Stimming, how long and what frequency is significant

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I'm looking into whether it is possible both me and my two sons might be on the spectrum. I notice my youngest rocks from one foot to the other sometimes. Also today I noticed him looking upwards and shaking his head from side to side for around 8seconds. When he gets anxious or excited, for example unwrapping some chocolate, that is when he does the side to side rocking. The head shaking is quite new but now I am looking out for it, I noticed he did it at dinner too. He has a speech delay, and does alot of repeating words, he likes to say when there is 2 of something, and likes to repeat words relating to vehicles, especially trains. He is almost 3. My question is, for a stim to be significant, how often is it usually seen in a 2/3 year old, and for how long. Young children can often do unusual gestures that might look like stims and I don't want to over react, or assume it is stimming.

You know, I don't know that this is defined concretely. Nothing I was asked really was. The terms were all fuzzy and subjective. It is normal for young children to do a lot of the same things that autistic kids do, and defining what is considered outside the norm I think is intentionally designed to be difficult for non-professionals to decipher. I don't think professionals time or necessarily even count incidents per a certain time interval. They observe and then decide subjectively based on experience.

That said, I think parents of autistic kids kind of develop a spidey-sense in that I think we can spot autistic kids if they fall into a certain range. I have had random people approach and ask if my son is autistic, or assume it, based on stimming behaviors.

That said, I would have no idea what metrics to give you.

The only thing I can say is that it will seem not normal. You will know if something looks abnormal. My son would start kind of snapping his fingers and hand flapping for a few seconds when he had to speak and was nervous.

I have rocked, slightly, my whole life. I didn't know it was odd, but looking back, I've never seen anyone NT doing it.

Mostly stimming isn't a problem though.
If you're trying to assess, just take your time, do the reading, and it will become clear. Then get a diagnosis if you like

My son flapped his arms behind him whenever he got excited. He did that from about 4 till 12-13 and had to really work to stop it.

My son would look out the corner of his eye at things. Staring at something like that while turning his head, or run along a fence staring through the gaps to see what was beyond the fence in blur. He loves to visual stim, glistening light on moving water. Etc.

Your boy turning his head might be this. 8 seconds is quite a while to be shaking his head, so could possibly have been that he was enjoying watching the lights on the ceiling while moving his head at the same time, this makes a trail, which is fun to watch if you're autistic!

Another stim my son has is that he loves weird noises, and those annoying electric toys used to make him over excited and get aggressive because he'd press the buttons again and again as fast as possible.

This is an old thread at this point. But lets not forget that "stimming" is normal behavior for NT kids too. Anyone who has chewed on his pen or tapped her feet has stimmed. And most babies that I know go through some stage of watching fans twirl.

The difference with autistic kids is that the stimming is intense to the point where they use it to tune out the world, at least sometimes. If you can't "get your kid back" from a stim, it's more likely to mean that they are autistic.

I'm so sad to hear that one of our own had his hand flapping "extinguished." There goes another potentially bitter autistic adult in the making. We as a society need to start differentiating between behavior that really is harmful (like biting or stepping out into traffic) from behavior that just makes us uncomfortable because it's visibly autistic. Don't make your kids live their whole lives in the autism closet. It's no better than making a gay kid pretend he's straight to please you.