Bedroom advice for Child with Asperger's

[tutu100]

My ds1 who is 9 has been referred for investigations into him possibly having Asperger's. He has shown signs since he was 2 so it won't come as a great shock if he does have it.

However the reason for him being referred now is that his behaviours are becoming more extreme, obsessive and impulsive and I am having quite a lot of problems parenting him because of his anger. He doesn't seem to know how to deal with his emotions and so reacts to most things that aren't his obsessions with anger. He is a tall (and quite heavy!) 9 year old (similar size to most 11-12 year olds) and so now I physically can't really restrain him or move him around so I have been getting him to go to his room when he's having an outburst to calm down.

His room has plain blue walls, but so much stuff in it! He is obssessed with hoovers and Thomas the Tank so we have boxes and boxes of various train tracks, hundreds of trains. 4 full sized numatic international hoovers and now we have minecraft toys starting to creep in. I have been doing some reading on some children with asperger's needing very calm and uncluttered rooms (which ds1's definatly isn't) and I was wondering if anyone on here has tried this and if it helped. Also if so, how did you reduce the clutter without causing more distress. Ds1 finds it very hard to let go of things and it causes major meltdown if I take anything out of his room, even just to put it in the loft.

Any suggestions would be very greatly recieved. I have been told it will be a long wait to get ds1 assessed so I thought I would just try some different techniques before hand to see if I can make life nicer for him and for me.

We had similar issues with ds ASD. He would get very distressed if there was anything missing. He would know instantly if one of his lego characters were missing from a pile of around 100. There would also be bigger piles of lego around the room and wouldn't let anyone touch. It was getting out of hand.

What we did (not saying it will work for you) is to slowly negotiate a smaller collection that could be on his bedside table and the rest could be put away in his drawer. We have managed over time to get everything tidied away into his cupboards so it's a much calmer environment for him.

uncluttered? ds does the cluttering.

they share a room. we live in a two bed flat... uncluttered is a pipe dream.

ds has wind down time after school. he is fed as soon as possible as he is angrier when he is hungry. we have upped his omega three intake. no real evidence for this but swapping to fish instead of meat is not that drastic.

can you store his stuff in the spare room or a cupboard?

We have recently moved house and have given my ds a tiny bedroom with just bed and clothes in (couple cuddly toys and books on bed) and a seperate playroom with toys etc. Result has been a calmer child who is sleeping better despite all the changes going on. This suited the house we were moving to as well but might not be for everyone.

Thank you for suggestions and experiences. We live in a small 3 bed terrace so I am lucky that ds1 can have his own bedroom (I have another ds as well), although his room is still quite small. Currently Ds1 has shelving units in his bedroom to try and accomodate everything, but despite everything having a place he seems unable to put anything away (I think this is more linked to his ASD traits rather than being naughty and refusing to tidy). I was wondering whether one answer would be to have cupboards so that visually the room looks less cluttered, but the same amount of stuff is still in it. We don't have much room to store stuff elsewhere other than the loft - which isn't very big either. BlackeyedSusan how does your ds wind down after school? That is another meltdown time for us. Ds1 seems to be able to hold things together at school, but then all his frustrations come out when he gets home.

Minionmadness and Katcatkat you do feel then that a calmer room does help your child feel calmer. I really would like Ds1 to have a sort of sanctuary that he can retreat to when the world is feeling too much for him, so I want him to have his familiar objects around him, but I think atm we are overdoing it.