The tyranny of alphabet songs

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So my son 7 has recently taken to a new form of stimming. This involves alphabet songs. He will say a letter and then we need to say a friend or dinosaur that belongs to the letter. Another variation is he we say a colour and then we need to say an associated friend or dinosaur. He has in his head already which friends belong to which colour or letter (its not as simple as names beginning with T belonging to the letter T). There are various rules and regulations to these games and errors can be punished with a meltdown. The rules seem to change from time to time just to keep us on our toes.

The first 10 times one plays these games are ok. By the 20th time one is very board and by the 100th one is practically gnawing off ones own arm in desperation.........

I know this is his form of stimming. He needs us to do this for him but god it's draining. Sometimes one get caught in a trap of an hour of inane alphabet games just being repeated again and again and again and again and again...............backing out is normally punished with a massive meltdown so one swaps inane repetative bordom with all the excitement of a screaming shitfit what a choice!

Any advice for my sanity? We have tried to implement "alphabet game quotas" and limits but with little success. Any tips on that? I think some kind of daily quota or chart might be a good idea. The problem is that he absolutely loves doing these songs and it is really cute interaction especially given that a few years back we were worried he would never talk. This is defintely a case of being careful what you wish for!! ! I love seeing his little face full of joy as we do the games but it just goes on and on and on and its sooooo dull. I nee to find a way so he gets what he wants and me and my wife stay sane. So any tips would be great!

My sympathies. I can relate to that.

Once upon a long time ago, in my earlier incarnation as a children educational software programmer, one of the mantras we received was: repetition is the way children learn. Children love repetition. That mantra kind of got stuck in my head. So even if I am tired from my son's repetitions, I would still try to go on for a few more rounds.

I've had some "smashing success" with some of the animation video clips I've made for my children. Quite a few of them. Here I will just show one of them.



My son would memorize the entire script of the play, and I would have to play along with him. Hundreds of times, seriously. The video is about 2.5 minutes long, and I've done the reenactment with my son for like 1 hour continuously, so that would be 24 times in a row or something close to that. It gets tiring. At the end I always have to apologize to my son that I was too tired and could not go on.

I guess I never discouraged my son from repeating. I did have to raise my white flag when I got exhausted.

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Stimming is a good thing. It gives a "hook" for cueing in additional skills for your son.

My son was non-verbal when he was 2.5 years old. But he liked to watch a short dinosaur video clip on YouTube. So, what I did was to insert some stick-figure drawings. Almost like TV commercials. His attention span for static images was about 2 seconds. I needed to take advantage of those precious 2 seconds to teach him additional skills. So I had brief frames with silly drawings and silly voice-overs (and labels) like "Papaosaurus. PAPA!" and "Mamiosaurus. MAMI!" Those frames were displayed for only 2~3 seconds. Believe it or not, that was how my son learned to call me "Papa."

Later, my son stimmed with playing a vacuum cleaner. We stow away the vacuum cleaner in a closet. But he would always want to take it out to play again. So, I inserted additional activities. Before I gave the vacuum cleaner to him, he would need to run one loop around the staircase with me, or go tap tap tap on his mom and say "I am a good boy!" Later, I would make a sign and write down the sentence "I want vacuum!" and he'd have to read it. Later, I would pick some short sentences from children's story books and he'd have to read them out for me, before I gave the vacuum cleaner to him. And later, he'd have to do two activities with me before I gave the vacuum cleaner to him. Later, it went up to 3 activities. In short, he learned tons of skills, all from his stimming with the vacuum cleaner. Not only that, his stimming with vacuum cleaners eventually subsided.

Stimming is a good thing. It's a door for developing interests and skills. That's the reason I still take my son to elevator rides on weekends. And believe it or not, lately we've had some other families joining us for elevator rides. Yeap, an autistic elevator riding club. Ha ha. My son has learned to talk, to draw pictures, to type on computers, to write, to do math, to assemble electronic circuits, to remove some of his sensory/rigidity issues, to ask stranger questions, and now to socialize, all from his passion with elevators.

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In the case of re-enactment of the animation video clip, I did not insert additional activities for my son. You could potentially try it. BUT, before you insert activities, you need to explain to your son your game plan. Children's don't like surprises. This is where a magnetic drawing board comes in handy. You draw pictures, explain to your son that today you guys will play the alphabet game a bit differently. (Actually, drawing on blank index cards in a mini photo-album might be good idea, too. It makes your message more permanent.) Anyway, you need to explain to him the change in game plan. You tell him that you guys will still do the alphabet game, but that after each round he'll have to do some math problems with you. Addition/subtraction, or Japanese multiplication with straight, colorful circuit wires. And that after he solves a problem, you guys can then go back to the alphabet game. That is, you can take the opportunity to broaden his skill set.

What I see happening very often is that parents complain that their kids are not learning. At the same time many of these parents also complain that their kids are stimming all the time. To me it is like: "Duh?" Stimming time is learning time. You are not teaching your children when they are stimming, so of course they are not learning. That is also why I keep taking my son back to elevator rides. To other parents, they don't see the point of playing with elevators. But to me, my son has learned all the skills he'll ever need to learn in his life, from elevators.

