Oral/Vocal/Mouth stimming?

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Hi people

I haven't read much about this, but I have just been realising lately that I tend to do a lot of stuff to do with my mouth, like constantly making silly noises, singing snippets of songs/jingles because some word may have triggered the association or who knows where from, pressing my lips together, whistling, copying funny accents/phrases I hear on TV, an obsession with eating repetitive type food (chips,m&ms, popcorn, etc), chattering teeth together to a beat, I used to chew on/suck objects a lot as a child, etc, etc....

Is this a form of stimming? Feels like it to me...

I do almost all of the things you mentioned, and I do believe it is a form of stimming.

My daughter used to do it and I viewed it as stimming.

Yes, I believe my stims are mostly oral - I used to do something with my lips all my life still I started smoking. I still do the other thing occasionally too. Eating repetitive foods is an excellent description for me! Nuts, chips, etc. Lots of nail-biting and pencil-chewing as a child. But therapists, of course, always related it to insufficient breast-feeding as a baby. It's only lately that I've been thinking of it as stims.

Mmhmm, I still do all that: echolalia, singing/humming, moving my tongue around, moving my tongue up behind my uvula and into the back of my nasal cavity, and all that good stuff.

Yes. Possibly such inconspicuous stimming was the only type Mum would allow.......adults were pretty strict about "fidgeting" back then. I also wiggle my toes a lot.

Yeah. I was much more severely autistic as a kid and I used to make a weird loud noise with my voice all the time. Haven't done it in years though.

Talking to myself and my echolalia. I tend to mimic sounds i hear too and also make a high pitched humming sound when I am very excited.

I hum snippets of songs that are stuck in my head. I try to do it only when I'm alone, but it's becoming such a habit that I'm starting to do it around other people too.

Yes, I do think those are all potential stims. When I was really little I used to suck my thumb, until an aunt called me a "baby" and I forced myself to stop. Then I went on to "blow kisses" at things... until my mom asked me, "What the heck is THAT?!" and basically embarrassed me out of it, too... I've always bit my nails and I still put necklaces in my mouth, if they're on a long enough chain. I also tend to whistle spontaneously, especially when alone or bored. I also occasionally do this thing where I trace my thumbnail along the ridges of my teeth, from one side of my mouth to the other... Yeah... I'm sure I'll remember more things after I post this, too...

I am constantly discarding and replacing stims that have to do with the mouth--but ones that seem to stay are drawing my upper lip up until it's touching my nose and sniffing, just generally moving my mouth, humming while making my throat contract (which my mom finds really distracting, and nibbling on my lip or gritting my teeth in response to sounds or textures or movements that I like.

when I don't know what to do in a social situation I usually start making noises like squeeking or churping...other times I fall back on the phrase 'I like cats'

I also like repeating things from stuff that I've heard: like 'We're not a team, we're a time bomb' from the Avengers trailer/film or 'Shame on you, John Watson. Mrs. Hudson leave Baker street? England would fall!' from BBC's Sherlock.

I will sing the chorus of song I like all the time. Yes I would consider it a stim. It calms me when I do it so that constitutes a stim in my mind.

Some times I repeat phrases that I have made up or just random things over and over. My more recent ones are "Bless you said the people in China!" and "Moo!"

I used to make this weird sound by moving air between my cheeks and gums but have since stopped doing it. I still like to chew on pens and other things though, but I try to be more discreet about it. For example, I will play with the battery cover to the TV remote with my mouth, but I don't bite down hard on it so I don't damage it. I also take the ink out of BIC pens and bite off the empty part of the reservoir and play with the little piece of plastic with my incisors. Then again, I will play with almost anything clean with my teeth. This all dates back to my childhood too so I guess that this is more confirmation of AS for me.

Another verbal stim, if you will, is talking to myself. This is something I do almost constantly as a way to figure out problems. I tend to think it is something I do as a memory device too as I usually have to repeat back things like order numbers and the price of orders when at work or else I will forget them due to my extremely bad short term memory.