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Dealing with obsessions and routines

stardust66

Hello. My son is nearly 4, and having assessments for ASD. One of the main issues which is causing problems for us at the moment is his obsessiveness and his insistence for routines. I'm wondering how I ought to be handling this. As he does not have a diagnosis yet, one way or the other, the health professionals are not giving me any advice on how to handle things like this.

Examples are: he likes everything to happen in the same way, and in the same order every day. As a general rule, I try to keep routines similar, but obviously things have to change. If something happens differently he will shriek and scream and often now go into a full tantrum. This could be something like the order I put things on the breakfast table, or the order I get him dressed, or the things I say to him at bedtime, or the order we read his reading flash cards in.

This also causes difficulties when we are out and about. He is obsessed with automatic doors on shops and hand dryers. When going into a shop he insists on waiting for the doors to shut fully before we go to open them. This can take ages, as you can imagine, especially in a busy supermarket. He also insists on going into the toilets in shops/ clinics etc to try the hand dryers, and insists on a specific order to go round the supermarket. If things do not happen in the way he wants them, he goes into utter meltdown: screaming and shrieking and tantrumming, which is tougher out in public.

How should I be dealing with this? Should I just be firm and say "no", that he does not get it his way all the time, and ignore the meltdowns. Or should I be going with his routines and obesssions in order to keep him calm and stress-free, however hard they make life for me? I do sometimes wonder if he is just being a spoilt child, or if this is really part of a wider problem.

Also, he likes to exclusively about his obessions: at the moment hand dryers. I can do this up to a point, but when it is at every meal table, on every car journey, and every other conversation, it starts to drive me a bit mad. Again: should I be forcing him to talk about other topics, and telling him that is enough about hand dryers, or should I be going along with him, and letting him chat about this all the time. I really don't know what is best for him in the long run.

Parents

  • Making a positive light of his obsessions as you describe them certainly sounds like good strategy, but also look at the environmental factors behind some of these routines. The routines are needed in order to establish some sort of personal control within what for him is a very unpredictable world.

    That means anticipating some of the stresses encountered particularly when out and about. The whoosh of hand driers might actually be soothing or reassuring. But there are other noises in supermarkets he may not like. Also there will be conflicting and multi-directional sounds which can make things worse.

    You say he has a preferred route around the supermarket, does that indicate that some of the environments are easier to deal with once he has settled? Refrigeration units can be particularly unsettling - you might be able to filter it out and not notice it - he may find the mixed noise environment of refrigerator units unsettling. The queues at tills can be very noisy places where you are stuck while waiting your turn, and cannot move away from adverse noise or close proximity to strangers. If he is sensitive to smells consider the differences between the bakery, meat and detergent areas of the supermarket.

    Also before entering the supermarket what sources of stress are there that might make him more unsettled before he goes in? Apart from the fascination he has with the automatic doors is there also an element of fear? To him passing through automatic doors may create all kinds of irrational fears like them closing on him suddenly. 

    So try to anticipate the environmental factors influencing the need for more routine and maybe talk through these with him.

Reply

  • Making a positive light of his obsessions as you describe them certainly sounds like good strategy, but also look at the environmental factors behind some of these routines. The routines are needed in order to establish some sort of personal control within what for him is a very unpredictable world.

    That means anticipating some of the stresses encountered particularly when out and about. The whoosh of hand driers might actually be soothing or reassuring. But there are other noises in supermarkets he may not like. Also there will be conflicting and multi-directional sounds which can make things worse.

    You say he has a preferred route around the supermarket, does that indicate that some of the environments are easier to deal with once he has settled? Refrigeration units can be particularly unsettling - you might be able to filter it out and not notice it - he may find the mixed noise environment of refrigerator units unsettling. The queues at tills can be very noisy places where you are stuck while waiting your turn, and cannot move away from adverse noise or close proximity to strangers. If he is sensitive to smells consider the differences between the bakery, meat and detergent areas of the supermarket.

    Also before entering the supermarket what sources of stress are there that might make him more unsettled before he goes in? Apart from the fascination he has with the automatic doors is there also an element of fear? To him passing through automatic doors may create all kinds of irrational fears like them closing on him suddenly. 

    So try to anticipate the environmental factors influencing the need for more routine and maybe talk through these with him.

Children
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