Limiting special interests or imposing limits on them only causes resentment.

You have my sympathies.

I have no clue how to stop it.

Having a massive attack of the guilts for all the hours my poor grandma spent pushing me in a swing and reading the same stories and playing "kitty cats."

I realize it does absolutely nothing to help you right now, but-- I'm insanely grateful to my family for tolerating my repetitive "games," and this too shall pass.

What about a timer for a break? Maybe 10-15 min of alphabet songs, with a 10 min parent break, then back at it? Would your child be able to tolerate a break for you if they knew that you were coming back?

In my case, no. Being told my own parent needed a limit of hearing about the thing I loved most made me resentful and also like I wasn't loved.

I don't know if this helps or not. But I have never once had the experience of having my special interest given attention from my parents. At least not once I was of an age where I had enough freedom to pick an interest that didn't come from them in the first place. Can you imagine? I've always loved science and space, and they've been actively discouraging that for as long as I can remember. I was even forbidden to do a book report on Saturn in 3rd grade because the topic was "boring." (Yes, weird that I remember that.)

So give yourself some credit. Your son already knows that his interests are important for you. You've already invested a lot of time in letting him this and it's clear your not going to stop letting him play alphabet at all.

That being said, it is UTTER horse hockey that he's going to be damaged by being told that he can't go on and on and on for hours without paying attention to the needs of others, and the interests of others. He needs to hear that, consistently and gently - probably for years before it really sinks in. His interests matter, but so do your's. That's central to any relationship except the mother/infant relationship. And he's not a baby anymore.

It is OK to say "I love your alphabet game. You are such a smart boy and I'm so proud of you. But we are only going to play for ten minutes. If you want to keep playing, you can go into your room and play the game by yourself because your father and I need to talk about other things too."

Depending on his interests and ability level, you might suggest that he put on a performance for his stuffed animals, or that he make a recording to put on youtube. (It matters not at all if no-one ever watches the whole thing.) You might reverse it and set a timer and tell him to go practice for ten minutes and come back when the timer is done and we will listen to your performance again.

This is a skill - understanding that other's have needs of their own. At 7, it's probably an emerging skill. Younger kids often only see their parents as tools to get their needs met. That's not picking on them, it's just normal for the age. So, it's going to take some time and patience to teach him this. It's introducing a big new idea.

Have you tried social stories to teach new skills like this one? I like that method.

Another idea is to ask what happens in school. I can promise you that the teacher has had to deal with the issue of children taking up too much lesson time with their private stories. She/he probably has some tips that work for your son at this point in the school year. It's a skill to learn what works to interrupt the flow of a child's monologue without crushing them. Every teacher of younger students has to deal with this, almost daily.

I'm an adult, no one tells me I can't talk about my speical intrests anymore. But the pain from being told I couldn't or that I had a limit on how long I could STILL hurts me to this day. So YES, it can damage a child for life.

My son made me sing " The farmer in the dell" every night for 15 minutes ( and occasionally another nursery rhyme) . after several months of this i noticed he was using connectives/articles in some of his speech. ( we usually sang nursery rhymes through out the day)

Im sure this phase will pass and maybe he's using it for his development.

My son lined everything up , eventually he lined up words and by 3 was lining up 12 letter words.

I don't think theres any harm in using a timer and sitting down with a drink and a snack and telling him its alphabet song time as part of your daily schedule and when hes feeling anxious. just an idea.

If I want to stop an activity i simply say " finished" ( i use to have a finished pecs card too)

You have to set your limits and stick to them. I will play one game with you now, and one this evening. Tomorrow we will play again. If he throws a fit/ meltdown ignore it unless it's a safety issue. He will learn after 2 or 3 times of this, then will adapt and probably try to manipulate you into it in some other way. That's what my kid does anyways. Stay firm!!

Also, try explaining/demonstrating that everyone gets a choice and deserves to pick. You play something with him (alphabet game) then he plays something with you that you like. Try to get him interested in other people and activities.

Based on my own experience, I will second this.

I loved my grandmother best of all the adults in my life, not least of all because she put up with my repetitive obsessions, indulged and encouraged them, even pretended to enjoy being lectured on the habits of cats or the history of bluegrass music or singing Suanee River over and over and over and over and over and over again. Her unconditional acceptance and endless praise were a warm, wonderful, confidence-building thing that let me get through the Really Bad Years known as preschool-eighth grade with some kind of sense of self intact.

But.

My dad, who enjoyed them in small doses, tolerated them up to a point, and then kindly and logically told me that it was time to do/talk about something else now (or at least let other people do something else) (and go along with it if I wanted to improve my odds of being liked)-- Well, I loved him next-best (a very close-run thing), and he was more influential in making me into a functioning adult over the course of 18-25 years.

It took me YEARS to understand (I think I was about 12 or 14 when I finally began to "get it" that people could like me, but still be sick and tired of what I was talking about), but once I got it, it was a very helpful lesson, for which I remain permanently grateful.

Thank you all.
Much good advice to consider.