Stims: Good, Bad or Ugly?

When Tate was diagnosed with autism, I did not know anyone else with autism. I had no idea what the right thing to do was, nor if there were any treatments. I quickly began educating myself about autism. I read many books and surrounded myself with people who could help us. We began ABA and tried our best to use “best practice” methods. Forty hours a week of discrete trial and incidental teaching, redirecting stereotypic behaviors, and teaching social skills. 

I did have the Internet, but social media was not yet a “thing” when Tate was three years old. For that I am grateful. Shocking, coming from a mommy blogger who loves nothing more than interacting with others from the autism community isn’t it? Let me explain. 

If I had turned to Facebook and mommy bloggers for my information, I'm afraid I would have done many things differently. And if I had done many things differently, Tate might still be stimming his day away and unable to do so many of the things he can now, twelve years after his diagnosis.

So many autism parents today, in the name of autism acceptance, are telling us not to try to change our children with autism. The politically correct thing has become “Don’t ask a child with autism to step into your world. You should step into his.” The thing is… mom and dad will not always be there. The child with autism is going to grow into an adult with autism. And all those things that you did not ask him to learn, and all those things he did not have to give up (because he has autism) have the potential to make his adult life so much harder. The stereotypic behaviors could make him a target for bullies. Those things you did not ask him to give up are likely going to be ingrained and a huge part of his day.

According to so many autism moms who are blogging, their children with autism NEED the stereotypic behaviors. They say the behaviors serve a purpose. Some even suggest that we should stim right along with the child. 

The sensory issues are real. I get that. I get all that. Tate NEEDED to do those things too, when he was small. But those things were getting in the way of his learning. And he NEEDED to learn. I chose the hard road. The majority of the stimming NEEDED to go. One of the hardest parts was that when one stim was eliminated, another often took its place. But we kept at it, gently trying to mold and change the way our son dealt with stress, boredom, and excitement. 

Tate wanted to run back and forth on his toes, from one end of the room to the other. I put things in his path and redirected his attention. All. Day. Long.

Tate wanted to look at his reflection in the oven door, the television, and mirrors for long periods of time. I covered the oven with a towel, the television with a fitted sheet, and took down the mirrors.

Tate wanted to use books to fan the pages for thirty minutes at a time. I made sure he stopped and looked at each page or we put the book away.

Tate wanted to wave his hands and wiggle his fingers. We gently took his hands and put things in his hands to hold and tried to keep him busy playing. 

Had Tate’s favorite stim been head banging until his forehead bled, no one would think I was a tyrant for redirecting it. Had his stim been to bite himself or others, my efforts would have been approved of as well. Would he have NEEDED those things? I drew my line way before those things though, so I have been told I am not accepting of Tate or his autism. HA! I’d step in front of a truck for my boy and I’ve worked so hard to help him. It would have been much easier to just let him stim. 

I heard from a mom recently with a son about ten years old. She had been trying to convince a therapist that her son NEEDED to stim and it was cruel to ask him to stop or to reduce the amount of stimming he engaged in. Because the therapist would not agree, the mother thought the therapist did not understand autism. It could be that the therapist understands autism better than the mother.

What if I had not redirected all the stimming when Tate was small? What if I had given up because it was so hard to do? Our lives would have been so much easier for those preschool and early elementary school years, for sure. But what about now? Tate is six foot, three inches tall. Any stimming he wants to do now, would be impossible for me to deter. He still occasionally stims, but it does not take up large parts of his day, nor does he rely heavily on it to entertain himself. His go-to stim now is pacing, which he does when he is nervous. He sometimes stiffens his body and uses his hands to push on his legs when he is bored or anxious. But those things do not consume him like his stims did when he was small. Would he have eventually outgrown it all on his own? 

I suppose he might have stopped or reduced all those stereotypic behaviors on his own. I could never prove he would not have. I was unwilling to take that chance. All those hours I redirected the stimming were not wasted either way, because every minute Tate was not stimming, he was learning. I was teaching him: how to pretend, how to read, how to interact with others, how to use verbs, pronouns and prepositions, social skills, turn taking, how to tell a joke, and so much more.

I know how hard it is to redirect stimming. The enormity of the task is intimidating. If you choose to try to eliminate the stimming, you may become discouraged at times. But, do not let the moms who are engaging in stimming with their child, in the name of autism acceptance, deter you. It may be that many of those kids will someday be six feet tall and their moms will be wishing they had eliminated or reduced some of the stimming when they were very young too. 

