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With autism often comes obessions. I know most kids have obessions but ASD kids take it to a whole new level. For about a year it was an otter, as in Parker would say he was an otter. If you told him he was a boy, he'd kindly show you the hair on his leg and tell you it was otter fur. He'd twirl in the tub just like an otter. He's ask me to throw goldfish crackers at him, so that he was being fed like the otters at the zoo. Yes, this all started from a simple zoo visit. It was all fun & cute until he jumped in a pool thinking he could swim. Then he really started blurring the lines and we couldn't tell if he was pretending anymore. Instead of hello, people were greeted with otter speak. It crossed over into school and was actually the topic at parent conferences last fall! So, we had to break his little heart and lay the law down that he was indeed a boy and not an otter. It was difficult but the clincher was the fact that Santa only visited little boys, not otters.


Flashforward 2 months and we've moved on to our next one, because that's another thing with ASD kids, there's always a next one and your never going to know what it is. For a month it was Jumpy the squirrel from Curious George. Now, we've some how lucked out because after trudging through everything from max & ruby to combines over the years, he has actually choosen one that is beneficial, numbers!


Numbers numbers everywhere. The boy that couldn't count to 30 at age 6 finally took an interest and like that was counting to 1000 and more. His favorite is 95. He puts it everywhere he can, so I snapped a couple pics for todays posting to display. As always, we await with interest and a little fear at what could possibly be next on the obession list, but I am certainly going to enjoy this one while it lasts. Even if I have to count to 300 nightly because he thinks it's so fun.


On another note, what prompted this little interest was the purchase of the Melissa and Doug wipe placement with numbers 1 - 100 on it. I purchased it because he was having such difficultly and the visual with all the numbers in one spot like that, it just finally clicked for him. I recommend it for any kid learning their numbers (Cooper learned all of his from it to) or if their struggling. It's been a great tool and is like $4!Parker's bedroom.



Those little pieces of paper are all numbers and this goes on throughout the whole room.
He will just sit for fun and write his numbers until he runs out of room.

Any place he can sneak in some numbers on his school work, he does.

I came out to this on my truck!