I am a first time mother of a 7 month old baby girl. According to her
doctor, she is ahead on her milestones having sat up by 5 months and
crawling very well at 6 months. At now 7 months and one week, she pulls
herself into a standing position and is now attempting to "let go" and
balance. Although people are impressed by this, I am worried because
she is ALWAYS messing with her hands! Since she began to sit up on her own, she started with smacking them
together - not like a clap but rather in a vertical motion, hitting her hands against each other up and down. And now, just this past week, I noticed
her rolling her wrist to the side (rotating her hand back and forth) and then she looked at her hands with
this "holy moly" look and did it in front of her face! Now she will do
the hand smacking thing or the wrist rolling thing periodically during
the day.

She is ahead on her milestones, laughs, reacts with various emotions, favors certain people, is very attached to me, babbles, gives raspberries, squeals with delight, responds to her name, etc. and shows no other "odd" behaviors (the doctor was actually very impressed by her abilities at her age). She will give you a kiss if you ask her in spanish and in english, she gets irritated when I tell her no now, and is starting this awful whining when she is tired or fed up!! Other than the hand thing, she seems to be a very normal baby.

Unfortunately, Autism has overloaded the
internet and while my baby has no other signs of Autism and no
delays, an "odd" hand movement that becomes repetitive strikes the
worst fears especially in a first time parent. There seems to be no
information on the different stages of NORMAL hand discovery, movement,
etc. - Only warnings about hand or arm flapping.

My husband noticed that does this in response to us waving at her and feels this is her simply discovering what her hands can do... I am a worry wart apparently and have used google which led me to the autism concern.q

So, my questions are...what is with the hand play? Is this normal development? Is it only a concern if it were combined with a delay or social issue?