I didn’t “cure” Tate. I'm not making that claim. But I did help him to “fit in”. I do not understand the mind-set of so many parents in the autism community lately. Asking a kid with autism to conform is not abusive. One of my favorite quotes is the one that tells us not to judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree. But, I did not ask my fish to climb a tree. I asked my fish to swim faster, harder, and be a stronger fish, something that would be politically correct for a typically developing child, but not for a child with autism these days. And yet, we autism parents are often asking the world to treat our kids as they would treat any others. 

Perhaps there is no true right or wrong answer about the stimming. Or perhaps we will not know until this group of children who are encouraged to stim have grown into adults. Perhaps these children will be far better off and healthier than my son who was constantly asked not to stim, or to choose a more subtle stim at times verses an obvious one. Perhaps there will be no difference at all. 

It's Too Loud In Here!

Many people with autism like to be alone. They like quiet. They like calm. They might like some noise but only controlled noise. So, they don’t necessarily want silence and I’m not sure it is even about volume so much. They just don’t want unpredictable noise or chaos. For example, Tate loves music, television, and movies. He even likes surround sound but he NEEDS to be in control of the noise. He needs to be able to walk away if he is feeling overwhelmed. He wants to pick the movie and control the remote. He can feel at ease if he is controlling his environment and is able to predict what is going to happen. Touch, smell, taste, and sight are all a big deal to a kid with autism and I recently addressed some of Tate’s issues with touch. Noises (sound) are also an issue with many kids with autism.

Tonight we went to a restaurant. Ten feet from where Tate was sitting was a crying baby. Now, Tate doesn’t hate babies but Tate was miserable. He squirmed. He complained. He whispered things about babies who cry (whispering to himself is one of his stims). He stuck his fingers deep into his ears. He asked me if I had any headphones. (They use headphones at school to help with the noise level sometimes.) The screaming went on for about ten minutes while the mother ignored her baby. I love babies; but I honestly was beginning to squirm a little myself. Finally, the mother picked the baby up and gave him a bottle. The little guy went right to sleep and we were able to enjoy our meal. I have a friend who has a son with autism who probably couldn’t have lasted the ten minutes. They would have had to leave after just the first cries. Interestingly enough though, I have another friend who has a son with autism and when he goes to a restaurant he, himself, makes a lot of noise. He is non-verbal and one of his stims is to make loud noises. (Remember, autism is a spectrum and people are all over that spectrum.) The same young man who likes to make loud noises? When his baby brother cries he puts his hands over his ears! My theory on this is that he does not like his baby brother’s noises because they are totally out of his control and unpredictable. He needs to be in control of the noise to be able to tolerate it.

Just hangin' out, upside down.

Recently, Tate’s sister and I were in the living room watching a movie that Tate loves. I told him I wanted him to watch it with us. He watched it but he could not relax and really enjoy it. He sat in a hard backed chair behind the couch, instead of on the couch with us, and watched from the dinning room. He could not relax because he was not in control. He was not alone to enjoy the movie and he was not going to be able to pause it if he wanted to, or run it back and watch his favorite parts more than once, or fast forward through the song he did not like. He would have enjoyed the movie so much more if he’d been alone to watch it. When given the choice he will almost always choose to be alone.

Having seven children and belonging to a small, close-knit church family, we have always had a lot of “people traffic” coming through the house. It sometimes gets pretty loud in our home. When he was little, Tate did not hang out in the living area, showing off, and trying to get the attention of the adults as my older children had. He did not run off to play with the other children. He usually snuck off to my room, climbed into my bed to watch television, and wait for everyone to leave. I’d find him and invite him to be a part of our gathering, but know that he would not be coming out until the noise level was back down to his liking.

Tonight when the baby was crying, I was not only feeling a little stressed from hearing it myself, but I was watching Tate squirm and I was feeling stressed because he was stressed. I try hard to make his world “autism friendly” while at the same time challenging him to step out of his comfort zone and make his world a little bit bigger. It’s a fine line. I am usually guilty of staying far inside his boundaries to keep him happy but once in a while I drag him too far across the line and feel terrible about it. Sometimes it does pay off though. Sometimes, instead of a meltdown and huge amounts of anxiety, that lead to nothing but more anxiety, we get growth.

