Present word count of WIP:  53,060

One of the main symptoms of Asperger’s is some kind of obsession or preoccupation with a particular subject or object or topic. For some, it’s trains. They can tell you all about every kind of train ever built. For others, it’s the Crimean War. Again, they can talk for hours about what led to it, where the battlefields were, etc.

With Jason, I had a hard time pinning down his particular obsession. He tended to fixate on a few particular videos, toys, books, computer games, or magazines (which were often related to a show or two with which he was obsessed). Looking back now, I’d have to say that, for him, the overarching obsession was Disney and it continues to this day.

At the time I compiled this list, however, I would have pegged it as media and media-related objects or toys, though there were other fixations:

Obsessions/Preoccupations

•  Anytime we go somewhere in the car, he has to take one or two small toys with him. He used to have to take them into wherever we were going–the store, the mall, church, a house we were visiting–but we’re gradually weaning him by making him leave them in the car.
• His latest obsession is the Powerpuff Girls and that’s all he will draw (and his drawings are spot-on, by the way). He’ll draw them on any paper…even drawing them into totally unrelated coloring books. It’s as if they have to be a part of his world.
• Early on, at ages 2 and 3, he was fascinated with globes and, later, maps.
• He knows all the planets and is fascinated with the stars and flying.
• Anything Disney. He devours any Disney catalogue that comes in the mail. He loves all Disney videos and tapes. He loves the Disney Store and Disneyland, but he won’t go on many of the rides. He’s really only interested in the characters.
• Lately, anything Lego…including Lego catalogues. He actually prefers Legoland to Disneyland now because it’s less crowded and the rides aren’t as scary. He LOVES his new Lego Island CD game on the computer, and he can’t wait to get his promised Lego Train Station at the end of next month.
• He can easily spend 2-3 hours on the computer if I let him. He had an early fixation on “My First Encyclopedia” and still quotes often from it.
• He had a “Sailor Moon” fixation based on the videos, but got teased a lot for singing the theme song at school and acting like Sailor Moon, so he doesn’t do it anymore.
• He loves Barbies and Polly Pocket toys (mainly because there’s lots of pink–his favorite color–and because the latter are so small…he loves small toys).
• He used to dress up in his sister’s dresses to re-enact favorite scenes from Disney movies (he always wants to play the female lead)…doesn’t do that as much anymore.
• He used to line up his smaller toys a certain way on his nightstand (as many as 15 different toys or figurines). He also used to be more obsessed about putting toys away in a certain order or way.
• His current obsessions seem to be Powerpuff Girls and Legos.
• If he watches a video or movie on TV he HAS to watch the whole thing, particularly the credits (he was already into credits at a very young age). If the video gets interrupted or paused, he won’t pick up where it left off. It has to be rewound and watched from the beginning in its entirety. It’s the same with a book, though he’s not as inflexible with an interrupted book.

I wasn’t sure, at times, where his obsessions ended and his routines began because he could be so obsessive about routines. Early on, Jason seemed to want particular routines that went beyond the norm. Indeed, the routines could become very complex as they developed.

If we did something one way, and he accepted it, then he wanted it that way every time thereafter. If we happened to unsuspectingly add something to the routine, and he accepted the addition, then the next day it had to stay part of the routine. This would go on in some cases in such a way as to make the routine ridiculously convoluted after a week or so:

Routines

• Food Routines:  Cheerios had to be served in a bowl from an early age…then he’d take 5 or 6 out and line them up and eat them one at a time until it was time to line up the next set of 5 or 6; French toast and bread had to be served with the crusts off, one slice on top of another, then cut vertically and horizontally four times each way so you ended up with 16 small pieces on top of 16 other small pieces (he wouldn’t eat them presented any other way); Vanilla ice cream will only be eaten if you present it to him with the spoon already in the ice cream (he has to have the spoon first and he only eats it from the bottom of the spoon, licking it off); Banana peels at first had to be cut off halfway down because he couldn’t stand the peels hanging down over his hand (we finally broke him down to accepting them hanging as long as there were no stringy parts hanging separately); Eggo pancakes have to be heated in our microwave exactly 1 minute and 20 seconds, then taken out and cooled for exactly 4 minutes (when they’re brought to him on a plate, he won’t eat them unless and until the three pancakes are positioned to look like Mickey Mouse; upsetting his food routines really causes him to lose control…it’s really the only time he throws any kind of mini-tantrum.
• Morning routine: This has gotten more relaxed lately, but he still insists on putting his right shoe on before his left shoe (same with socks). He tends to want to wear some of the same clothes and it’s really hard to get him to wear some new clothes, particularly when they are darker in color. Also, once it’s warm enough to wear shorts and he finally gets into wearing them, then when fall comes and it’s getting cooler again, it’s hard to get him switched back to wearing long pants.
• Bedtime routine: After scripture reading, family prayer, and a bedtime story, he won’t go to sleep until both my husband and I have taken turns saying, “Good night, sleep tight…” then he says, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite” and we say, “That’s right,” touch his nose and kiss him (plus lately I also have to blow kiss him on the neck). Something that was added to his routine later and remains to this day (unlike the bedtime story, the sayings, the touching on the nose, etc.) was a humidifier when he got sick. He liked the noise so much that when he got better he still insisted on it. We’ve replaced that today with an air purifier.

At the conclusion of my list, I wrote:

“Despite all his idiosyncrasies, Jason’s a very well-behaved little boy who sometimes seems to talk like a little man. The most he’ll do when he gets mad is grit his teeth (though his teacher says at school he’ll shake a bit and pump his arms up and down), go to his room, and slam the door. But he always says, “Sorry” later, forgives and forgets. He has no stage fright and is enjoying his classes at Riverside Children’s Theatre (as he enjoyed being in “Cinderella”)…We love him so much and just want to do our best to see that he starts enjoying school again.”

Tomorrow, I’ll share his developmental update from Second Grade. On Friday, I’ll skip ahead to another turning point for him–Fifth Grade.

Originally posted 2012-04-25 17:00:20.