One of the most prevalent Autism Spectrum behaviors Peter has is his obsessive need/want to order and line objects up. Several months ago he would literally spend an hour moving 6 bottles of haircare products from one location to another on the second floor. He would carefully move the objects, organize them to his liking then immediately pick them up and start the entire process over. He would melt down if someone tried interrupting his process or moved things out of his order. Most of the time he would "play" with his toys this way unless someone was right there making him play with the toys correctly. Peter's doctor and EIS told Ryan and me that we needed to interrupt and prevent Peter from doing this lining up too much. While it's okay for him to do it occasionally for short periods of time it isn't okay for it to make up most of his solitary play. I've been working really hard since October to distract and redirect Peter when he starts lining things up.

Fortunately, Peter has made a lot of improvement; now most days he only does it once or twice for about 10 minutes. Then I bought those cute Little Tikes animals and the temptation was too much. Peter loves lining those animals up. Oops. I've had to hide them and only bring them out for a short time each day. Peter and I have a fun time moving those animals around. I try to make it more interactive by performing stunningly accurate imitations of animal sounds (except for the bunnny; what noise does a bunny make?) and requiring Peter to point and sign. Now if I could only get Peter to think cleaning and organizing the house is fun...
Bring Peter over to my shop and he can line up all of my junk. He sure had fun with the Texas and California storms in town.
ReplyDeleteThose toys are a super cute idea! Where did you get them?
ReplyDeleteYour blog is my favorite. We need to talk soon!
ReplyDeleteToday's toys are so innovative and educational.
ReplyDeleteYour pictures really capture how cute Peter is and you can really see those wheels turning in that head!
A bunny says, "Boing boing."
ReplyDeleteThat is one of my girls' favorite games. Jade likes to crack the eggs open into a frying pan and cook the animals up for lunch. They're farm animals raised for our consumption, so it really shouldn't bother me that much, but I almost always get stuck with the mouse, and that's just gross.
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