Going through a carwash was out of the question a few years ago. The noise terrified Tate. Now they are very doable. Tate still becomes a little nervous, probably because of the noise, but he loves watching the soapsuds cascade down the windshield. Smoke detectors at home and fire drills at school are no longer things that send him into a panic. Fireworks are another example of progress made. When Tate was young, a fireworks show would drive him over the edge. On the fourth of July, his siblings would have a great time with their dad out in the yard lighting fireworks. Tate would be inside in my bed hiding under blankets while I tried to soothe him. We did not stop celebrating the fourth or make our older kids go somewhere else to light their fireworks. Although we are very considerate of Tate’s disability and his sensory issues, it cannot ALWAYS be about Tate. We do have six other kids who need parents too. Surprise! Somewhere around age six or seven, Tate decided fireworks were pretty cool. Now he looks very forward each year to those loud pops and booms. He still watches and listens with his fingers in his ears but he enjoys the lights and noise quite a bit. He’s really livin’ on the edge now, huh?

Note: Most children with autism have Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and I will be writing more about Tate’s sensory issues in the near future. I recently wrote a blog post entitled “Don’t Touch My Skin” about his aversion to touch that you might find interesting.

Find me on Facebook at Quirks and Chaos. Like what you read? Want to become a follower? Click on the Google Friend Following gadget on this blog. It's over on the right side and asks you to subscribe. Or you can add the URL (the web address in your search bar) to your Reading List. You can do that by clicking the plus sign in front of the URL. Thanks! 

What is Autism? (or) Why Does Tate Act That Way?

The following is what I would hand to a Junior High or High School student to read if they asked me to explain autism. The Center for Disease Control has just come out with new numbers and the rate of autism is 1:66. There is probably almost no one left that does not know someone with autism. It is important that people understand a little bit about this disorder. I wrote this with Tate in mind and not all of these things would apply to EVERY person with autism.

What is autism? Autism is a disorder that affects the way a person thinks. A germ does not cause autism. Autism is not a disease. People do not “catch” autism. A person with autism thinks much differently than a person without autism. When you THINK differently, you ACT differently. Being different is not a BAD thing to be but sometimes being different is a HARD thing to be.

There is a saying that goes like this: If you meet one person with autism, you have met one person with autism. That means not every one that has autism acts exactly alike. Even though people with autism are not just alike, they often have a lot of similarities.

Albert Einstein was a brilliant man. Many people believe he had autism.  He once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” This quote really hits the nail on the head. We cannot ask a person with a disability to perform as if the disability did not exist.

When most children are small their brains are like sponges, absorbing all kinds of things. They are always taking in new information and watching people to see how they behave. Children should be learning from the world around them. The brains of children with autism are not soaking up the information around them. Everything they learn has to be taught to them differently, in a much more structured lesson. It does not mean they are not just as smart as other kids. Actually they are sometimes VERY smart. They just learn differently.

Kids with autism can barely tolerate some of the things that seem perfectly acceptable to the rest of us. They may hate to be touched, or the opposite and like lots of touching. A small flickering light that most people can ignore could have the capacity to totally captivate the attention of a child with autism. A noise out in the hall that you barely notice might keep them from being able to concentrate. A scent that you find appealing has the potential to make a person with autism gag. If you ask a person with autism to taste a new food, there is a pretty good chance they will say, “no!”

What if everyone talked faster than you could think? Imagine living in a world that you did not understand. Imagine your teacher was speaking in a language you did not understand. You were still expected to do the schoolwork and while you were busy working, the school bell started ringing and wouldn’t stop. Even with the loud noise, you were supposed to concentrate on the assignment. Oh, and the whole time, there were bees buzzing around your face, the room was way too hot, and your shirt was made of sandpaper. Now imagine your teacher asking you over and over, why you had not gotten the assignment done? All your classmates finished. They got the instructions in a language they could understand. They never heard the school bell going off at all, and they did not have one bee bothering them. They thought the room was the perfect temperature, and their clothing was very comfortable. Remember that fish that should not be expected to climb a tree? How about that student that should not be expected to perform as if he did not have a disability?

