What kinds of obsessions? | Autism PDD
current among my students are: Willy Wonka, The Wizard of Oz, fans, electrical plugs, and monsters.WATER. We obsess over water, or really, liquid. Bath tub, toilet, kitchen sink, pool, mommy's coffee......if it is wet, we love it.
We must have to similar toys so that he has one in each hand. Usually beanies, often the same color or texture etc.
Shredding paper. OBSESSED with it. Any paper within his reach will be in a million pieces in about 3 minutes or less.
Our newest obsession is my fridge. Or would that just be a fascination? ALL day every other minute he is in there just touching and moving things around. I really hope this one passes, he got into my entire supply of hot dogs (4 packs since they were on sale) and I found little pieces of hot dog all through my house. And we finger painted with the chocolate pudding I keep for his medicine.....yay.
My son loves monsters, religion (talking about the devil or the pope; he doesn't care which one) infomercials.
my son loves the water and right now he is obssed with the deep end,he couldent stop talking at swimming lessons this morning,
"am i in the deep end" Where is the deep end?,am i going to swim to the deep end?How deep is the deep end!!
Also Cars and Thomas the tank.
I think I mentioned before that my son is fascinated with his classmates names. He has all 17 first and last names memorized (and can spell them, etc.), and he loves to write them in lists, alphabetize them, etc. I didn't really think of it as an obsession until I realized he did the same thing with his T-K classmates names last year. He probably has more 'interaction' with the names than the kids."Jackson Tacks" - a fictional character based on several pre-existing concepts in TV, movies and videogames. Aiden has spent much time over the past 3 year perfecting this character and everything about the world in which he exists, with meticulous attention to a perfectionist level of detail.
RULES - nothing exists for Aiden, but for the rules that govern. I just played a game with him this evening with his toys (which actually aren't toys). This involved 45 minutes of setting him detailing the rules and 15 minutes of actually playing the game. He is utterly unable to play unless he is setting up rules in advance or as he goes. This is one reason that most children very quickly push away from him, losing interest or rejecting him based on his need for his rules to dominate any sort of play that should otherwise be free-flowing.
In response to a post above, Aiden has also memorized how to spell all of his classmates' names, as well as where they come from. They had a little assignment about this, where they shared where they were born. He remembers all 19.
ds started with thomas - it was great he learnt SO much thru thomas.
Then puzzles - that was ok but spooked me a little.
went on to the lengths of movies - 1hr 32mins 2 hrs 15mins etc.. I hated that 1.
now has become fixed on math - if he's a really good boy in skool he gets extra math homework. he does sums all the time in his head (he's not aspie)
he has a little survey about the best film and funniest joke going on right now, it's actualy quite a lengthy survey because you have to list the films and jokes in order of preference.
I dislike all obsessions. I suppose there are worse things tho.
my dear brother Nick has a lot of "obsessions". He started with Thomas, and then, real trains. He has liked some cartoon characters such as.. Dora, Blue's Clues, etc, most recent though was Foster's home for imaginary friends, then he jumped to the backyardigans especially Pablo- that is his favorite character right now. But he still loves stuffed animals (his bed is so full
~Wendy~
I would be interested to know when some of these obsessions really takehold. Jasper will be 4 in late Jan, so many of his obsessions are still age
appropriate. All our NT friends also LOVE LOVE LOVE CARS (the movie)
and Thomas the tank engine. When he was younger he really liked
perseverating on lists i.e. : What are some other things that could be
wrong with a house? What other kinds of birds can't fly? He would be
happy if we went on and on, but he was pretty easy to redirect. Lately his
love of Thomas and all things train related seem to be growing by the
day. But, like I said may boys this age are Thomas freaks. Will we have to
wait and see? Is it a good idea to continue redirecting him when the train
conversation just becomes too much? It's difficult to know since with NT
kids, you can really indulge some of their current faves without worrying.
With Jasper, I wonder what is too much? What is too little? I'm not afraid
of obsessions, I just want to know how to mange them in the context of
his social learning. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Megan (HFA, age 11) is obsessed with "My Little Ponies" and has been for about 4 years now. Sometimes I feel like they are taking over the house!When she was a preschooler, my daughter was obsessed with elephants and trains, specifically all the Thomas the Tank Engine characters. She also really enjoyed pulling the buttons off my husbands recliner and eating the stuffing out of it, but that's a whole other subject. 
Now she LOVES pokemon cards and beanie babies.
When my son was little, it was sticks. And anything that resembled a stick. So that is how he feel in love with giraffes and from there it expanded to all types of exotic animals. He knows TONS about every rare animal from all over the world that you'd ever want to know. This is an obsession that's about 13 years old.
Oddly, he's terrified of REAL animals.
anything long and skinny and colorful. Straws, markers, pencils, bubble wands, paint brushes, etc. If its long and skinny she considers it hers. She know exactly how many she has and where every single one of them is located at any given time.
She takes with her everytime she leaves the house, no matter where she goes. And she guards them with her life!
her other obsession would be video games. mostly, Mario and Yoshi... SHE LOVES YOSHI.
We are obssessed with the following -
Mc donalds - or anything to do with it. BURGERS !! Hardly eats them, just watches them. Loves the happy meal toys, when he was small he used to rummage around peoples houses, find happy meal toys and then show me the golden ' M 'on the label.
Thomas the tank engineand trains in general.
Shrek - the movie, anything associated with Shrek he watches this at least twice a day and has done so for the past year.
Tractors and Diggers ( Big wheels !! )
Post boxes
Red garage doors - in fact most of his obssessions seem to be consistant with the colour red.
Counts red cars.
Oh I could sit here forever and list, basically what the Wock takes an interest in he does in a big way. We lose one obssession and gain another, then the old one comes back again. The curent big one is breakfast cereals. Carries a box round with him wherever he goes. We stand and look at Breakfast cereal boxes in the supermarkets t'is hillairious. Never take Wock shopping if you are in a rush, he finds pictures of burgers, strawberries and cereals everywhere.
Whatever floats his boat I say ! He expresses himself through his obssessions which is a positive.
Wocksmum
Teletubbies. But I think my son is holding on to that because he knows it annoys his father and me.
He's also very obsessed with Halloween. Poor kid. I hate decorating and he wants to buy all that stuff in the store, which I refuse to do. Lights. Any kind of lights. And it started at about 6 mos. My husband would take him to the local Home Depot and if they didn't go past the lights he would scream. He would just sit in his car seat and stare at them. Then scream again when it was time to go. He now has a whole wall of shelves with different kinds of lights (Ex: lava lamp, neon light etc). We used to have to hide the xmas lights. He needs to watch the Simpsons everynight at 6pm. (I guess that is more of a consistancy thing), And he has obessions that change but they are mostly related to video games or compute games. His latest obession one the SIMS computer game. Dinosaurs; bugs; snakes; rocks; sand; world map (wanted to know how animals could have migrated without the help of man); plants; space. Etc...
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