My son actually had screaming fits that started with him pinching his skin and then escalating to scratching behind his ears until he bled. He was seeing a psychiatrist at Children's hospital at this time, but she never saw him have one of these episodes so she kept telling me it was a behavior problem because I wasn't giving him something. After about three years of the same thing, she finally got to see one of his episodes and she immediately scheduled him for an EEG. They found that he was never seizure free. Once we had this diagnosis, we were able to put him on siezure medication and things improved.

I have because I suspected Petite Mal seizures. My girl occasionally stares for long periods. Like you, the initial test showed nothing. The subsequent test wasn't given due to scheduling problems. Hmmm? Is that a pattern? We were offered an anti-depressant to which we said, "NO!" and good-bye to that neurologist. Sometimes they think you just want to "give your child something." I don't and didn't like the offer so easily given. BTW, staring episodes have diminished to almost non-occurring. Stemming by tapping corners of any and everything has stopped. Sometimes we just need to give our babies love and time. Early intervention is important, but it is also important to know when to say enough.

My son has "staring" spells and also will stop mid-action (this is more concerning) even in play for a few seconds at a time. And has sleep issues….
I have known other children who do have have a lot of staring spelling, odd eye movements, or really just semi-frequently seem "out of it" but parents most often say the doctors are not concerned (a few themselves aren't concerned) I am confused as to why.
An reg is not a super easy test, but it isn't incredibly complicated. Insurance (all minors with autism should be able to get medicaid at least) covers it….so why not if there is a concern?

it is very common for doctors to ask to have an EEG done when in comes to ASD children. There are a few reasons, fist if the child has sleep issues, second if the child has seizure like symptoms, brought on by possible medication side effects. And finally because seizure activity is fairly common in ASD children as a secondary diagnosis.

We had to have a second one done for our daughter because the first one did not work out to well because she was uncooperative. She has movement in her sleep so they suspected it was a medication related side effect however they wanted to rule out epilepsy. We had the second one done and they saw the movement in sleep but found out there was not any neurological issue going on.

If you are not having issues and the child is not having any seizures of any kind then you may want to not have a second one done if the first was negative.

I asked our developmental ped if he thought we should see a neuro to get an EEG. His position was that it would be a waste if time and money because the EEG wasn't going to tell us anything unless he was have so many seizures a day that it was almost constant and at that point, there wouldn't be much question because it would be pretty obvious.
I'm sure other clinicians have differing opinions but that was our guys opinion.