People with autism are often called “concrete thinkers” and they have trouble imagining things the way the rest of us do. When they are young pretending is not something they learn to do without help.  Thinking about what will be happening tomorrow is not easy for them. As they get older they have trouble mastering many of the concepts they need to understand in order to succeed in school. A concrete thinker will probably need to use visuals with their math to help it make sense. A concrete thinker might be able to define for you what a policeman is and what a jail is for but he will not be able to explain ideas like justice or freedom.

Communication is not easy for a concrete thinker. A person with autism might not understand that a word can have more than one meaning. For example, if you heard someone say that a football player ran ten yards you would picture him on a football field. A person with autism could be picturing a man running through a neighborhood, jumping fences and dodging swing sets, as he ran across ten lawns (yards). Then there are idioms and other ways of saying things that make no sense to a person with autism. If you say, “He got cold feet and chickened out” then a person with autism might picture a barefoot man standing next to a chicken in the snow. Top all that off with puns and sarcasm when we say the opposite of what we really mean and communication becomes very complicated for a concrete thinker. As you go through your day listen to all the language around you. If you hear things like, “It was a piece of cake” or “He pigged out at lunch" think about the confusion a kid with autism would be having understanding what is being meant by these things.

A person with autism will probably speak differently than you do. Their voice may sound odd. It may seem stiff or sound monotone. It is sometimes hard for a person with autism to organize their thoughts and express them. They may use words that seem strange and their thoughts may be strung together in a way that does not make sense to you. Some people with autism are unable to have a conversation with give-and-take. They state facts or make comments but they do not seem to be interested in your participation or opinions.

A person with autism might talk about unusual things or a topic that interests them for extended periods of time. Maybe they are interested in movies, video games, computers, castles, trains, vacuum cleaners, geography, calendars, presidents, trees, insects, or another topic. A person with autism finds it easy and enjoyable to focus on something they are interested in, but very difficult to focus on anything they are not interested in. That makes it very hard to learn new things. Here’s an example: Tom is so interested in volcanoes that he can name almost every active volcano in the world. He can tell you all kinds of statistics about volcanoes and lava. However, Tom cannot seem to remember anything at all the teacher has told them in history or science unless it involved information about volcanoes. Not every person with autism has special interests like this but many do.

Most people are developing “theory of mind” before they enter kindergarten. This theory of mind is just the understanding that other people are thinking things that you may not be thinking. They may not like the same things you do and they may really like things that you do not care for. Understanding that other people do not think exactly the same things that you do is pretty important. Without this understanding it is really hard to make friends and maintain relationships. People with autism do not understand the teamwork of friendship so they need a lot of help from people who are willing to become their friends.

Repetitive behavior is an issue for people with autism. Repetitive behavior can seem very odd. Often when a small child has autism they like to watch things that spin or they drop things and watch them fall over and over. A child with autism can spend so much time doing these things that they miss out on many opportunities to learn new things. Spinning things and watching things drop are only a couple of the things that children with autism might find entertaining. These and other behaviors are called “stereotypic behaviors” or “self-stimulatory behaviors.” Sometimes we just call them “stims” for short. A kid with autism might like to pace the floor, walking on their toes with a sort of bounce to their step or make the same noise over and over. Perhaps they wiggle their fingers or even flap their whole arms. When they are engaging in these stims it seems to make them feel better. They do these things when they are excited or stressed or just bored. It will be hard to get their attention on something else but it is good to try.

Stress is a big part of the day for a kid with autism. Kids with autism prefer a schedule and they have a need to know what is coming up next. Transitions from one activity to the next cause them stress. Surprises can make a person with autism very anxious. Having a routine makes life easier if you have autism.

People with autism have trouble looking at others’ faces. When you talk to a friend you look at them. You watch their expressions. You can see if they are paying attention and looking back at you. You would be able to tell if something you said made them angry. If they seemed bored or were looking away then you would understand that you should change the subject or find a different friend to talk with. Making eye contact is a very important social skill. People with autism have to be taught social skills that just came naturally to the rest of us.

Along the same lines as watching a person’s face and expression, people with autism have trouble figuring out what a person is looking at. Have you ever noticed that when someone seems excited or upset you look at their eyes to see what they are looking at? Then you follow their gaze to see where they are looking. These are the kinds of things that a person with autism has trouble doing. Some people call it “thinking with your eyes” because we usually look at what we are thinking about and most of us use our eyes to communicate many things. People with autism have to be taught to “think with their eyes” but to most people it just comes naturally.

