Is this considered "stimming?"

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Just trying to understand my boy more Thank you!

Looks like it to me. I've seen kids who weren't autistic do things like that, though. But probably not to that extent.

I do certain kinds of stimming that are related specifically to emotions. Especially anxiety, frustration, impatience, excitement/happiness, and anger. They seem to have the same characteristics as what he is doing. Although as an adult, I don't do things like rocking my chair. It's just one way that I express emotions. In the case of negative feelings, stimming seems to help me deal with them better. I don't know why.

It can be. I have friend who rocks in his chair, bounces on the sofa, in his wheel chair. He is in his 20s.

It doesn't mean that anything goes. If he rocks quite a lot in his wheel chair or on a wooden chair that can be quite dangerous, especially if over excited (either through happiness or sadness). I get him to sit back, although a certain amount doesn't matter just when it gets out of hand.

Just becuase slimming can help, doesn't mean it always help. It depend on what frame of mind that he is in. Some types of stimming helps when he is distressed like his needs, but not rocking this will further escalate into meltdown. I will try to redirect that to getting him up so he can walk (he has some mobility). he has damaged furniture and his wheelchair from meltdowns, so sometime it better to get him up, get him to focus on his breathing.

Obviously we try to find out what the problem is when appropriate.

I have found myslef rocking myself, but mostly I've paced.

That looked like normal kid behavior to me TBH. It's hard to tell from a 54 second video. But that sort of stimming can be dangerous because what if it tipped over and eventually the chair will break from all that rocking.

...Well...........I have only recently learned that I (I guess) " stimmed " .

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Looks like something I might do, so it's probably a stim. Right now I'm in a chair that can lean back and I regularly rock back and forth in it.

STIMMING TIME IS LEARNING TIME.

I think these are good moments to teach your son some academics. If you don't want to come up with ideas, I guess you can always get some flash cards, for instance, for math, or for Spanish vocabulary. Use your son's stimming behavior as the backbone to introduce him to new skills. Put down one card at a time: he'll have to pause the rocking to read. He is always welcome to go back to his rocking.

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That being said, rocking/shaking is not just for autistic people. I remember a trip I took with my wife to Canada while we were still dating. While sitting at the row of seats in the airport's waiting room, my wife started to shake her leg (she used to do that all the time). That was until the old lady sitting behind us turned around and shouted at my wife: "Would you please STOP THAT?!"

Oops...

First I will say that all 3 of my kids rock their chairs like that, even though only one of them is definitely ASD (one of the others is NT and the youngest is on the fence.) To me it seems to be a fairly typical "fidgety" behavior, especially for boys. That said, watching the video, this looks like stimming behavior to me. If it's a problem (for him or for you-- I know personally that chair-rocking drives me nuts when my sons do it, because it's disruptive and occasionally someone gets hurt from either pinching someone's finger or actually toppling the chair over) I would suggest trying an alternative outlet for the need to do something fidgety. In my family, putty has been wonderful. We love Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty. It's fun, all kids love it (it's not just for "special needs") and it definitely taps into that "I need to be doing something with my body" impulse. I homeschool my oldest son and putty is extremely helpful if he needs to feel more "grounded" when he is trying to actively listen or convey something, but his body's need to be more active is interfering. I also recommend getting a small fitness trampoline if you don't already have one... again, most kids love them but for fidgety kids and kinesthetic learners they are really useful tools and very appreciated by kids who need to move.

Non-autistic people stim too, just a lot less. Things like tapping your fingers on a desk, bouncing your leg up and down, and fiddling with random things are all forms of stimming. Autistic people just so it a lot more (for example I have rocked back and forth a bit while composing this message) and in a wider variety of ways.