How best to deal with obsessive 6yo DS

[SpinningTops]

DS is 6 and does not want to engage in any weekend activity due to being obsessed with Lego. I know there are worse things to be obsessed about and at least he's not just on a screen.

It's great if we're chilling at home but it's such a battle to drag him away from it and he will refuse, cry and whinge.

I don't know what the best thing to do is. He might be autistic so we are accommodating but we can't let him dictate our weekends.

The only thing I can think is to take away the Lego until he can be less obsessive but if he is autistic this seems a bit cruel. Any ideas

Anyone?

Don't take the Lego away if it makes him happy.

Visual timetable of activity then lego time, lunch etc?
Lots of timers/prep on what activity is coming next, when free time is I.e. when he can play lego lol
There are some lego cafes and things

Now and next cards? You may need lots of identical Lego cards! Ie a picture of Lego for now, a picture of the park for next, then an additional picture of Lego for after the park.

Forewarn him when he needs to stop with a picture of the clock at that time near an actual clock so he can compare them. Give him half an hour warning, 5 minute warning then stop playing. If he is half way through a project save it for him to finish later.

God don't take it away from him. The visceral anger I feel if I'm forced away from the thing I'm locked into stays with me for days. You could try introducing visual time cards.

My boy has asd and gets really obsessed easily. You need to set expectations early, eg you can play Lego for 1 hour then we need to leave to do x y and z. Look up now and next, we use it at home and school as my boy struggles to transition between activities.
I would recommend giving him a count down too, so you have 5 mins until you need to stop and put your shoes on, then 4 mins etc. We find this limits the crying and melt downs as the stopping isn’t abrupt so he can process it easier.

Thanks for the advice, we do have a now and next board and I sometimes draw out the plan but he will just say 'no, we can't' even about future events. I will give this more of a try though and stick to timings. We do have sand timers to help with transitions.

It's also difficult to do anything spontaneous or just pop out.

I get that he might find it difficult but sometimes I feel like I'm living with a tiny dictator.

I'm an autistic adult and I'm still obsessed with Lego, it's a thing.

I mean... if you're at home and he's playing with Lego as opposed to watching TV or drawing, that seems fine to me. But if it's time to go out / he could do with some fresh air / whatever, I'd just go with whatever consistent approach works, whether that's "now and next" or a timer or whatever.

Would he respond if you say to him he has to do one thing away from Lego, but he can choose?

Then give him a choice:
Walk in park
Cycle Ride
McDonalds
Something else

So he gets used to not being Lego all the time. Then introduce the idea that you choose something too.

That worked with ds (also ASD) in that he had some autonomy and he could see the logic/fairness. I won't say he always wanted to, but it's helped as he got older.
I also would say to him (and still do to a certain extent) "do you want to have the shower now, and then you can get back to Lego, or do you want to do the Lego now, but you won't be able to go back to it after the shower?"
He grumbles, but chooses, and then is better about doing both.

The giving 2 choices (where he does what I need him to do) would probably work quite well.

I think we might just be in a difficult time. I seem to remember things were harder last winter too and let's face it, who wants to go out on a dreary January day.

Ds1 was similar at a similar age. For the most part we just let him crack on, on the grounds it’s lego.

Things that helped were not springing things on him. So we’d tell him the evening before if there was anything planned the next day and remind him in the morning. Where, when and approximately how long.

Don't take it away! With my autistic DS I find it better to really lean into the intrest. So in this case I be looking at lego sessions at the library, lego sculpture trails, any local museums etc that have lego tables in the play room, or anywhere with giant lego if he'd go for that. That way the he's been exposed to all the things at those places alongside the lego, which widens his horizons, but feels 'safe' as it's linked to the intrest.

They sound similar. He copes much better knowing well in advance. It's difficult because sometimes we don't know plans in advance but I guess we need to get better at planning and sticking to plans.

Out of interest, Is your son autistic?

My son has asd and is also lego obsessed. Timers help. He finds making choices difficult and stressful so we try to avoid that and find he responds better to us telling him what we're doing. When we're going places we let him take 1 or 2 lego minifigures with him which helps. We try not to talk too much about future events as again that's too abstract for him but he does like a plan of the day/weekend. It is hard but there's also lots of benefits, his hand dexterity has improved massively and school use it to help with his learning. My house may soon be a whole lego display though!

Oh and he often seems like he's trying to dictate everything but I try and remember it's driven by anxiety. Not knowing what he's doing or not being able to control it/transitions are very stressful for him and ramp up his anxiety so he tries to control everything to manage that emotion.

Oh I feel you. We've run out of surfaces to house the many Lego builds!

@SpinningTops yes he is.

@SpinningTops what helped for DS1 was us mostly sticking to plans but just occasionally using the “the plan is there is no plan”. Sometimes you can’t say how many shops you will go in. Also i found as he got older and more articulate he would try to make us to commit to “the Plan” and then refuse any adjustment. So sometimes just said i wasn’t playing.

The other thing i found helped: Was not to ask him a question if “no” wasn’t an acceptable answer. DH is really bad at this and DS2 has been heard to say “is that an actual question or a dad question”.

If it was a screen or something less "worthy" than Lego I expect you would find a way to limit it. It's no different to a child who wants to sit and read all day or play on a console instead of getting fresh air and exercise.

Set time limits and if he makes a fuss make them shorter.

My 6yr old has ASD and ADHD.

We have a visual timetable of the week with the events for each day as well as a section for morning/evening routine activities. We generally do the week ahead on a Sunday and this reduces how many "surprise" things there are. We find that even regular activities eg swimming lessons, would be a "surprise" if not on the timetable.

We limit changes or spontaneous activities as they can be difficult to manage and the impact on regulation is cumulative over a day/week etc (depending on the size of the change). If someone invited us to something last minute there's a 90% chance we'd say no even if we had nothing else on - it's not worth the knock on effects on the stuff we actually had planned.

If also make sure I gave suitable transition time between activities eg 30mins till we go swimming, time to put shoes on in 5 mins etc and allow time for them to be overwhelmed at a change if you think that's likely.

I think all this resonates. We've been quite used to living a 'the plan is there is no plan' life but maybe we all need to adjust how we do things and try to think ahead more to create a clear plan and only use that when necessary.

Also the don't ask sometime they can't say no to. We might say 'shall we go to X for a walk' and then he'll say 'no' and we get frustrated. I'll try rephrase to something like 'we're going to go to X for a walk tomorrow, why don't you choose whether you want to take a ball or a frisbee'.

It's all very easy when reflecting but needs a bit of a readjusting how we parent. It doesn't help that our other child is extremely easy going and just goes with the flow.

Just to add to this, we had a really successful bedtime just now where he was focused on Lego so I asked 'do you want to get ready for bed now or after this 5 minute timer runs out?'

He opted for the timer and once it ran out came to get ready for bed.