Because a person with autism has trouble looking at faces, it means they cannot always identify a person by their face. You might sit beside a person with autism for the whole school year and then run into them in the community after school but they cannot recognize you. Not all people with autism would have this difficulty but many would.

Sometimes when a person with autism is speaking they sound rude. They probably do not mean to be impolite and have no idea they are not being nice. It does not help to be rude in return. They will not learn from it. It also probably does not help to ignore the rude behavior. If a person with autism seems rude, and you would like to help, it best to gently tell them their words seemed rude and explain why. Do not go into a long explanation but if you can explain in just two or three sentences a better way to say what they said, or better tone of voice to use, you might be able to help them learn.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I am not sure you can really explain autism to a child much younger than five or six years of age because they themselves are just developing their own theory of mind and understanding that everyone is different. When a child is very young and a parent knows they will be exposed to children with disabilities I think they should probably just tell them that everyone if different and that is okay. Then remind them often to be kind to EVERYONE, even the kids who seem different than the rest.

I have a very simple description of Tate and his autism that his teachers’ used to present to his classmates each year when he was in elementary school. I have revised it several times over the years. It started off much simpler when it was being read to first graders. See attached: 

Three Steps Forward and Two Steps Back

Three steps forward and two steps back: My life is a version of hhe bunny-hop.  We make a little progress and then have a set-back.

This week has been a hard one. I’m not good at tough-love, especially with my two youngest. It has always been hard for me not to spoil my kids and sometimes I have had to undo damage that I have inflicted, but it seems doubly hard for me not to give the two youngest what they want. What they want is not always what they need though and that is where the tough-love comes in. Tate and Sydney have to do without so much in their world that I cannot always give them: regular friendships, the ability to understand social relationships, a grade-level understanding of academics, age appropriate motor skills, the ability to communicate what they are thinking or feeling, and much more. So, when there are things that I CAN give them, things they want, I tend to bend over backward to make those things happen. Saying “no” to them is hard for me. 

It has been a long time since I’ve left Tate at school crying. He used to cry almost every morning before school but that was before we had the kind of IEP team we have now. I had forgotten how hard it is to walk away from the young man that has custody of my heart when he was sobbing. This morning I left him, wiping tears, with his shoulders shaking.  I told myself it was no big deal. I had a talk with myself about toughening up and the “big picture.” I got a block from school and burst into my own tears. I wanted to turn around, run back into the building, tell him that everything that led up to the tears was a mistake, and we could let him have it all his way. But his way, is not the best way and his way will just handicap him further. 

There is a behavior stereotypic of autism called echolalia. It just means echoing or parroting words or phrases. Tate used to echo movie phrases or book passages a lot. He also used to echo the last word of every sentence he spoke. He often did that in a whisper. It was pretty creepy sometimes and it was one of the first behaviors we eliminated when he was diagnosed with autism. I worked hard to rid us of that behavior by constantly telling him not to repeat, or “No whispering.” If I had a dollar for every time I said, “No whispering” I could probably buy a new car. I always said it with a smile on my face because I never wanted Tate to think he was in trouble or doing something naughty. A child with autism cannot help the fact that they have stereotypic behaviors (stims.) A stim often looks like a behavior you would see with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Stims can be redirected and eliminated sometimes but are often replaced with other behaviors that are even worse than the original behavior. We try to eliminate the worst stims we see and live with the milder ones.   

Occasionally when Tate is stressed he can still be heard whispering the last word or sometimes the last sentence he spoke but he doesn’t do it often. We don’t hear the movie dialogue like we used to either, but he has taken it to another level. He tells bits from sitcom stories as if they really happened to him. This is where our problem today began. Tate’s favorite shows are shows on the Disney channel: “Sam and Kat,” “Jessie,” “i-Carly” and “Good Luck Charlie.” Tate has taken scenes or jokes from the shows and built stories around them to tell to anyone that will listen. His latest story is that he will start a babysitting service in his apartment building (we actually live in a house) and he will “change them, feed them, burp them” as well as have a website for Tate’s babysitting service dot com. I have heard this over and over for days. Before that, he was going to be in a play on the high school stage and he was inviting people to it. I actually had people stopping me and asking what Tate’s play was going to be about. He loved the attention. It didn’t matter to him that it was all fantasy and he couldn’t really “deliver” a play.

