My 10 month old son does a few things that concern me a bit. When he is crawling, he at times will pause, sit against the wall and hit his head against it a few times. He also rocks back and forth in his highchair a few times during his feedings. My son also likes to shake his head like "no", but he is not saying no. He started the head shaking because he was mimicking me and his dad and he will do it and look at us laughing - and wait for us to do it - like a game.

With hitting his head, he'll do it a few times while looking at us - I've found when we ignore the behavior (he has never done it hard or rapidly enough to hurt himself) - he stops after a couple times and crawls on to a toy or another activity.

With the rocking in the high chair (the only time he rocks) he will do it a couple of times over his feeding - each time he starts it lasts in duration maybe 1 -2 minutes.

He is easily distracted from these behaviors and the duration is very brief, but he is doing each of these things a couple/few times every day.

I raised it with his ped. and she advises that many babies go through phases doing these things and to keep an eye on whether the duration or frequency increases.

Otherwise, he appears to be doing well. He waves hi and bye-bye (he just started a few weeks ago- so he does not do it 100% of the time, but fairly consistently). He says "da-da" and he knows who daddy is (eg, he calls it out when daddy leaves the room and he looks at his daddy when I say "where's da-da"). No mama yet ;) He smiles, responds to his name consistently, seeks attention, is very affectionate, plays with his twin and generally interacts, including initiating interaction, with others. In sum, his social behavior seems pretty good.

I am worried by the other behaviors I described above because they are noted as "red flags" or stimming in many things I've read.

Any thoughts are appreciated!

:wave: I am not a dr. but I my favorite profession is being a mother of four including one with Autism. Your child sounds very normal. More than likely he hit his head by accident, and now is experimenting with it. Doing his own investigation, “hey that hurt when that happened, how hard can I hit the wall without it hurting? My normal children as well did that as babies. As for rocking- it’s fun! What I didn’t realize about my Autistic child when he was 10months old, until much later when I found out he was Autistic is: he never went through the pointing stage, it is age appropriate for babies to touch or point to objects to hear the name. He as well didn’t get too excited about playing games like peek a boo. I hope I helped- Brandi Weems

I agree - this behavior is probably not stimming. The fact that he's watching for your reaction means that he isn't stimming, but attention seeking. Autistic kids don't seek attention. Also, when our kids stim, they are tuning out of the environment. It sounds like your son is still completely aware of everything that's happening when he hits his head or shakes his head.