At age 7 my son used to flap his hands when he was excited, which was often, and because of this and the fact that the words he used in his speech sounded more like an adult than a little kid, some people thought he has Asperger's--even my sister, who thought the developmental pediatrician had to be wrong when she told us he didn't have it. He was also very expressive and animated when he talked.

My son doesn't have Asperger's because he doesn't have any deficit in social skills, has more friends than I ever had, can read body language to the point that it sometimes seems he can read my mind, loves to use figurative language and enjoys books with a lot of figurative language, has no trouble looking anyone in the eye and his friends describe him as smart and funny. He sometimes likes to use different voices for different characters when he reads or makes up jokes. I think all of his friends in his musical theater class do this too. I think all the kids in his class, ages 4 - 19, are all very smart and kind of quirky and so much fun. My son is just a little quirkier than the others.

One of his friends even asked me why he is similar in some ways to another kid he knows who does have Asperger's. I think one of the main reasons my son seems similar to someone with Asperger's is because he has sensory integration dysfunction which he says causes him to feel like he has excess energy in his hands that he has to get rid of. He doesn't do it as much now, only when he is extremely nervous, like outside the room where the spelling bee was held. He didn't do it on stage because now that he is 10 he knows that it looks a little strange and he cares a little more about how he looks to other people than he used to. At seven he didn't care that much what people thought about him.

I found that he was worse with the flapping whenever he ate or drank something containing Red Dye #40 so I tried to keep him away from that whenever we were in public.

Before I found out that he had sensory integration issues, I didn't know what to tell people about his quirky hand flapping other than the "overexcitabilities" I had read about.