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cataspie
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24 Feb 2008, 6:25 pm

My son is 8 years old and he flaps his hands,he does this alot when hes excited or waiting for something thats about to happen.He also does it now when hes building models of cars and things in his mind.Can NT children hand flap like this as well or does it mean he is on the autism spectrum somewhere?.



ster
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24 Feb 2008, 7:03 pm

my daughter is supposedly NT, and she flaps her hands when she's anxious & upset.......my aspie son doesn't hand flap at all. never has...........my aspie hubby flaps his hands when he's upset



gbollard
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24 Feb 2008, 8:30 pm

Flapping is a form of stimming.
Everyone does it.

Aspies and Auties do it more often than NTs



Mum2ASDboy
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24 Feb 2008, 9:55 pm

My son does when upset or excited or sometimes for no reason (that I can see) as well. I can't hand flap, I tried and it hurts :lol:



punky
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25 Feb 2008, 12:09 am

I have three children, only my son who has AS hand flaps, but sometimes his 2 younger sisters do it to play with him. I guess it kind of makes them feel closer to him. I don't think that they could do it as long or as fast as he can though. They just do it to get his attention.



cataspie
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25 Feb 2008, 8:56 am

My son does it fast as well he also makes sounds alot like csssshhhh and other things at the same time.I did wonder about tourrettes but i think there would be school issues with shouting out if it was that.



punky
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26 Feb 2008, 10:09 pm

My son also makes all the noises while he flaps his hands. When he was younger I would ask him what he was doing and he would just say playing. I always thought he was playing makebelieve airplanes the way he moved. he was diagnosed last year around this time, he was 11 at this time. I have never met anyone with aspergers so I didn't know what signs to look for, I just always knew that he wasn't like the other kids(to me he was the greatest and I wasn't having all the problems my friends were having with their kids so I thought all was ok). In the 5th grade he started doing little rituals before certain activities(like lunch, before homework, whenever he was stressed)that made me seek help to see what was going on. He has been alot better since then and I have learned so much in this past year. He really is wonderfull and my whole family has learned so much from him.



jaleb
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27 Feb 2008, 12:54 am

My 4 year old flaps his hands now, mostly when he is excited. My 7 year old used to but seems to have outgrown it, probably sometime around 5. (Both have AS)


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Mollymum
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27 Feb 2008, 2:20 am

My 5 yo flaps when he is upset or really excited. I didn't realize that he did it until the psychologist who diagnosed him with AS pointed it out. I now realize that he flaps a lot!



hosford42
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07 Nov 2013, 6:50 pm

cataspie wrote:
My son does it fast as well he also makes sounds alot like csssshhhh and other things at the same time.I did wonder about tourrettes but i think there would be school issues with shouting out if it was that.


punky wrote:
My son also makes all the noises while he flaps his hands. When he was younger I would ask him what he was doing and he would just say playing.


They are pretending something, and their hand movements represent whatever they are imagining. My 8 year old son does this. I recognized it as pretending, because when I was little I used to make very similar noises while playing with my toys. I have asked him about it a few times. He gets embarrassed and usually won't talk about it, but when he does, he confirms he is imagining something happening, usually a fight scene between two ninjas, a person running very quickly, or something spinning rapidly.

I am curious. I know what it looks like when my son does it, but I always wonder whether hand flapping is the same movement for everyone, or is it just any kind of repetitive hand movement? My son twists his arms really fast, clockwise then counterclockwise. But before he started doing that, I had always imagined it was a rocking motion back and forth in the direction of the top of the wrist and then back towards the bottom of the wrist.

Personally, I do a lot of drumming on tables, sometimes alternating between my pinkie and my thumb in a motion similar motion to my son's. I also do a weird thing where I rub my fingertips together in a particular pattern very quickly (which I also do with my tongue across the front of my teeth or the roof of my mouth). Do these count as hand flapping? Stimming? Or just quirkiness? I have not been in for official evaluation yet, and so I haven't had a chance to ask a professional.



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08 Nov 2013, 9:25 am

I use to surpress it. I might flap a little it I got extremely excited but mostly surpressed it because I knew it was weird. Especially after learning about autism, I refused to admit to my self I am autistic for a long time.
Now that I have admitted it to myself I let myself flap. All my life I've had a bad tic, now that I flap that tic is gone.



Halfmadgenius
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08 Nov 2013, 9:25 am

I use to surpress it. I might flap a little it I got extremely excited but mostly surpressed it because I knew it was weird. Especially after learning about autism, I refused to admit to my self I am autistic for a long time.
Now that I have admitted it to myself I let myself flap. All my life I've had a bad tic, now that I flap that tic is gone.



Wreck-Gar
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09 Nov 2013, 11:19 am

gbollard wrote:
Flapping is a form of stimming.
Everyone does it.

Aspies and Auties do it more often than NTs


I'd agree that everyone stims in someway or another but not that everyone flaps their hands. I don't do that and neither does my ASD son.



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09 Nov 2013, 11:54 am

My only experience with hand flapping have been with people on the spectrum. My son only flapped when jumping as a toddler. When he was 7, he took to hand flapping when excited, or trying very hard to concentrate. He still does it at 8, especially when excite or playing.

My son's friend who is in th process of getting an ASD diagnosis, he also flaps when excited. My NT 4yo DD will try to copy them when playing with them, but it is completely different how she does it. First of all, it is ONLY when she is chasing behind the 2 boys who are running and flapping. THEY flap at the wrist, she just shakes her arms up and down, no wrist action at all.

Id say hand flapping is a major red flag for spectrum.


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09 Nov 2013, 5:45 pm

My 8yr old son used to do it all the time. Now he does it mainly when super happy and/or super excited. I remember in the process of doing research prior to his diagnosis (though I do not remember the source) that NT toddlers may do this as well, but then when they get older and still do it, it is a more valid indicator of ASD.



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09 Nov 2013, 8:05 pm

By itself, it's a sign of a kid flapping their hands. Might be a sign of Scots, Irish, or Italian blood. :lol:

If you see that, and a lot of social mistakes that are not age-appropriate, and a poor ability to tolerate frustration, and avoidance of eye contact, and, and, and, and, and...

...then it might be a sign of something.


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