Is it normal for toddlers to make little piles of things?

[WanderingWildflower]

DD 18 months likes to make little piles eg she will get all her soft toys out of their basket and pile them up on a chair. This morning she went around collecting pairs of shoes and made a pile on the kitchen floor.

I googled purely out of curiosity and noticed that lining things up is an autistic trait, does this usually apply to making piles too?

At that age I'd just put it down to kids being weird. She's identifying that things have their own team. She's made a shoe team. A Teddy team. It's just a way of exploring what fits where.

Totally normal. They're like ants.

Yep, normal.

Toddlers do all sorts of things that appear weird to us as adults. That doesn't mean they're showing tendencies to anything except being toddlers. We did weird things too, once.

Totally normal. Take a look at some child development stuff on “schema play” - eg. construction schema etc.

https://education.gov.scot/parentzone/Documents/nih058-Parentzone-Booklet.pdf

https://www.pacey.org.uk/working-in-childcare/spotlight-on/schemas/

https://www.onehundredtoys.com/understanding-schema-play-in-toddlers/

Yep. We have gravel in our garden and it was toddler heaven, always being gathered and moved around. I figured it must be some primal hunter-gatherer instinct. 🤷‍♀️

At that age my DD loved making what we used to call “tableaux” - we would regularly find every soft toy and animal figure grouped into a scene on the top of something, looking for all the world like they were having some kind of village parliament! She also liked putting things into bags and taking them somewhere, then unpacking the bags. Later on she was obsessed with building towers. They do lots of this stuff 😂

Kids are weird, I wouldn't read too much into it yet. My daughter used to do this a lot as a toddler. I distinctly remember one Christmas she refused to open any of her presents, preferring to just carefully pile them up in neat little stacks.

Totally normal. I have 2 asd dc and 1 nt child. The nt child and 1 asd child did this.
Nt child was at the time being observed by a child development student as part of her degree and she told me it was a good sign because they could differentiate between the objects. She said it can be a sign of Autism but had to be part of a wider picture and usually when they were a bit older.

My 13mo does this with her nappies. Every morning she will take them all out, pile them up and then put them all back. I use to try and 'help' her but she just shouts at me so I just let her get on with it 😂 although she does have the odd day where instead of putting them back she'll then just throw them all over the room 🤦🏼‍♀️😂

Thanks for the replies. Sounds pretty typical, must stop googling things!

Very normal, it's part of schematic learning.

Read up about schemas - fascinating and will help you make sense of things.

One of mine had a transporting schema - everything would get put in a pushchair or truck or bag and taken somewhere else. We lost some important stuff that way...

Yeah DS at that age (and up until quite recently actually) lines up his cars etc in a traffic jam. He'll get in line as well sometimes and complain about how long it's taking to get through the traffic

I remember we had the complete set of numbered Mr Men books in a lovely case. My son would tip all the books out and put them all back in again in the correct order. He would repeat this so many times. Once it was done he would scatter them all and say “oh what a mess, let’s sort all these books out again” 😂.

It was so endearing. He’s 7 now, he’s fine. He did the above until he started school.

Lots of things are autistic traits in older children that are normal development in a younger child. At 18 months it's fine.

Dd loved lining things up- crayons,stones, dolls, peas....

She has a logical mind and now works as a whizz administrator 😄

Mine just made fucking piles of mess. They still do.

The one who doesn't have an autism diagnosis lined things up.

I think this bodes well for her future tidying up skills ☺️.

Think of stacking cups, those rainbow arch toys etc - very typical and age appropriate play. Sorting skills are actively encouraged to help development and if she is already sorting into, say, shoes and "not-shoes" I would say that sounds great. Think what other things she could sort - socks maybe, coloured balls or blocks

Omg the bag thing. My 3 yo are obsessed with putting things in bags, boxes etc. But tidy like. All snacks. All pj toys. All Toy Story toys etc. Never just a random box full of crap. Always specific crap.