Obsessive interests are part and parcel of autism spectrum disorders. Ethan’s ability to fixate on his interests has always amazed me, even before I knew he was autistic. Ethan’s first obsession, which I only realise in hindsight, was the Teletubbies. When he was about 9 months old, his interest was piqued one day as I was flicking through the TV channels and he caught a glimpse of the Teletubbies and started to giggle. I loved hearing that beautiful bubbling baby giggle so we kept watching. A few weeks later he was crying in his carseat when we were driving somewhere, and I said “eh-oh!” like the Teletubbies, which resulted in those lovely giggles again. When Ethan was around 18 months old, he would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night crying for no apparent reason; even after Panadol and cuddles he wouldn’t settle. So I took to playing a Teletubbies dvd I had bought, and he calmed down immediately and would eventually go to sleep. One night he was having a huge tantrum and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, eventually I put on the Teletubbies and he was so happy. I guess that was one of the first inklings of obsessive interests.
When he was a toddler, he would sit and do puzzles for hours, so content, and his skills were far beyond his age. Then he had a colouring obsession – I would buy colouring books from Chickenfeed and he would sit and colour-in until every page was covered in colour…. sometimes two hours later. He had some innate focused drive to finish every page.
His next major obsession was the Wiggles and his focus was incredibly intense. We would be walking through a mall and he would glimpse the tiniest Wiggles logo inside a shop and pull toward the shop and jump with excitement while studying the logo. By this time (around 3 years old) I knew he probably had autism, and I thought we should use the obsession as a teaching tool: we sang “Hot Potato” every night to get him to eat his dinner; we spent hours looking at Wiggles picture books with him, trying to encourage some speech; we played Wiggles DVDs to encourage some imitation of their dances and body postures; he learned colours because he was attracted to the Wiggles’ coloured skivvies and began labelling their shirt colours.
He has had many other fixations, but they change every 3 or 4 months. It is fortunate now that Ethan is in prep, that his strongest interest is letters and numbers. He spends hours writing sentences, checking on how to spell words, writing numbers, typing sentences on the laptop, reading books, spelling words on the fridge with magnetic letters. He literally spends at least one to two hours each day writing on his mega-sketcher. Sometimes he looks up a letter in his children’s dictionary and copies out all the words that start with that letter. He is spelling quite well, given his amazing photographic memory and interest in words and letters. This is an obsession that is educationally very beneficial! And he loves to share this interest with others, asking them what their name is, then writing it down and showing it to them proudly.
Transitions (changes in activities, or moving to a different place or task), which are difficult for many children with autism, are made so much easier using the special interest. For example, getting Ethan out of the car if we have gone shopping – often this takes 10 minutes or more and Ethan cries and protests or lies on the car floor refusing to get out. If I am savvy, I will plan ahead before we even leave to go to the shops and using a visual time table, will tell him “first shop, then car, then when you come in the house, you can write words/ type on the computer”.
Some professionals will advise parents to discourage obsessive interests in their children with autism, because of the assumption that the singular interest will cut them off from developing relationships and communication skills. But in my experience if you try to stamp out an obsession, another quickly forms. I believe that obsessive interests are an integral part of autism, and that level of intense focus and interest in a specific area is possible due to the neurological differences in brain structure of a person with autism. Obsessions can be a springboard to learning and developing opportunities for social interactions and communication.
My perspective is - use the obsessions to teach and engage a child with autism. Obsessions are highly motivating, most kids will complete less-preferred tasks (eg. going to the toilet) if they are rewarded with something related to their interest immediately afterwards. Creativity in tailoring activities to a child’s area of interest will pay off.
