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SN children

DS1 thinks he is a computer

5 replies

Greensleeves · 25/02/2008 09:40

...am posting this in SN too, even though DS1 isn't diagnosed with anything, in case anyone with a child with ASD (or not!) has heard something similar

DS1 says that he has a computer inside him which organises his thoughts, his memories and his behaviour. He's been making odd references to it for a while - eg

GS "DS! stop that please, I don't like it."

DS1 "OK Mummy - do I need to use a filtering tool, or a deleting?"

GS "Erm, well I would like you to stop it and not do it again"

DS1 "OK I'll delete it then"

then on the way to school this morning... the new 'topic' for his class in this half of the term is "space", which just happens to be ds1's current obsession. He was hopping up and down all the way to school "Can I take my Universe book?" "Can I show Miss XXX my solar system?" "Will we learn about the surface of Mars?"

I then said "It's lovely that you are so excited but you will need to remember only to talk about space when Miss XXX wants you to, and remember to listen as well as talking"

DS1 "Yes, I will try, but it is very hard when I want to say something I know about space, really"

GS "Maybe you could create a separate file in your memory bank for all the things you know about space, so you could access them when it is the right time" (he has previously told me that his memory is organised like a video library)

DS1 "Oh, I've already done that, I created it before I went to sleep last night. There's a separate folder there for space now.

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deeeja · 25/02/2008 12:24

Your ds sounds adorable!
This has made me lol
Sorry if it wasn't intended as a funny post and you have concerns about your ds being asd. I don't really know you or any of your posts, but this sounds alot like my ds1(aspergers) when he was around 5 or6. He is 19 now and at university, doing very well.
Loved the bit about the seperate folder already been created,
He sounds very bright!

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needmorecoffee · 25/02/2008 12:27

one of mine did this for a while and would talk about the pixels in the real world being wrong and asking if he could 'pause' things.
ahem
He did grow out of it though. Luckily before I had to reboot him!
Sounds amazingly bright your LO.

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Greensleeves · 25/02/2008 13:37

ds1 does the "pause" thing too (although he pronounces it "plause"), he has an annoying habit of answering questions by writing the words in the air with his finger, and if he needs to go to the loo or something, he holds his two forefingers up and says "Plause! Plause!"

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hels9 · 25/02/2008 13:44

My 3-year old son does something similar, in that he likes singing the nursery rhymes on his CD, but has to pretend to turn the CD player on, first, and pause it if anyone is stupid enough to ask him a question whilst he's being the CD, and forward wind it to a different track if you ask him to miss a song out (something the "CD player" often won't do - he'll instead say it's got stuck and then goes back to the beginning of the songs again, instead... This is better than the meltdowns he used to have if interrupted, until we explained that proper CD players can skip tracks and be put on pause for a bit, and stop while their owner eats his lunch). He's no longer nearly so interested in doing this, thankfully, as there are 50 nursery rhymes on that CD, so it takes quite a long time to get through them all.

He is also quite often an imaginary television or DVD player. And he will also quite happily play more traditional imaginative games.

In all, I think it's rather an endearing aspect of his personality, now that he's got it under control and doesn't get too upset to be interrupted.

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ouryve · 26/02/2008 22:11

Hah! Funny!

DS1 spends much of his life being a washing machine. He'll even incorporate spinning into his wash cycle. It's cute except when DS2 gets mown down by the spin cycle and when I need to get the boys out of the house and have no cooperation whatsoever.

One of his occasional funnies is inspired by numberjacks. He goes through phases of shouting "Zero!" when he doesn't want to cooperate and wants me or whatever he's objecting to to simply go away.

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