ASD son doesn’t stop talking about his special subject

[Powerofpurple]

His special subject is countries of the world and he’s extremely knowledgeable on it (he’s 6 years old). His memory is incredible and he can draw a map of the world from memory and name every single flag.

But the one issue is that he doesn’t stop talking about it from the moment he wakes in the morning, until the moment he goes to sleep. Everything about it in all different forms - smallest to largest countries, eye colours of each country, populations, borders of each country, food from each country and so on and so on.

It’s never ending and as much as I enjoy hearing about it, it’s wearing me down.

We once got stuck in a lengthy traffic jam when 6yo DS piped up "why did Titler invade other countries?"

An hour later and we'd covered empire building, Franz Ferdinand, WW1, the Treaty of Versailles and lebensraum.

I remember the moment his interest in war started. We were at a living museum and they had a 1940s day. He saw a "soldier" holding a gun and his face lit up and you could see the neurons firing.
That was 9 years and 9 months ago...

At least he's now old enough that I can say "my brain isn't processing this anymore" and let him ramble off.

To be fair, he does send me links to some interesting youtube videos 😂

Haha! DS2 does. He also has severe learning difficulties and Tourette's and his pet subjects are his favourite foods and snacks, TV listings, Julia Donaldson /Axel Scheffler book titles and adaptations and bus fleets. He expects very particular responses or else he gets more in your face with it and he doesn't feel better after because sometimes he just starts again or flits from cereal bars to Tiddler to the registration numbers of all the Enviro 400s at a particular bus depot.... (coming up for air)

He can not stop. Unless he mentions banana cake then I reply do doo do do do and he feels obliged to compete the song then tries to find another way of mentioning banana cake without setting me off again 😈

I know this may not help with you probably experiencing information overload, but...

I follow lots of ASD and ADHD content online and have seen videos about this made by a teen with ASD.

Would it help to say that this may be your son's way of expressing connection with you? You are important to him so he wants to share with you everything about something that is the most interesting thing to him ever! He feels safe, confident and comfortable to be himself with you and this is his way of showing it. He is sharing an important part of who he is with you, a topic that is very close to his heart, because you're a special person to him.

This may not be the case for everyone with ASD who is prone to monologuing about a special interest, but it's definitely true for some.

My son's fixation is trains. There is nothing he doesn't know, or can't tell you about. As a consequence, I'm now an expert too! I get some respite as he has a model railway and spends some considerable time with that and more recently he has made a friend with the same interest so I can take them spotting and have a quiet (ish) coffee.

Sorry this sounds a bit nuts, but how do you channel the hyper focus toward something so productive and useful?
My 5 year old will just force me to sit for hours while they recite the names of their stuffed animals, then realign them, then change the names again, then align them differently because it’s “snack time” and then repeat on an endless loop.
However, should I suggest we spend even a minute reading or doing homework, I risk total meltdown.

Trick question! You can’t 😄

My son is 16 and it's still Pokemon. It's been 10 years of Pokemon. With some intermittent respite of "Murder Drones".

We are not okay 🤣

Ds main one is Mario, he also often has a few smaller ones and countries is one of them.

I do tune him out some of the time if I can get away with it but I never make him feel like he's boring or needs to stop. It's important to him and he has enough people making him feel shit about himself. I'm not one of them.

Does he play globle? Ds loves it

Oh God, this is absolutely adorable, but I agree that it must be incredibly tedious! Bless him.

@glassof oh gosh same here with the smiths, he can chat to my daughter she's 14!

Excuse my spelling!

I've really enjoyed reading this thread. What fascinating kids you have!

I’ve nothing helpful to add other than a friend of mines child’s special subject at one point was bladder infections. I think he’s gone off the topic now though.

I wonder if a PP suggestion of him doing a podcast idea would relieve you whilst still fulfilling his enthusiasm to share & learn?

No advice but have you discovered Seterra? It’s online geography games which might keep him busy for a while.

