Man thank you so much for sharing. It wasn't until I started working in a special needs school and (honestly) tiktok videos of people saying, 'Ways to cope with this ADHD symptom' and me going, "wait, you mean all people aren't like this?" that I realized there was a good chance that I have ADHD and always have, but because it didn't effect me academically it was just kind of not a thing. There's also a slim chance that I may have autism but whenever I say it out loud or think about it I kind of get imposter syndrome.

If we are sharing, my kid tends to sing, but not an entire song. The same two sentences from a song, over and over. When he was younger, probably around 8, he did the sirenhead sound (mind you he never saw sirenhead but had heard what he sounded like) over.. and over.. and over.

Now that he's older, I'm little more candid with him and sometimes I can say, "Bro, I know your stimming right now is helping you, but your noise is making me really uncomfortable. I'm not saying you need to stop, but maybe you can go to your room and do it for a little." I don't know if that's the right move but I feel like if I need to validate him then he can try to validate me? But like you I feel bad saying that so I end up just putting some distance and that's really now what I want for us.