6 yo preoccupied with his hands

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When my son is learning to read often one of the problems is that he will stop everything and start studying his hands- until he is redirected. he is on the spectrum and I was curious if this is behavior seen in other children who are autistic? Thank you for any input. Paul

My son is much younger, but he has the same problem, plus he likes my hands too, one of his stimms is that he like to clap his hands into mine in some sort of rythm and he can do that with no end. He can communicate while doing that and then I feel, he listen and understand more. I am still failing to understandm why. I would hope he will stop... he might not.
He is also look at his hands a lot, when he is listening to music or even whatching cartoons.

Lol, I'm still preoccupied with my hands!

I worked as an aide for a LFA individual. He did this. I never knew why, but eventually I picked it up. I find concentrating, starring, whatever you want to call it at your hand when you are feeling overwhelmed has a very soothing/calming/grounding effect try it the next time you are feeling that way and you will see why. It's just another thing like breathing or something of this nature to help calm your nerves.

My son didnt just stare at his hands, he had whole worlds with his hands, feet and our hands. My hands were lovingly caled, "Mommy Hands" and his dads hands, "Daddy Hands" his feet he called "Aye Aye's" since he was real small. he loved to play with our hands, have our hands play hide and seek, have our hands go to sleep and he wakes them up or vice versa. We couldnt sit next to him without him playing with our hands, thru his hands. Bed time was the same, him playing with our hands until he fell asleep. he would make his hands move like a puppet and they would talk to our hands...ugh!

He also can play with his hands, his baby sisters hands and just about anyones! He did make songs and rhythms too with our hands...funny PP mentioned that too.

He is 6 and while he still plays with our hands, it is much less then it was. It seems when he is not sure of what to do, or has no direction or ideas, he will resort to hand play.

All this is reassuring- thanks. Paul

That's one of the questions on one of the rating scales given parents to look at various behaviors. It must be somewhat common? I haven't ever noticed my son doing that, but he's got other interesting behaviors

Our 8 year old is very intrigued by his hands! He will stop ANYTHING to stare at them/pick at them/clap them/hyper extend them. Although we don't generally like to stop stims unless they are distracting (the clapping was interfering with other students' learning, as well as waking everyone in the household at odd hours of the night), we've found that it was necessary to redirect the hand obsession a little as it was seriously distracting him from all activities.

We approached it a few ways. First, we gave him something to DO with his hands while doing quiet work. In our case, it was holding and manipulating little toy action figures. He did not feel the need to actually look, just feel. Second, we would let him watch his movies for an extra half hour a day during ABA, but the movie would be paused every time he started picking at his hands. Third, we would put his ipod in front of him with a timer. If he could go ten seconds without stimming on his hands, he would get a great reward. We gradually increased it to 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, and so on.

He still does it ALL the time when playing, but he has an easier time refraining when it's necessary.

I'm also preoccupied with my hands.

I love looking at my hands. There are so many features to inspect on hands. My favorite is the skin on the back of my hands. It has a special pattern.

My son has been doing this since infanthood. The frequency has been reduced as he now has other stims and other interests, but he still does it.