This is a fairly new thing. Three steps forward:  Tate is seeking attention from others. Tate is communicating. Tate is pretending. All these things are things we WANT to see when a kid has autism. 

I didn’t know what to do about this new behavior. At first I listened and gave him an audience. I tried to help him with writing a script for his play. He was not interested, nor does he really have the ability to plan or write a play, even with help. So then I tried talking to Tate about it, explaining that he was pretending and he couldn’t continue to talk to people about all the pretend things. I told him it was not appropriate and it was confusing to people. He did seem to make an effort to hide it from me and only talk to people about his fantasies when I was not standing right beside him. So then I tried asking him nicely to stop. It stopped at home but not at school or in the community. 

Two steps back:  The fantasy talk has become a real problem. He is interrupting teachers, dominating conversations with peers, and causing awkward moments because people do not know how to respond. Soon, I fear he will be alienating people from his world who used to enjoy his company.  

So, what’s a mom to do? Tell the dad to take care of the problem, of course! Shawn is a very involved dad. Tate recognizes that Mom is a softer place to fall than Dad and Dad is the authority figure in our home. Dad had not yet addressed the “problem” although he knew it was becoming an issue. Last evening Dad initiated the tough-love I asked him to. He had a serious talk with Tate. Shawn did not frown, did not raise his voice, and did not try to intimidate Tate in anyway, but the message was clear:  the pretend babysitting service and all the other fantasies have to stop. There will be no more conversations based on those things. This morning I reminded Tate that he could start conversations with his friends and teachers about a lot of things. He could talk about his pets, his Halloween costume, or even a show he liked to watch, but he was not to talk about having a babysitting service or anything else that was not true. He seemed okay. He stimmed a little, but not a lot. We walked into the school, I greeted his Para and Tate choked. Then he began to sob.  He rarely cries. Seriously, I think he has gone a whole year before without crying. In Tate’s world, crying is big. In Tate’s world, crying is huge. Oh how I wish he was still two years old and I could make everything better. When Tate was two I still didn’t know what autism was. I still didn’t know our world would be turned upside down by a disorder I didn’t recognize. In my mind I still had six “normal” kids. Until you hear the words, “Your little boy has autism” I’m not sure you could understand how badly I would like to turn back the clock. Ignorance was bliss.

I’ve read a lot of books about autism. A. Lot. Of. Books. Some of the most helpful books I have read, were written by adults with autism. Temple Grandin is a favorite author of mine, and Sean Barron is another. Sean tells of being a young man and being very interested in television. He also was interested in having friends but had no idea how to make a friend or how to communicate. He didn’t know what was socially acceptable and what was not. He knew that the cartoons and sitcoms he watched got a lot of laughs from people so he began to memorize lines from the shows and he would deliver them to his school mates. Because the scripted lines were not set up properly and were out of context, Sean would get no laughter. He couldn’t figure out why and it left him angry and confused. I often think about this when Tate is trying to tell a joke he heard on television or is quoting movie lines. Is it the same for him? Is it different? Will he ever be able to tell me? 

We move forward in other ways, only to fall back. For years I have tried to interest Tate in participating during worship services. He has been singing for years but zones out for the rest of the service. I have tried to get him to hold a songbook while he sings but he has complained that it was too heavy and he couldn’t look up the numbers because it was too hard. I have made some huge headway with him lately. Three steps forward:  Tate has learned to follow along and keep his place while we sing hymns. He understands how the stanzas work and the chorus repeats. Most recently, he began looking up the numbers by himself, rarely needing help to find a hymn!  He has even begun to pick up his book without me reminding him. Two steps back: Holding that “heavy” hymnbook has brought back a stim that we broke him of many, many years ago: fanning the corners of a book. I’m not talking about fanning the corners for a second and putting the book away. I’m talking about becoming LOST in the movement of the pages as they fan across his thumb. His whole focus is absorbed into the corners of that book and it could keep his attention for twenty minutes easily. No big deal if he only does it during worship? No! It has the potential to consume him at home and with every book he can get his hands on. So, after we sing, I take the book, put it back in the rack and tell him he is not allowed to touch it again until it is time to sing. What’s the big deal? Do you know how many books there are in this world I will have to keep an eye on now? Ha! Honestly, I feel like I can hear the music playing now. The tune is “The Bunny Hop.”   
There is a follow up to this story here: Part Two