Is It Stimming, OCD, or Anxiety? How I Learned to Tell the Difference as a Parent
For a long time, I thought the hardest part of parenting was learning how to respond in the moment. What I did not expect was how difficult it would be to understand what I was even responding to.
I watched my child repeat movements, phrases, rituals. I watched behaviours ramp up when they were overwhelmed, tired, excited, or under pressure. I watched them disappear into patterns that looked comforting one day and distressing the next. And I kept asking myself the same question, quietly and then out loud.
Is this stimming
Is this anxiety
Is this OCD
Or am I getting it all wrong
I did not come to this question as a specialist. I came to it as a parent who could feel that something mattered here, even if I could not yet name it. Like many parents, I was trying to do the right thing without having the language to describe what I was seeing.
That uncertainty is where most of us start.
The confusion parents live inside
If you search online for repetitive behaviours in children, you fall into a tunnel almost immediately. One article tells you stimming is harmless and supportive. Another warns that compulsions should never be reinforced. A third suggests anxiety management strategies that contradict both.
What none of them capture is how blurred this all looks in real life.
My child did not present in neat categories. Their behaviours changed depending on the environment. Something that soothed them at home became rigid and distressing at school. A movement that helped them regulate during play became something they felt compelled to complete before they could move on.
And I realised that the real confusion was not about recognising a specific disorder. It was about intention, lived experience, and what those behaviours were costing my child.
What helped me begin to tell the difference
The shift for me came when I stopped asking what the behaviour looked like and started asking what it was doing for my child.
That sounds simple. It is not.
Stimming as regulation
Stimming is often described as self-stimulatory behaviour, but that definition never helped me much. What helped was noticing when my child used repetitive movement or sound to stay regulated.
These were behaviours that appeared during excitement, overwhelm, boredom, or sensory overload. They often looked rhythmic. They could be stopped without panic. If interrupted, my child might be annoyed or dysregulated, but not distressed.
Most importantly, these behaviours gave something back. My child seemed calmer after them. More present. More able to cope.
Once I saw that, I stopped trying to reduce them.
I learned to ask myself
Does this help my child stay in their body
Does it help them process what is happening around them
If the answer was yes, I learned to step back.
Anxiety-driven behaviours
Anxiety behaviours were harder to spot because they often masqueraded as habits.
These showed up around anticipation. Before school. Before transitions. Before social situations. They were often linked to reassurance seeking, avoidance, or control.
The key difference for me was flexibility.
Anxiety-driven behaviours could shift. If the environment changed, the behaviour sometimes faded. If reassurance was given, it could soften. These behaviours rose and fell with stress levels.
They were not soothing in the same way stimming was. They were protective.
I stopped asking how to stop them and started asking what my child was worried about, even when they could not articulate it themselves.
When behaviours tipped into compulsion
OCD carries a sense of urgency. There is a sense of something bad happening if the behaviour is not completed. Interruptions caused panic rather than dysregulation. Relief came only briefly, and the behaviour needed repeating again and again.
These were not behaviours my child chose. They were behaviours that seemed to choose my child.
What helped me distinguish compulsion from stimming was distress.
If the behaviour increased anxiety rather than reducing it
If it felt rigid rather than regulating
If my child described feeling trapped inside it
I knew I was dealing with something different.
This was the point where I stopped trying to interpret everything myself and started mentally documenting and recognising patterns instead.
Why masking makes this harder
Masking complicates everything.
A child who masks learns very early which behaviours are acceptable and which are not. Regulations that happen freely at home may be suppressed in public. Anxiety may be hidden until it erupts somewhere safe. Compulsions may be performed silently or mentally rather than outwardly.
This means parents often see the aftermath, not the trigger.
I learned that some of my child’s most intense behaviours were not new problems. They were the release valve after holding everything together elsewhere.
Understanding this stopped me from treating behaviours as isolated incidents. They were part of a larger system.
Letting go of the need to categorise perfectly
One of the most freeing realisations I had was that I did not need to correctly identify every behaviour in order to respond with care.
I needed to know three things
Is my child distressed
Is this behaviour helping or hurting them
What support does this moment require
Sometimes the answer was space. Sometimes reassurance. Sometimes professional input. Often a ‘reset’ squeeze/hug. Sometimes nothing at all.
I stopped asking myself whether I was reinforcing something wrong and started asking whether my child felt safe.
That changed everything.
What I wish I had known earlier
I wish I had known that behaviours can sit in more than one category. That a child can stim and experience anxiety and have compulsions without any of those cancelling the others out.
I wish I had known that parental instinct is data, not diagnosis. Noticing patterns is not the same as recognising a disorder in a child.
And I wish I had known that it is allowed to take time.
Parents are often pressured to either act immediately or dismiss concerns entirely. The middle ground, observation, reflection, gentle curiosity, is rarely encouraged. But it is where understanding grows.
For parents standing where I once stood
If you are watching your child and feeling that same knot of uncertainty, you are not failing. You are paying attention.
You do not need to become an expert overnight. You do not need to have the right language yet. You need permission to notice without judgement.
Start with curiosity. Write things down. Look for patterns, not problems. Ask what the behaviour gives and what it costs.
And remember that understanding your child is not about fixing them. It is about meeting them where they are.
That is something we are allowed to learn slowly.
About me
I am a married mother of four children. One of those children is our granddaughter, for whom we are legal guardians and kinship carers. I run a small business, and I love to write, which is how this blog came to be. I write about family life, kinship care, and my experiences living with chronic illness and disability, including ME CFS, spinal stenosis, TMJD, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia. I am also very aware that I am doing all of this in my mid-forties, which still surprises me some days.
You’re not alone here. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
I stopped focusing on how the behaviour looked and started noticing what it did. Stimming usually helped my child regulate. Anxiety driven behaviours often appeared around anticipation and softened when stress reduced.
-
Yes I believe so. That overlap was one of the hardest things to understand. The same behaviour could be regulating in one situation and anxiety driven in another, depending on pressure, environment, and fatigue.
-
For me, the difference was distress. Compulsions carried urgency and fear if they were interrupted. They did not soothe my child in the long term and often increased anxiety rather than reducing it.
-
I learned that stopping behaviours without understanding them often caused more harm than good. My focus shifted to whether the behaviour helped my child feel safer or more overwhelmed.
-
Absolutely. Masking meant many behaviours only appeared at home, after my child had spent the day holding themselves together elsewhere.
