How do you deal with your childs immature interest?

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I'm an Aspie myself but look back on being into Barney into the 3rd grade and being picked on and perhaps being into Pokemon/Digimon and toys/games/cards etc. into my teens might haven't been the right move. I wasn't into Cosmo girly magazines or make up. Looking on my little sister Madison who is going on 12 yrs. old she's into Monster High. It seems to skew young 5-6yr. old the shirts and costumes are for that age range. She struggles reading and while she has read a 300 page Monster High book she needs to get into something besides Monster High. We've suggested Monster books but she turned down the idea. It was cute one Christmas but going into 3 Chirstmas' I swear last year she got 6 of the same pink Draculara doll girl!! !!

How did you change your childs immature interest? Did you channel it into something different or was that an interest you didn't talk to among there social group. Thanks for any help.

What is there to "deal with?" The interest does not seem harmful, so why do anything about it?

I had to look at the age range of Monster High as my near 6 year old isn't into it and neither are her classmates. It is all Ty Beanie Babies, Pet Shop, and My Little Pony with the kids I know who are 5 and 6 years old. It says that Monster High is a tween doll aimed at age 8-12 years old. I wouldn't worry about it so much as your sister is probably a little immature but she is still on the tail end of the bell curve.

I never did anything about immature interests. I try to expand his horizons by introducing new things, but a lot of the interests other boys my son's age have are not at my son's developmental level. (My son gets scared rather easily.)

If he were being bullied about them, I would have told him to try not to talk about the immature interests until he got home,which would not have worked. (I would have felt amiss not to, however.) We never had any of these problems, I think partially because some of my son's other interests are mathematical and way over other kids' heads, so I think they just lumped all his interests together as odd, rather than focusing on the maturity level of some of them.

My suggestion would be "get over and it stop fussing about things that hurt noone".
I'm going to be 30 in December and I still play Pokemon.

my 12 yo niece LOVES Monster High dolls, and I have a friend (adult) who still collects barbies and played with them well into her teens. She used to dress them and brush their hair, and now has an extensive collection as an adult.

There are worse things these kids could be in now a days!

also, my son is 8 and loves to play with his Mario and luigi stuffed dolls, I know that isn't too far off but most his friends don't play with the "dolls" but he is fine with it and so am I!

I'm 40 and still collect Transformers toys.

I stopped for a while around 13-14 due to teasing but got back into it when I was in college.

I think this is where remembering that autism can also be defined as a developmental delay is helpful. I played with dolls much longer than most of my friends, but my closest friends did too. I also noticed that my dd's most solid friendships are either with girls who are her age but have similiarly immature interests or are older and look after her. I understand your concern about bullying or shaming, but I find many of my daughter's peers who are acting in more "age-appropriate" ways will mock or shun her for something anyway. Her older siblings just tell her to ignore them.
You can, however, gently encourage her to become interest in a larger range of books and characters. Look for some things that are similar, and are high interest / low literacy (that's the label used for things that have more mature content but can be read easily and quickly).
J.

Exactly. I learned early that no matter what I was interested in, the other children would find something wrong with me anyway. They probably would have made something up if they couldn't find anything.
If you can't please anyone else, why not just please yourself?

I'm 35. I still read Young Adult novels. I like to watch cartoons. I get as excited over Naruto as my 12-year-old, and we're all into the new season of Dreamworks Dragons. The only reason I quit collecting Beanie Babies is that I got sick and tired of finding places to keep them and gave them to my kids. I'd still be playing Magic: The Gathering if I had the time to build decks and wanted to spare the money for cards (and, confessionally, if I had ever actually been any good at it).

ASD kid?? The other kids are going to find something to make fun of. It's the wierd that bugs them, honey. You can get rid of the wierd interests, try to squash the wierd movements, do everything humanly possible about the wierd speech patterns, train the wierd facial expressions out of them, punish them for the wierd comments like it's some kind of sin before God...

