Does hand flapping look ret*d?

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I get charged with assault and then get a criminal record. No thanks.

Sometimes attractive, trendy young women flap their hands and gasp in amazement when they are really excited. I am surprised no one else has made mention of this. Flapping per se isn't 'tarded unless it is done in an inappropriate or idiosyncratic manner.

david m:

I've seen this too, it's these excitable young women who say stuff like "OMG, did you see the cute guy?!" Or "Guess what?! He called me, he called me!" And then they kind of jump up and down and yell with shrill voices and giggle and YES, flap their hands.

I guess it looks odd when you do it outside of the appropriate interaction. I always move my hands, somehow. I flap them briefly if something bothers me or disgusts me, but I haven't had any comments, I guess it's because I don't do it for more than a couple of seconds.

Yes, exactly!

A little bit of flapping now and then is okay.

I don't think it makes a person look ret*d. It makes me feel sad that people think that way. Why don't heavy drinkers worry about how ret*d they look, when the get drunk, together. I shake/flap my hands ten times in a row, a couple of times, when I'm typing out a long article for a paper, in front of everybody in the communications room, of my clubhouse. Nobody complains about it, because they know I'm on the spectrum. A bigger guy, three years younger than myself, said that he likes how I have the hand shakes going on.

When people think you're weird because you flap your hands or whatever else, and you retaliate by force, all that changes is that they'll think that in addition you are also temperamental and perhaps dangerous. It also typically alienates you from people who may be in some way sympathetic.

I used to try to behave as normally as I could, from standing there doing absolutely nothing to copying actions that other people who were seen as 'normal' did, but it makes no difference. No matter what I do or don't do, something is still wrong and people stare at me. I don't bother now. If I feel a wish/need to do something (pacing is my big stim) I do it.



I clearly remember just playing a game on my own in the garden, and my mother telling me to stop it or come inside because people were going to think I was crazy. I was six years old at the time. Children are children, AS or non-AS. Unless they are doing something utterly bizarre, is anyone really going to think that a person of that age is anything other than what they are - a child playing?

No. It just looks as if the person is overstimulated or very excited.

My hand flapping isn't weird IMO it's more as if you slammed your hand in a door and shake it as if it's hurt (that's how I'd describe my new stim of hand flapping)