Ds1 (ASD) strange new behaviour - can't get our heads around this one.

[moosemama]

Ds1 is 8, has a verbal dx of ASD and is currently awaiting multi-dip assessment.

In general, I can usually work out why he is doing something and take appropriate action to deal with it, if its say from stress overload, sensory, overtiredness etc, but this one has be flummoxed and I'm not even sure its ASD related to be honest.

He has a cuddly bunny, tatty looking thing that he has has since he was tiny and is very much his comfort. At home he carries it everywhere, although he is careful to make sure none of his school peergroup see him with it. Whenever he is stressed or upset he curls up with a book and this bunny and obviously she always goes to bed with him at night.

Over the past couple of weeks he's been getting into panics saying he can't find her, so we all spend hours turning the house upside down searching, while he gets increasingly distressed. He doesn't take her out of the house, other than into the car - but he always leaves her in the car when we arrive somewhere, so no danger of her actually being genuinely lost.

I initially thought that, although unusual as he is rarely apart from her at home, him losing her so regularly was connected to his disordered thinking (he is also being checked for dyspraxia and has big problems with organisation and memory) however each time we have found her it would seem she has actually been deliberately hidden by him and after a couple of hours of searching he suddenly says something like "I think she might be under the kitchen trolley", we go and check and sure enough that's exactly where she is.

He has done it a few times at bedtime and we thought maybe it was just delaying tactics to avoid going to bed, as he knows we wouldn't make him go to bed without her, but he also seems to be doing at other times now.

When we ask why he hid her, he can't answer us, he just doesn't seem to know why he does it.

I am completely lost on this one, other than it possibly having something to do with him knowing that he needs his bunny, but maybe feeling like he's too old to need a cuddly toy, I can't think what basis the behaviour has and therefore don't know how to get to the bottom of it and help him sort it out.

The only other thought I had, was whether or not it was something to do with the stress of end of school-year mayhem and/or also he was the victim of a couple of nasty bullying incidents a few weeks ago, which have now been dealt with, resulting in him actually being much happier at school - so all a bit conflicting there really.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

Could it be him just enjoying seeing you all run round like loonies looking rather than an ASD thing? My DD1 thinks its great to make us look for things she's "lost" too.

I'd say it's all about control too.

he has hit upon something that is guaranteed to make you all react. he can control the situation for as long as he wants to, thus getting (indirectly) all your attention.

dd1 does this too. hides her bear (thankfully only her daytime versionat the moment - the bedtiem one is too precous even for her to mess around with) and then gets us all to look for it.

this usually happens after a period of me being on MN busy , but she has also done it randomly whenver she is bored.

My ds (6) does this too. I think it may be that he likes to be in control, and like lisad said, he finds it entertaining to see us all running around on his behalf.

Maybe he thinks if you look for the bunny and help him find it, it means that you think he needs it too and its OK for him to need it.

DD1 has done this, though TBH I just put it down to her patchy memory- she will quite often remember quite random things hours or days later.
Sometimes I also wonder if she does remember where something is but by then it's been too long want to admit it for fear of looking silly IYSWIM ( very aware she has memory issues)
The control thing is also a possibility though

It doesn't seem like he's enjoying us all hunting for her. He gets very distressed, sobs and has tears streaming down his face. He's not good at faking strong emotions so I don't think he's having us on.

GooseyLoosey, you might have something there. Perhaps if he's feeling like he shouldn't need a cuddly at his age, its his way of getting us to reassure him that its ok for him to still have one?

There have been some very strange places, its not like he's absent mindedly put her down and forgotten where - eg squished down the side of the fridge freezer, shoved down the back of the kitchen butchers-block/trolley, down behind the washing machine - not places she could have just been put down and left, and as he doesn't actually 'play' with her, its not as if he's put her somewhere as part of a game and then forgotten. It really is like he is deliberately hiding her in the most inaccessible place he can think of.