...and if you do it all successfully, and the stress doesn't drive one or the other (or both) of you to a nervous breakdown, and ASD kid is still going to be wierd, and the other kids are still going to pick on them, and the teachers and all the other people who are supposed to be protecting them are still going to look the other way. After all, it's not like they're REALLY disabled. They're smart enough. Just, well, wierd.

Harumph.

Let it be. The dolls bring some happiness and comfort and joy into a life that has a lot of confusion and pain in it. Would getting rid of the wierd get rid of the pain?? Maybe-- but the wierd ain't going anywhere.

You might explain to her that it's fine to ENJOY these things, fine to DO these things, but not a good idea to TALK about these things to other people (something I finally figured out when, at 12, I discovered a completely unacceptable enjoyment of watching old reruns of MASH, much to my peers', *ahem*, amusement)...

...but don't try to get her to give them up.

The only person who can steer an, erm, hobby is the Aspie who has it. She might learn that someday, but she's got enough to deal with right now without having to "make" herself be interested in something that someone else deems "acceptable enough."

^^^^This

I have been criticized so many times, both explicitly and implictly by the school district about my son's interest likes they are my "fault." The more advanced and (odd) stuff was my fault b/c I "must" have been "pushing" them. I mean, no way that a child with Internet access could find these things on his own, right? (They aren't bad, anyway, just "odd." ) The baby stuff was my "fault" b/c I wasn't exposing him to "cool kid stuff." Never mind that I spend time researching the stuff best I can and exposing him to it, which is not what NT parents do (or have to do.) He does not care about that stuff with few (computer-related) exceptions.

<sarcasm>
But, yeah, I should definitely nag him about it, as though that will magically make him acceptable to his peers. Sure...
</sarcasm>

Oh, yeah, and I think most of his interests are awesome.

Love that.

One of the first things I realized about my son was that there was no way to push him. He'd do what he wanted when he was good and ready.

The only thing you can really do for kids like this expose them to things and hope it sticks. Otherwise, just let them be who they are. Independent kids who think for themselves should be more celebrated. They are creative and unique.

Of course, I say that as an adult who used to be a horse obsessed little girl who got made fun of in Jr. High because all of my classmates remembered me pretending to be a horse in sixth grade. I changed my interests and it didn't matter. I still didn't fit in. So I just read a lot.

Kids who stick out are just going to stick out. The only thing I think we can do is be positive about it, give them opportunities to use those interests to grow.






Zeldapsychology

AS for your little sister,
Maybe there are other young adult books that are similar. It's not a genre I'm familiar with, so I wouldn't know. (All that comes to mind is Twilight, and I don't think that's a good alternative)

Does she enjoy writing? Maybe you could get her to start writing fan fiction about monster high? That's a good creative outlet. Maybe she'd like to create her own characters and branch off from there. The more you encourage her to expand this interest might help her to want to create her own world, her own characters and then start reading something besides Monster HIgh books. Eventually, she'll grow out of the fandom, right?

I like this question...

First my 18 year old NT college student still loves pokemon, and tells me that there are other kids at school who do too.

My 13 year old ASD son is a brony, who loves My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. Anyone who knows anything about bronies would know that it isn't only for little kids BUT for the resty of the world it is deemed odd. WE have had countless discussions about when your interest may appear to be odd to others, and how to handle it.

I think its more usefull to teach them how to handle the disapproval (or public vs. private behavior), than to sway them from their love of something. So my brony chooses when he wants to come out as a brony. (he actually likes the shock and disgust..)

So, I may have said to you... You know the other kids think Barney is for babies. I know you aren't a baby and you love Barney - and I think its fine. You may want to be ready for them to tease you if you tell them that you like Barney. Its ok to just have barney at home or its ok to tell everyone - just be ready that some kids aren't mature enough to understand.

I am all about giving information not about controlling.

Totally normal.

I am wearing a Luigi hat right now. Am I ok or should I be smacked down?

I still have a few immature interests, and several interests that I'm probably way too young for, it all just balances out into a big ball of speccy weirdness.

Louis