How do you deal with your child's obsessions?

[orangepudding]

My 6 year old DS is absolutely obsessed with Pokemon. It's all he talks about, plays and thinks about. The whole family is finding it very draining. It's so hard to distract him.

DS has verbal dyspraxia, dyspraxia and SPD is it a part of one of them? Also how do we deal with it, do we just let him be or should we be discouraging him?

[Sahkoora]

DS is obsessed with dinosaurs. They are all he thinks about and talks about. Sometimes he yammers all day about dinosaurs and he acts out fights he's seen on TV between dinosaurs. He's actually quite good at it, and has impressed his tutor lots of times with his knowledge.

It does drive me barking mad when I'm trying to talk to him/get him to do somethng and all I get back is "How big is the bony club on a euplocephalus's tail?"

But mostly I leave it because it is an educational topic and it does genuinely give him pleasure.

DS has ASD and I know obsessions are an accepted part of that. I'm sorry I don't know enough about your DS's conditions to comment on whether it's part of them.

[autumnsmum]

Ds is 9 and has high functioning autism , he is obsessed with minecraft , it gets a bit wearing but I just count to ten in my head , if he's talking about minecraft it means he's happy

[autumnsmum]

Ds is 9 and has high functioning autism , he is obsessed with minecraft , it gets a bit wearing but I just count to ten in my head , if he's talking about minecraft it means he's happy

[fairgame]

My DS is obsessed with Lego and Epic Mickey. He has just got a new epic mickey game so is currently talking about it non stop and it's absolutely driving me insane.
The autism outreach teacher gave me 2 strategies to deal with it and they do work.
The first one is to tell him that he can tell me 3 things about his obesession then he has to stop talking about it for a set period of time.
The second one is to let him talk about it for 5 minutes and then he has to stop for a set period of time.
I only use these strategies when he is talking non stop and its causing me to lose the will to live. When i say non-stop i mean literally it is all he talks about all day. The rest of the time i let him crack on, he's not harming anyone.

[ouryve]

They're not going away, so they become a learning opportunity.

DS2 is currently obsessed with numbers. Apart from not wanting to count from 7-36 (checkouts at nearest big Sainsburys) every single time he instigates it it's all good. He's learning useful stuff.

DS1 is obsessed with coins. The rituals around it are a PITA and we have to establish reasonable limits. However, he's has learnt more about C20 European history than I ever managed!

[ouryve]

Have also introduced DS1 to some basic metallurgy :o

[theDudesmummy]

My DS is non-verbal but communicates by typing into a text to speech device. He currently obsessed with animals. I used to be woken up by "cow", "sheep", "camel" being played into my ear, but now he has moved onto "aardvark"!!

[Rafanderpants]

mines (autistic ,OCD)
obsessed with the argos catalogue psp games section and is every night writing orders in her notebook.

I don't mind, it keeps her quiet, occupied, and practices her writing.

if its not that its Top Gear. shes mad about cars and remembers number plates, makes, litre engine sizes the lot.

again, she teaches ME about cars and is a great help when I have to replace mine!

[orangepudding]

Thanks all for sharing your experiences.

Looks like we just have to get used to it. I imagine he won't be so focused during the summer holiday as I feel he uses Pokemon as a stress relief from school.

[marne2]

I have a pokemon obsessed dd1 it does drive me nuts! I have set a few rules ( the figures and cards stay in her room and limited 3DS time ), once she starts talking about pokemon it's hard to stop her, luckily she has found a friend who is also obsessed, she spent half of yesterday in her room with her friend talking about pokemon out of my way .

[ShropshireLady]

I can totally relate to this and am thinking of implementing some sort of time system too but unfortunately my son just rambles on all day long about really dull things like how many letters are in a name or what the last letter of a name is, or other completely irrelevant things during a conversation when i'm really trying to get my point across - like something about his behaviour or school work. it's like it goes in one ear and out of the other. I'm a single parent too so finding it hard to get any respite from it. My parents keep telling me that i'm lucky that he is verbal for ASD, but his speech patterns are rambly, constant and very very draining. One of the reasons why i've joined here today is because I get very little adult conversation. Not sure if anything i've said has helped but just wanted you to know you're not alone!!

[ShropshireLady]

Meant to add, i'm not sure how I can implement a time system as he has so many special interest and repetitive speech patterns all rolled into one

[davidsotherhalf]

orange my dd is obsessed with pokemon, we found a pokemon club for her, they are run in most areas, ours is every other Saturday and every Wednesday in school holidays, they discuss pokemon together, play ds games together, also do pokemon cards, (lots have asd) gives me a break from talking about pokemon lol.