Obsessions?

meghans30

Trevor age 9 dx of ADHD, PDD, Anxiety is obsessed with construction trucks. His desired job at the moment? Large equipment operator, construction worker, crane operator He likes to build things and learns about his world through touching.  This may change of course, but how do you help obsessions?  While other 9 yo's are into sports and such Trevor wants to learn about excavators. I hear lots about spectrum kids obsessed with trains, but I thinks in this case, trucks are pretty similar! 

meghans30

He is also obsessed with machines and gears and creating his own (he will draw his own machines and write about them). It's very interesting. I do not want to squash his interest, but also would like to see him try new things.

meghans30

Thanks so much for your input!

-auntie- said:

Trains are one of the classics. I often wonder if there were autistic people before there were steam engines.

Special interests, aka "restricted and repetitive interests in the DSM, tend to break down into two catagories.

There are the stimmy things like ceiling fans and stuff that spins. These are often the gateway drug for more sophisticated SIs, but for some more impaired and atypical kids these are their jam.

No Stims

The other kind of SI tends to be something that comes from a catagory that meets one or both of two veins. Sometimes the SI is around something that is big, a little scary, and powerful- often the penultimate of whatever it is. This would include kids who get stuck on sharks, geological features and disasters, extreme weather phenomenon, disasters, large equipment, birds of prey, big cats, the Titanic, space, the Star Wars and Star trek frnachises. The other feature to most SI is the ability for them to be neatly catagorized and systemized abilities which are often strong for those on spectrum. Hurricanes have catagories, Earthquakes have the Richter Scale (a lot of people think Richter was on spectrum, btw), steam trains have Whyte notations, tonnage, horsepower, etc.

Large equipment is the only quirky interest. While is is interested in some of these other topics, they do not appear to be a special interest or obsession.

The bigger question is what to do about it. That depends on your expectations for the adult Trevor and how willing he is to be flexible around enjoying other things. A kid who is a one trick pony, who is too rigid about his SI to be able to relate to peers is going to be isolated in the mainstream. A kid who can enjoy a range of interests that his peers can relate to and enjoy as well as his own thing-discretely- is probably going to be OK. 

He is flexible. That is the thing about Trevor - the interest of large equipment is not typical for his age, but it's not the only interest. He does enjoy other things more typical - he decided to join the rec. soccer league, he likes to swim, video games...  I think I will work on him discussing large equipment discretely .

If he lives and breathes big equipment (which is kind of a little kid dorky thing in the eyes of his peers at this age) and can only talk about that with them, you may need to actively discourage this interest at this time. I get that you find this interesting- you're his mom and aren't maybe the most objective person out there. 

oh, I am asking because I know that while I find it interesting, such an interest makes his stick out even more than he does already!  Trying to find a balance, but maybe trying to go cold turkey for a bit would be a good idea to see if he is able to break away from it.  

I'd also look to note whether he's stuck in creating the same thing over and over. DS had a band mate who supposedly had Aspergers but was very atypical compared to those I know with that dx- he really stood out (he was homeschooled by his mom and I think she made some disasterous choices) and interacted only with me and the other uniform mom. It was sad. Every week he'd bring us a picture he drew for us, and every week it was the same sort of steampunk contraption- it was "perfect" because he got a lot of practice drawing the same thing again and again.

His drawings do vary.  Drawing in general is a way he calms him self and re-focuses.  A bit ago, his drawings focused on sharks and the ocean. He also draws trucks  

 We went cold turkey because trains were consuming my kid; but I know other parents who were able to restrict their kids' SI to a half hour access and talk before bed.

Interests tend to morph over time, DS has always loved trains but he's also gone through a number of other SIs- some of which (music, politics, yu-Gi-Oh!) have been useful for connecting with peers. Had we not taken trains away for a time, he would not have been as likely to have learned to enjoy other subjects.

Two other considerations-

1. It's critical he understands that his interests are not those of most of his peers and that rabbiting on about them or blurting random factoids is sort of pathetic and will make other kids think less of him. He needs to be respectful of other people's interests as well.

Yea, that's why I was asking what to do. We've been working on taking the perspective of others and understanding that in order to make true connections with peers you have to be willing to respect their interests.

