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insistence on same route

luvmybaby28luvmybaby28 member
in Special Needs

my lo, almost 2, used to fuss if we would deviate from the route to the park starting about 6 months ago.  He would fuss and calm down if we turned to go to the park.  Now, he flips out if we go a different way, so walking away from the park in the opposite direction or going on any walk and not going to the park.  Is this the beginning of insisting on the same route to school?  He usually will freak out for a minute and then calm down, but today he was really flipping out so I turned around and headed to the park.  I then took him out of his little coupe car and he just turned it around as soon as we walked there and insisted on walking home.  There was nobody at the park, but it seemed like he just wanted to go there and then leave, like completing a goal or something.

He kept turning around and looking at me smiling really big when I started walking there.  Is this anxiety?  Sensory?  help please.  Is this something aba would help?

he doesn't care about a routine in the sense that we can wake up and either go out to eat, go shopping, go swimming, or go to the museum.  So no order to events other than this so far.

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Re: insistence on same route

  • SpocklesSpockles member
    My son with ASD also likes to go on similar routes. He doesn't like to deviate from a specific route.  I think it has to do with it being predictable. It's familiar and they know what to expect. Going a different way might be scary to our ASD kids, but we need to help them work through it. My best advice is deliberate sabotage. Don't always go the same route. Mix up the route that you go to help him learn to be more flexible. This has helped DS a lot. I think that ABA would be able to help you with this behavior. Good luck!
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  • MirandaHobbesMirandaHobbes member
    I used to think this was cute, but then I learned about deliberate sabotage. Like you said, it's cute and fun and peaceful seeing him giving you big grins for going "the right way!" DS loved driving to school following a little creek in our neighborhood. He would laugh and talk about the creek, ask questions about it, etc. Then it dawned on me that it was time to change it up. Now I literally go a different way every day and he's fine with that. Idk if your son is doing this yet, but at age 3 mine went through a wicked phase of insisting on who sat where at the dinner table. Our teachers told us very sternly that we better nip that in the bud fast or he'd still be doing it while he was a teenager. So despite his anguished cries, we simply repeat over and over that "sometimes mommy sits here and sometimes mommy sits there. and that's OKAY." It's partly a typical toddler/preschooler control thing, and partly an anxiety ASD-thing. Either way it's not cool and he has to learn how to deal.
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  • luvmybaby28luvmybaby28 member
    image-auntie-:

    My son had this behavior starting from about 18 months. He was fully verbal, so his insistance took the form of him telling me what route he wanted me to take. In his case it was anxiety driven- he was looking to avoid or to observe certain landmarks on the routes to various places we went. He would advocate for one mall (got to pass two RR crossings) over the other which passed a RC cemetery with a large crucifix.

    The way you describe your situation, where getting to a goal seems to trump the experience there has a real OCD-like feel to it. These sorts of things are also anxiety driven.

    I can't wrap my mind around any way you could realistically ascribe this to a sensory processing disorder. There's no way to know if this was a one off thing for him or the start of a dysfunctional repetitive behavior- time will sort that out.

    I am not trying to ascribe it to spd, in fact, I don't know if he has any sensory issues, but I thought all asd toddlers do.  I am just confused, because I always also read that toddlers love consistency and routine, so it seems somewhat normal, though he has always been anxious at new places when we first get there.  So I know that he does have anxiety sometimes.
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  • bugmommybugmommy
    imageluvmybaby28:
    image-auntie-:

    My son had this behavior starting from about 18 months. He was fully verbal, so his insistance took the form of him telling me what route he wanted me to take. In his case it was anxiety driven- he was looking to avoid or to observe certain landmarks on the routes to various places we went. He would advocate for one mall (got to pass two RR crossings) over the other which passed a RC cemetery with a large crucifix.

    The way you describe your situation, where getting to a goal seems to trump the experience there has a real OCD-like feel to it. These sorts of things are also anxiety driven.

    I can't wrap my mind around any way you could realistically ascribe this to a sensory processing disorder. There's no way to know if this was a one off thing for him or the start of a dysfunctional repetitive behavior- time will sort that out.

    I am not trying to ascribe it to spd, in fact, I don't know if he has any sensory issues, but I thought all asd toddlers do.  I am just confused, because I always also read that toddlers love consistency and routine, so it seems somewhat normal, though he has always been anxious at new places when we first get there.  So I know that he does have anxiety sometimes.

    This is kind of hard to explain, particularly if  your ASD child is your first (like with me), but with a typical child they like to know what comes next.  If you present something different they might be a bit shy or resist a bit but nothing big - honestly a lot of them wouldn't even notice something as minor as a change in route as long as nothing else changed.  With an ASD child the most minor change can result in a meltdown (change in weather, route, hat worn on the trip, etc.)  For my older DS just doing the school/park/gym was at the absolute top end of his ability so any minor change outside of that would set him off.  It's like normal toddler anxiety times 1000. 

    The rule in my house is if you start "needing" something, I'm probably going to change it.  Dinner table positions, order of routine, car seat positions, etc.  My mantra is "what will happen if we change?"  I constantly enforce that change isn't a big deal, just something we deal with.  Honestly a sibling is great for this.  I frequently don't have the option to cater to either of their whims.

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