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Rituals and Obsessions in ASD Children

 

 

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds soooo familiar...

Anonymous said...

My son had the same problem. What we started doing is taking a picture of the snack, printed out fold the pic and put it in his pants pocket. On back of the pic I would write this is your snack for today..mom. It worked, now that he's 11 he no longer needs that. Best of Luck!

Anonymous said...

Could you make flash cards or picture cards of the snack and put it in his pocket? He'd have the power to see what he has at anytime. Visuals can be important.

Anonymous said...

We have done something similar with my son we took one of the foam boards that u can buy at Walmart and printed out picture and words an extra to put on the foam board and laminated the other and he does his day pretty much according to the foam board..... We have even found it to be help for getting his winter items on in the morning and anything that a set schedule would help with such as bedtime then he does not have to think about each item until he does it ..... It seems no matter what though he becomes fixated on certain things

Anonymous said...

My daughter is 13 and she does the same thing. I have her daily schedule written down in her Ipad so she can look at it throughout the day. I also have her breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks written down for the week so she can look it up as often as she wants. Makes life sooooo much easier. Good luck.

Anonymous said...

OK, if someone can help me please do, My son does this also..but his doctors say not to encourage it..don't do cards and foam boards, stuff like that cause it is only going to make him more likely to keep doing it.his doc says that I baby my son when I cater to his OCD behavior. I have come unglued by this and don't know what to do.His doc says we need to work on getting him able to deal and cope with REAL life, and as he gets older , he is 11, he can't be carrying around cards and stuff to calm him, I am so confused!

Anonymous said...

get a new dr...it's not catering to them, it's keeping sane!

Anonymous said...

i agree... I believe that you need to get a new doctor...I do not have a child with aspergers but I do have family members with other disorders and I believe that you should do for them what you can to make their life easier. If a picture or schedule will help them get through their day better give it to them. Life is hard enough without the added stress. Its your job to protect and nurture your child, thats not babying him. Its simply being a good mother.

Anonymous said...

OK you're all going to yell at me but my Aspie is also ADHD and I put him on Ritalin and while it's in effect, he has few to no OCD issues. When it wears off, they're back, but with it he can function without perseverative thoughts. He's in a normal first grade and doing great - as long as he has his "focus dust".

Anonymous said...

Hallie, whatever works for you. All the stims made my son's ocd much worse. We found Abilify helped tremendously!

Anonymous said...

I gave my son 3 baseball cards. He gives me a card when he asks a question. Once he is our of cards he cannot ask anymore about that topic. We weaned the cards and now it's a reminder" you already know the answer, think about it"

Anonymous said...

Without knowing the function for this behaviour, something you can try is to allow him to ask the question once and answer. If he asks again, remind him that he has already asked and this time have him write the question and answer down in a notebook. Then, anytime he asks again - tell him to check his notebook for the answer.

Anonymous said...

It is important to find out what the function of his behaviour is because he could be asking these questions repeatedly for various reasons ie: he wants attention, he likes the way the question sounds, he like what his snack is and is worried that he will not get it, etc

Anonymous said...

This is so familiar, I didn't realise that his asking the same thing over and over was a ritual but looking at it now it's so obvious... I haven't got any answers but thank you for posting this.

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