Why do kids with learning disabilities stim?

[adrianna22]

I've been hunting and looking around for specialised schools/units for DS..hopefully for next year as he is starting mainstream school this year.

I was at a specialist school which covers kids who mainly have learning difficulties, and I was talking to this parent, who was also checking out the school and then I saw her DS, who was really stimming and he kept repeatedly pushing the lorry and making it drop, over and over again, making him stim even more and when I tried to interact with him, he seemed like he was too engaged in what he was doing to listen to me.

Anyway, I stupidly ask the mum if her DS has autism; she then told me that she thought he did have it...his 8 by the way her child, but he has been tested 5 times by 5 different specialised autistic doctors and they all said no, but he has a moderate-severe learning disability.

I'm actually quite shocked, what her son was doing would warrant an autism diagnosis. Are learning disabilities similar to autism? I know you can have both. But the mum said he just had a leaning disability.

Maybe he wasn't assessed as fulfilling the triad of impairments necessary for a diagnosis of ASD, but that doesn't preclude him having autistic traits. Perhaps 'a learning disability' was the only diagnosis the paeds gave him?

An autism diagnosis is complex and wouldnt be made on the basis of stimming alone.
My dd stims but doesnt have asd, she does it for the sensory input. For example she will repeatedly twirl around and whilst she is doing it is impossible to communicate with her. this also gets worse when she is frightened, upset or stressed which could explain why the little boy was repeatedly stimming, he might have found the new school environment stressful and so needed additional sensory input to cope with it.

Hi zen1 thanks for replying, but I know some kids who did not fully meet the criteria for autism and they still got a diagnosis.

oramum thanks for replying. But her DS was really repetitive, and even when he seemed like he wasn't stimming, when he was playing with the lorry, he still was too engaged

My ds 'stims' - he twirls his hair/ribbon etc obsessively, spins, rolls on his back, bangs his head and turns it from side to side. He does it for sensory input, he has learning disabilities, and no diagnosis of ASD.

But, I also saw the boy looking at objects very closely. Like when he was rolling the truck, he looked closely at the wheels? Or is this again stimming?