Hello!
My daughter who just turned 3, flaps her hand when she talks in pretend play or "reading" a book, or explaining something. That's the only time she does it. It's primarily only at wrist and it looks like she's almost talking with her hands (like adults do) but to a little more extreme way since it's at her wrist. She usually does it when she gets very into her pretend play or explaining something. I didn't think much of it until a couple people brought it to my attention.
She is very bright for her age and has no delays in speech or social skills. She's actually WAY ahead in speech & reasoning for her age group. In terms of social skills, she's shy at first but once she warms up, she plays and starts talking and playing with others without a problem (both my husband and I are introverts so I'm not surprised about her shyness).
So once people brought this "Hand flapping" to my attention, I started reading more about autism and started worrying. She does a couple of other things that are usually listed with autism like she likes to line objects up when she plays sometimes, she sometimes (not often) tiptoes, she's kinda a picky eater.
However, what confuses me is that she has no delays in any way when it comes to her development and she's social and very affectionate to those closest to her. She's actually around age 4 when I look at developmental milestones. She started walking at 9/10 months, knew about 30 words by 14 months, knew how to sing the alphabet by 14 months, made multiple-word sentences by 18 months, her movement/coordination is great (she can play "sports" pretty well (throwing/catching/kicking ball, hopping on one foot...etc).
Another thing that she has done that kinda freaked us out at first is that before she goes to sleep she kinda lays on her pillow and rocks back and forth at her pelvis. It almost looks like masturbation. She even sometimes, comments that she need more comfortable pants to do this (she likes them thinner). She only does this when she falls asleep. Not sure if this behavior is normal or not, but since she has only been doing it in the privacy of her own room, we haven't tried telling her to stop doing it.
So do the above items sound like a disorder or could it be normal behavior? Also, any way to stop the hand movement?
Any help and opinions would be greatly appreciated it!