2. You have to really watch for anxiety around this. We took trains away because having access to them triggered a cycle of anxiety that left him emotionally unavialble for learning or interacting with peers in any meaningful way. 

Interesting.  I will watch for this.

I was very skeptical about taking away the one thing DS "loved" and I challenged his psych about it. He told me that not all SIs are wholesome in nature- once puberty hits they can take a dark side- gambling, sexual fetishes, recreational drugs, weapons. If a kid hasn't learned that he can be OK without his beloved trains, how can you expect him to self regulate around something as addictive as sex or drugs?

Ds's psych convinced me by telling me about a local boy who sexually assaulted half a dozen girls because he wanted a girlfriend. He managed to penetrate a lifeguard at our community pool leaving DNA. The girls shared with a friend who lured him to a secluded spot where her friends beat him and left him for dead. Adam Lanza is another cautionary tale of a SI gone terribly wrong.

That said, if you and your DS can keep a handle on this, maybe it is something that could be a career down the line. It pays pretty well. Just be sure he has the social thinking abilities to be OK in a blue collar world. DS is working for the local tourist railroad this summer and will be doing weekends once the semester starts. He loves his job, for the most part and is getting along really well with his public facing coworkers as well as the grittier dudes who do the maintance and run the trains. He's working the Information Booth today which means dressing up in his uniform, standing on a street corner and talking about his favorite thing- and he's getting paid. DH and I have been laughing about the irony of this all week. If his psych knew, I'd never hear the end of it.

I would be totally ok with him working in this field. My father is a retired construction worker who did very well. Can I really see Trevor doing this? I'm not sure at this point, but I am thinking about options down the line.  We have some trade high schools as an option once he reaches the older grades and I would be ok with this as my brother's went a similar route.  Trevor is such a quirky kid. Sometimes I def see the ASD qualities, while other times he fits right in. 

meghans30

And he has added some new interests lately ... Cameo (his favorite color is green), he wants to learn archery... But, trucks always come back.

blondegirl74

My sons first special interest was at 21 months and it was cars and this one particular chapel that we have here in town. Then around 2.5/3 he got into clocks and then came the trains! Around 4.5 he went back to clocks for around 6 months and then at 5 we are solidly into trains. So far, it ha not gotten in the way at school and for him, IF we are in a situation that causes him anxiety and there is a way to access any kind of train he goes right to it and that's it. I try to limit his time on the iPad playing train games, but it can be hard. We are starting a social thinking group this fall, so I'm hoping it will tach him that his integrates are not the only ones and there is a time and place for it. I hope we never have to go cold turkey taking them away, but if that's what we have to do we will.

macchiatto

My son is obsessed with lions (and the color purple), which seems to fit into auntie's second category above. That was interesting to read about. He's only 5.5 (SPD, hypotonia, anxiety, delays in social skills, gross motor and fine motor, "at risk" for ASD) and I definitely don't feel like I have the answers but I'll share what we've done fwiw. At the prompting of his EI and early therapists, we've been working with him since he was 3 on being flexible and trying to expand his interests. He has an NT twin brother who has been somewhat helpful in getting him interested in superheroes and some of the more "typical" stuff for kids his age. 

We have done a good bit of "chaining"; I don't know if that's officially recommended or not but we gradually worked to help him expand from just lions to other big cats, to animals in general. We used purple to get him interested in the Hulk (and from there, other superheroes), since his brother and a lot of the other little kids he's around wanted to play superheroes. We reminded him that red and blue make purple to get him to start wearing other colors rather than insisting on a purple shirt every day (and his range of favorite colors has expanded quite a bit since then, though purple is still #1 by far and he'll discuss at length the various shades of purple). He's gotten better, but we have to revisit the flexibility thing often, and we still have trouble at times getting him to make any effort at interacting with peers who don't want to talk about or play with animals, or color purple pictures with him.

meghans30

See, it's not about the wheels. He will play with them appropriately in the sand, although at age 9 the playing is slowing as he matures. He likes the gears and figuring out how they work.  I'm really not sure where his interest will lead him.

Interesting to read about colors. Trevor's favorite us green. When given a choice from popsicles to clothing, he will choose green.  If I buy him a different color, he will wear it though.