make the sounds louder to me (and shut out all other sounds), and that helped when trying to make it inaudible.

I also had a thing where I clapped my hands over my ears over and over and over to make sounds around me rhythmic, and I got in trouble for doing that during school assemblies and stuff, and didn’t understand why I was in trouble or what I’d done.  (I only put it together later. The principal tapped me on the shoulder, which was her way of saying “move to the back of the room, you’re in trouble”, and I literally didn’t know what I’d done until I grew up and remembered it.  She tended to assume that we knew what we were doing ‘wrong’.  I’m still not sure quite how she interpreted me doing the ear thing, whether it was considered “disruptive” or “disrespectful” or what, but I am pretty sure now that that’s what she was doing.)

Notes:
  1. arctic-hands said: Click your ears?
  2. withasmoothroundstone posted this