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Alternative hobbies for autistic 10 year old boy

MumOfT

Hi, 

My 10 year old son was recently diagnosed (after a 5 year assessment process) with ASD. He is high functioning and attends a drawing club, music club and young film makers club all for one hour a week on various days.

The problem we have is every other hour of the day all he want to do is sit on his Switch, You Tube, Phone and play/watch all things Pokemon, Minecraft or Roblox. He needs forced into being peeled away from them to the point where me and my husband are concerned that he has a VERY unhealthy relationship with them.

We are having a tricky time with school at the moment and everything seems to result in anger followed by an autistic meltdown, leading into the occasional kicking and punching. Our worry is he is being influenced by what he is seeing on his computer games and youtube.

Other activities he enjoys is building Lego, doing puzzles, Rubix cubes, drawing Pokemon but never opts do do any of these activities and when he does, we get 10 minutes in and "he's bored"

I am looking for suggestions, advice, any help really on how to approach trying to wean him off his screen time to have a more healthy relationship with it?

Also while I am here...is there any sport or external hobby that is typically good (if that's even a thing) for children with autism? 

Thank you in advance for any advice given.

Parents

  • I used to be really obsessed with making plastic model kits, as an child - I was diagnosed autistic as an adult. I never wanted to join clubs or societies because they involved a lot of social interaction, and I had more than I wanted of that at school. I needed large amounts of time outside of school hours alone, so I could recover from the stress of socialising at school. Making each model was a fight between my impatience to get it built and painted, and my innate perfectionism. I think they had a cumulative positive effect as I became more patient of processes over time.

  • in reply to Martin

    This was interesting to read Martin as I have watched his process of solving a Rubix cube recently and over the space of a year we have gone from sheer frustration (where he can't even bring himself to play with it) to now finding new methods and strategies of how to complete it. All of which is way above my head. But a bit like yourself, it seems to be time and patience is what has fuelled development in a positive way.

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  • in reply to Martin

    This was interesting to read Martin as I have watched his process of solving a Rubix cube recently and over the space of a year we have gone from sheer frustration (where he can't even bring himself to play with it) to now finding new methods and strategies of how to complete it. All of which is way above my head. But a bit like yourself, it seems to be time and patience is what has fuelled development in a positive way.

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