ds obsessed with traffic lights and green man

[redhappy]

Anybody else have this?

He was like this at 2, now almost 4 we haved moved to a road that has an unbelievable amount of traffic lights on it and the obsession is back.

Normally we are out and about at fairly quiet times of day so it doesn't pose too much of a problem. We get a lot of stares as he shows his excitement at the green man and the 'beep beep beep' , he cannot walk in a straight line because he is trying to see all the other green men lit up on the other lights at the junction, he stops in the middle of the road to point at each one and tell me about it unless I hold his hand and drag him across ( not so )

But the problem at the moment is that he has to be the person to press the button. It's complete meltdown if we get there and somebody already waiting and pressed the button. I am constantly slowing down or speeding up to try and get the timing right (also have pushchair with toddler so not always easy).

I'm sure this must be a common obsession for asd kids? How has anyone else handled it? I'm not sure what I'm looking for really, just bit stumped and struggling with this one...

Dd2 likes traffic lights but her favorite thing at the moment is number plates and phone numbers on the side of vehicles, she often runs off and i find her glued to a parked van reading the phone number off the side followed by the number plate.

DS2 has got an obsession of being the only person to press buttons. Not just traffic lights, but lifts, metro, bus, automatic doors..... anything that has a button that has an effect after you press it.

Like NS we do the taking turns technique (if you want to call it that). SO even if he isn't the irst person to press it, if someone else is there first, we say that it is there turn and DS2's turn next. This works 3 out of 4 times normally. Sometimes he will have a bit of a meltdown, screaming and getting all flappy, so I'd just let him press the button as we pass.

Thanks, even though I was sure I wasn't the only one it's good to hear it...

"anything that has a button that has an effect after you press it" I'm going to take that! His birthday is coming up and that's a great phrase to use to describe to people what kind of toy will actually get used by him.

We are working a lot on taking turns at the moment, if we hear any traffic lights going whilst we are not crossing he shouts at the top of his voice "everybody else press it!" but he seems to have finally accepted this is ok, and actually it's something to get excited about now.

So the answer really, as always, is patience and more patience then.

bus bells.....My 12yo DD still has to be the one to press the bell on the bus. Despite the fact that we live on a very busy bus route and lots of people tend to get off at the same stop...she also has to press it at 'exactly' the right moment, and hates it if someone else presses it too soon....

Ours is not quite the same, but to do with roads - when stressed in a busy street, and especially somewhere he does not know, DS has to jump on every drain/hydrant/manhole cover he can see. As this is regardless of whether anyone else is on or near them, and even if they are in a road, it can be a bit hairy at times

Yes we've had that one too Ampers. Not just when stressed though, all the time. He was fanatical about it, then we moved house and traffic lights has really come to the fore again.

He called them jumps and I think he thought he was in a computer game, everytime he jumped onto the next one he had to shout 'jump!'

It took us a lot of training, but eventually he agreed not to go on any of the road ones, but he would point every single one out to tell me he wasn't allowed on there.

Ampersand, you've reminded me of what DS2 used to do. Whenever we passed a drainpipe he insisted on stroking it . Took us forever to walk past terraced houses that had doors right into the street . Thankfully he doesn't do that anymore!

We are going to have an interesting time if we all meet up

Yes, it'll have to be a lift/traffic light/drain hole free zone

Just got back from taking ds to playschool and it seems jumping on the drains is very much back on the agenda