Thanks for all your thoughts, have to go and 'hopefully' get the cast removed from my leg now - back later.

We had something similar with DS (5 and ASD). He'd get his bee in his bonnet about stuff being in his room at bedtime. He had us moving nearly everything out until it got ridiculous. We couldn't take everything downstairs, like he wanted us to.

It kind of crept up on us.

To get over it we let him do it for about 5 mins and then said 'no more' and explained that thata's where stuff stayed. He got distressed but accepted it and we weaned him off it slowly.

Now he doesn't care if he can't see the carpet in his room at bedtime...

I suspect it was a control thing. And no doubt, it'll be back

My ds will sometimes re-enact situations that we didn't notice. Like if he bumped his head and he thinks we didn't see and he couldn't explain, he will then do it again in front of us. Could your son have lost bunny at some point, completely panicked but then found it but wants you to know how he felt but can't explain?

he's playing with theory of mind, I think. It's a very new and special feeling when you realise that you can know something that someone else doesn't know. My 7 year old tells me lies now (Althou8gh he#'s awful at it)

Ah, colditz, that's really interesting - thank you.

I have caught him out in several 'fibs' over the past couple of weeks, which is really unusual, as previously, I would have put money on him always telling the truth - no matter how brutal.

It would seem that he too is awful at telling lies - hence my catching him out.

That does make sense actually, add together the feeling of power that you get from knowing something no-one else knows and the fact that he has been completely disempowered at school recently by a relentless bully (who thankfully has now been dealt will and appears to have ceased activities) and its starts to make sense.

I think perhaps we will need to have a subtle, but concerted, push on the importance of honesty over the holidays and make sure we reward him for being honest when it might be tempting to tell a lie instead.

Mine went through a phase of that, an older equivalent to dropping the teddy out of the cot over and over again to see that the same thing happened each time. The power of realising that your actions affect others, and can change what was going to happen.
Getting caught up in it and believing that what he said had actually happened, to the point that he was distressed, yes, that too.
Having no understanding as to why people were cross with him when the facts came out. Yes.
Explaining calmly, linking it to a consequence, knowing that whatever annoyance he'd created wasn't done with malice aforethought. That helped too.

Is he being 'nasty' to the bunny? Giving it a hard time to see what it feels like to be the tormentor for a change? And he doesn't enjoy the feeling at all, hence the sobs?

I don't think he's being nasty to the bunny. The sobs come when we can't find her. He works himself up into a proper panic, as if he genuinely doesn't know where she is.

That's why I'm so confused, as what colditz said seems to fit the situation and certainly felt like a lightbulb moment to me when I read it, but now I'm not so sure again. I can't understand why he gets so upset and panicky about never being able to find her again, if he's getting a kick out of hiding her and knowing that she's hidden.

Also, we have had him try out being the tormentor already, only he chose his little brother to try it out on rather than his bunny.

DS1 does this with pencils. We're rotten, mean parents and tell him it's too bad and that he needs look after them better.

I was tempted to tell him yesterday that we wouldn't look for it yesterday, in the hope that he would think twice before hiding it again, but he was in such a state after we'd been searching for the best part of an hour I thought I'd better not.

If it was anything else, I think I would take that line of tack, but he has been so attached to this particular soft toy since he was a toddler, I'm worried it would do more harm than good.

I guess I could just be overthinking it and its just one of those weird things that children do sometimes which will pass in its own sweet time.

Maybe I've just got into the habit of worrying about him more than usual over the past few weeks, as we have really been through the wringer with him due to the bullying and he has had to be seen by the gp for anxiety (acid reflux, migraines, nightmares, panic attacks). I thought we had finally come out the other side of it all, as he seems so much better, school are handling things well at the moment and all his anxiety symptoms have gone.