My daughter has been through dinosaurs, the greatest showman, ABBA…but the most enduring one is birds of prey. I have a bird phobia. Fun!

As others have suggested , set some limits and perhaps also set yourself a timer where you talk to him about one of your interests so he begins to learn social etiquette.
My ASD 13 year very sweetly told me that he loves talking to me about his interests as nobody else understands just how much he loves it and appreciates the level of deep knowledge that he holds. He knows his friend find his level of obsession a bit “weird” and that it is part of ASD. Actually now older, he has found some kindred spirits via online gaming and YouTubers. Of course this requires some supervision and boundaries.
Your son will find his people as he gets older. For now, try and put in some quiet time (e.g we are all reading books alone for an hour now) to remove some of the tedium, get him baking foods of the world, do some junk
model making, get him to draw a picture story, so you are supporting the interest but mixing it up a bit as well as setting some limits.

My youngest (9) is the same at the moment, obsessed with countries and flags, they can list all the countries in the world and can't get over adults who don't know what borders what country. I don't think they are ASD, but they do have hyper focus. It was chess before this, we have had space, empires, the world wars. They just talk at me.

They are very useful for a quiz though.

I worked closely years ago with an autistic boy who was obsessed with bin lorries. I used to take him out of school for walks (movement breaks) and we'd wave to the bin men
I also got him a toy bin lorry from the charity shop and I might just as well have given him a winning lottery ticket.
I remember when we played with it and I'd have to remember very specific scenarios and words
He'll always have a special place in my heart.

I remember my son with football cards and he would test me on the height and eye colours of all the players. Also if he saw a puppet or toy (once a hat) he would talk about it longingly from the minute he woke up to bedtime. It was exhausting!!

You can’t in my experience. Mine as he’s got older has got better at understanding when it is and isn’t appropriate to talk a lot about something and how to take hints that he should stop now or his friends are bored of it. But I’d have no chance of choosing his special interests for him or getting him to apply the same memorisation to his spellings as he does the anatomy of insects.

That said I think the special interests and monologues about them are useful and productive in their own right. If my child’s upset or worried about something I just ask an innocent question about, for example, a hypothetical train journey I might want to make, and off he goes. He finds it soothing and often it completely staves off a meltdown. His mental health is hugely tied to his special interests and talking about them. I do get some funny looks into a dentists waiting room or waiting to try shoes on when I start talking about journey times to Southampton or the various body parts of a wasp but it works.

Fantastic idea!

As an adult who's had several special interests: I'm really, really good at pub quizzes, and holding in-depth conversations. My brain is still good at retaining detailed info. I was bored during covid so learnt flags and capitals. I get enjoyment out of sorting and categorising. Ranking them in personal favourite order. Arrange the animal flags taxonomically (birds, mammals), or in order of how endangered the species are.

Balancing interests vs other people is a learnt skill. I had to learn how to tell from someone's face when they're being polite but uninterested - and I learnt that much too late. My parents did not help me with that. PLEASE start teaching him asap to spot the signs of boredom. Reading people's faces is an art to us. I've become quite good but it is tiring (linked to masking).

YouTube or Reddit (when older) is a great outlet. The internet, uni, and potentially work are the best/only ways to meet fellow nerds. I wish I could have had those friends earlier in my life.

My DD wasn't diagnosed until recently so her pre teen years were before we knew. I would usually take an interest in whatever she was doing but I had to limit Minecraft 😂
I would offer DD my undivided attention for 20 minutes but then we had to talk about something else. She would look furious but it was better than nothing so would talk at me for 20 minutes then switch to something else 😄
She will be awesome at pub quizzes. Once she learns something she finds out everything about it and then remembers it...

Bladder infections is definitely the best on the thread!
I should count myself lucky with the computer game.

We've also had trains, Pokémon and ants.
This is making me wonder if he's actually ASD but I guess it's not exclusively an ASD thing. I vere between trying to show an interest and reminding him that conversation is a two way thing.

Trains here. Fucking bastard trains- I have zero interest. Zero. It's painful.