Dysregulated by obsessions/ASD

[Boymamabee]

My hyperlexic 3-year-old is on the ASD assessment pathway. He’s fantastic with numbers and letters. His reading level is around age 6/Year 1. He can complete 7+ maths sums. Right now, he’s obsessed with big numbers and Number Blocks on TV.

Only issue is, when he becomes particularly obsessive he won’t sleep properly, use the toilet, eat properly, etc. Am I right to reduce YouTube (which feeds his number obsession) and encourage him to adopt new skills and watch different TV shows. Ones that can teach him about social skills/empathy/life? Rather than letting him focus on just one thing all the time? I’ve seen comments from other SEN parents, and from autistic people online, that it’s cruel to limit an autistic child’s special interests.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Might help to separate things out here 1) his special interest in maths 2) the specific way he's approaching it. 1) is fine, more than fine. 2) might be limiting - DS used to get obsessive and disregulated around calculators at that age. It sounds like something similar is happening here with youtube.

Some ideas - Numberblocks is great and actually has a lot in it about kindness and friendship. Maybe take 'More to Explore' episode as a challenge and work through all the ways numbers appear?

Other screen stuff: DragonBox apps are very good. Minecraft on creative mode also - though probably a bit young for that.

Non-screen. Nrich is full of good suggestions. I'd also get as many manipulables (basically hands-on maths toys) as possible. Marble runs, cuisinaire rods, Numicon, numberblocks toys themselves, mathlink cubes.

Go outdoors and go BIG. Pile up sticks and rocks. Drag things. Time how long it takes to go down a slide. Estimate how many grains of sand to fill a bucket.

And broaden out. Music works for a lot of mathy kids. Orchard board games can appeal too and teach turn taking and patience. I think we started with Shopping List around 2 and lots turn up second hand.