Spinkle- quote: "We had something similar with DS (5 and ASD). He'd get his bee in his bonnet about stuff being in his room at bedtime. He had us moving nearly everything out until it got ridiculous. We couldn't take everything downstairs, like he wanted us to."

what you describe that is similar to what DS (4.8, asd) is getting us to do at every bedtime atm.
He will purposely brings lots of his cars and toys from his dowstairs toy box, arrange them in his bed, then when he is ready to lay down starts ordering us to take this, that,...etc, back downstairs.
If we say no he gets very upset.

'I can't understand why he gets so upset and panicky about never being able to find her again, if he's getting a kick out of hiding her and knowing that she's hidden.'

Perhaps he's not sure that the magic will work every time. My son is quite capable of temporarily being caught up in what's happening and 'forgetting' what he actually did. The adrenaline is almost like a stim for him sometimes, sensation-seeking.

Dd1 is perfectly capable of being in a blind panic about her bear, wailing and screaming as though he is being torn limb from limb in front of her, while actually looking at him

I think part of that is that she thinks I'm not giving my all to the search, as I must know where bear is, as she does iyswim - theory of mind stuff again.

Would it be possible for you to suggest the bunny stays in your ds' room, waiting for him at bedtime? Explain she is very precious and you don't want her properly lost? We had to do this with dd1, which is why she now has day bear and sleepy bear. Day bear (and his substitutes ) are the same bear, but obviously not as tatty/loved. It took a while, with lots of patient reinforcing, but she now leaves sleepy bear on her bed, and carries day bear around instead. We have 4 day bears, so there is usually one to hand if one does get mislaid for a while!

Would it be possible to get a new version of bunny on this way?

Just another thought - could it be that he is genuinely fearful of actually loosing him and testing you to see whether you will move mountains to try and find the bunny?

DS went through a phase of testing us to see if we would always come to the rescue when he was this age - almost like they are aware of their growing independence and need the reassurance that you will always be there for them.

After a disastrous, stressul and emotional day of driving round Menorca searching for a lost manky old, but much loved and irreplaceable bear we made a rule that tatty bear had to stay in his bed so he would always know where to find him.

Silverfrog, we did used to have the rule that bunnies (ds2 also has one) must go on pillows with pjs in the morning (so that they can get some rest while the boys are busy all day . It was working fine, but he has needed the comfort of holding her pretty much all the time since the recent upset at school, so started bringing her down when he went to get changed out of his uniform. I suppose we slackened the rule because he was going through such a tough time.

Unfortunately, I have never seen another one of these bunnies. Its actually one my dh bought me on holiday when we were first together 25 years ago. It was never supposed to be his really, but he adopted it from our bedroom when he was tiny. Prior to the bunny he had a penchant for Ikea sheep, no sooner had we bought about ten of them, then he swapped allegiance to the bunny. We learned our lesson with ds2 and have 3 of his bunny. Fortunately dd (18 months) is not so discriminating and is happy as long as she as any cuddly under her chin/arm. In fact she actually has ds1's bunny under there at the moment. I'd forgotten she can reach the window ledge now.

LimaCharlie, that's an interesting point. We have had a lot of conversations recently about the importance of him telling us if he has a problem (he was keeping the bullying to himself) and we will do everything in our power to sort it out for him. He knows that we have seen his teacher/s, SENCO and the Head about the bullying and that it was only after we did all that the bullying stopped. He also knows that we have been talking to various doctors about helping him with some of the things he finds difficult.

He came home from school yesterday really tearful, unhappy and intermittently sobbing, but other than falling over and hurting himself in class in the morning, there didn't really seem to be anything tangible behind it. I think he is just exhausted and overwhelmed by all the end of term stuff. I'm hoping that's all it is and not the bullying starting up again, but I think that's unlikely as the school is working really hard to make sure that doesn't happen and he was adamant that it hasn't.

Last night we agreed that the bunny would sit on the living room window sill until bedtime and he was happy with that, as he could see where she was the whole time - and - she didn't go missing. May have to rethink the location now dd can reach the window sill though. He tends to leave it looking out the window when he's at school so that 'she' can see when he comes home.