Is this normal? Very regimented 2.9 year old ds (sorry, long)

[forevared]

DS1 has always been quite neat, and like all boys puts his toys in great long lines like a long train. This I'm not worried about. Over the last few weeks though he's been getting very upset if you do certain things for him. Now I know this is probably a stab at asserting his independence but it seems a bit more ritualistic than that.

There are many examples I could give but for a start, if we put his shoes on him he starts yelling at us, rips them off his feet and wants to put them on himself. No problem. However, he has to take them back to where we picked them up, I mean the EXACT place and spends quite a while getting them just so, before he then happily picks them up again and puts them on himself.

He also has to categorise everything into either colours or themes. When he goes to bed he takes his toys up to bed and sorts them into piles of red, yellow and blue or trains, cars and tractors for example. Bob the builder and Iggle Piggle toys have to go on his chair and Tigger and Eeyore have to be on one side of the bed while 'Stripes' the tiger and Winnie the Pooh have to be on the other.

He does this with lots of things and because I work in mental health I'm worried I'm reading too much into his actions. Like I mentioned, he's always been quite neat and dh and I have joked in the past that he has OCD. Only now, I'm really beginning to wonder? Please tell me this is all normal and I'm just a silly old mum or would you be concerned too?

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like me as a child. I still like things in their place and am a pack rat - you never know when x,y,z might be useful

Does he have any other behaviours you are worried about? Language, physical contact, playing?

Prob not going to be much help at all here but I thought (and its only a thought so dont panic) that this sort of obsessive behaviour can be indicative of autism?

Please dont go mad at me and its prob not but it may be something worth looking into

I am sure someone else with more experience will come along x

It can be associated with autism but this kind of thing is so common in preschoolers. Dd is very like this and I have no developmental concerns about her. A lot of her friends - especially the boys are like this too. They're all 3. There would have to be other issues before I would worry. Are there?

Dd will go bonkers if you don't do/hold/put/use something EXACTLY right - and sometimes we can't tell what right is and increasingly we are just refusing to be bossed about. We tell her that everyone does things differently and not to be bossy.

A little knowledge is a worrying thing. My work is connected to research into autism and I know how it is when you know both too much but not quite enough - I have watched dd very carefully. I suspect, at worst, she may turn out to be a big geeky - just like her mum

Why's he putting the stuff in lines? DS2 used to do that but was playing at car parks or trains . DS1 (autistic) has never lined anything up in his life.

Ds3 does the independent "no I want to do it" stuff as well- and would do the same - he's 3 and not at all autistic although pretty high maintenance.

My dd1 went through a stage like this (it was very trying). She would do practically the same thing with her shoes/coat etc.
She would take CD's off the rack and place them in equally spaced piles of 10 in a straight line across the sitting room. Also block towers could only be built in towers of one colour.

She is now 5.5 and the messiest person in the house.

I've seen 2 of dd's boy toddler friends put their toys in lines. Not a big sample size I grnat you but obviously not uncommon.

We do have the issue of not being 'allowed' to move things from their designated positions, which can be very inconvenient.

Niether of mine line things up, but if you do something that they don't want you too they will want things back to exactly the way they were before you did whatever it was and would rant and rave like lunatics if this did not happen. The example that happens at the moment is that they fight over who opens the door when we go out. If the wrong ones open it, we can be some way from the house and the other one wants us all to go back inside exactly where we were before leaving and do it all again.

Forevared, my ds is nearly 3. He would line up his cars and trains all the time. This was only 2-3 months ago. He has grown out of this since then. He also does the thing with his shoes. I don't have any worries about his development. Your ds sounds like a clever boy who likes things organised.

The whole toys in lines thing seems really common, someone posted about this many moons ago and got about 90+ responses!

Thanks for making me laugh Elk.

Lilymolly, I never get mad at suggestions, you never know when someone might come up with something brilliant. Thank you.

I know what you mean Acinonyx. Autism isn't really something we'd seriously considered. DH is a psychiatrist and I work in adult psychiatry, (not in child/adolescent) so we both know a fair bit about autism but certainly not experts. While he's never been a cuddly child, he's affectionate and caring and seems to understand the normal social expectations (as far as his age allows). I know this doesn't mean you can discount it, and dh has said he may just be very low down on the autistic spectrum. There aren't any other problems with him, apart from normal bossiness and impatience (takes after his mum). Language is great.

What should I be looking out for as regards to playing? MatNanPlus mentioned it and just wondering now. I think it's all normal!

Two parents in psychiatry - poor kid doesn't stand a chance

I score 'high-normal' on the autism quotient and I suspect dd will too. It is a spectrum after all. If she's a bit OCD too, well, she must get that from her father...

yes, it is a spectrum, I think many people fall somewhere on the very lower end of the ASD spectrum while being perfectly 'normal'.

I have an 'odd' DS by the way, it is the only way to describe him. Not ASD as such but has a lot of peculiarities that, when all written down on paper, sound much more worrying than they actually are in real life.

Don't worry Acinonyx, we'll have him on Risperidone by the time he's 4!

Anyway, DH has been know to have the odd ritualistic tendency aswell, I blame him! DS2 is fortunately the epitome of cool, laid back temperament.

Unless of course he rolls over onto his tummy, then his yelling could wake the dead.

I think one of the earliest signs of autism is a lack of understanding that you need to behave in the same way as others. Most kids in say a nursery setting will roughly behave as the others do from a surprisingly young age. I remember ds2 aged 18 months went into a nursery room for the first time whilst I had a meeting about ds1 in another room. His first time there, and he knew to look around at the other children and do the same as them. I knew he was OK for sure at that moment. And sensory issues of course.

Affection neither here nor there.

Autistic play would tend to focus on parts of objects and lack imagination (although certainly imaginary play doesn't have to be entirely absent): looking at things from odd angles for example. Lying down and moving a car backwards and forwards in front of the eyes would be a classic.

For babies under a year asymmetrical lying can be an indicator or autism. After a year one of the biggest indicators is a failure to respond to name. Then CHAT test at 18 months.

Thanks jimjams He's great socially, gets on with other kids, has a best friend, and behaves himself. He does do the looking at the car thing as you describe. I take it it's not actually something ONLY kids with autism do?!

I don't think there are any behaviours that only kids with autism do. I'm sure somewhere out there there's another 9 year old who tried to eat a fish finger straight from the freezer yesterday for example

Any of the 'red flags' need to be looked at in the context of the whole child. If he plays that way sometimes, but most of the times shows imaginative play - and can sustain it (as opposed to my autistic son who at 3 would have fed a toy a bottle, or would have made his Little People go down slides- but wouldn't be able to sustain that play) then you don't need to worry about the odd session of running something backwards and forwards in front of his eyes. It's more of a concern if it's the only thing he does.

There are online screening tools. I've written about one here. Not that anything you're saying is ringing particular alarm bells with me.

Thanks you so much. I wasn't hugely concerned about autism myself but it's very reassuring to have some feedback from someone with experience. My (psyche trained) mind is more running along the lines of OCD.

It may just be a young child thing. DS3 (aged 3) is very like this, athough getting less so as his language develops. He has some sensory issues and he's quite sensitive (which comes out as being completely over-reactive to things), but he's not autistic.

My ds was like this when he was that age. Lining up all his Thomas trains...everything in it's place, and screaming if you moved anything

He is now 14, and he room is a total pigsty....oh for the old days ...