a person as a special interest

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Hello-

I was wondering if any of you have experienced your Aspie child getting fixated on another person. I don't know what to think of it. My 9 yr old son seems to go through phases where he is "stuck" on other people for awhile. Sometimes it is classmates, sometimes girls, sometimes boys and sometimes adults. He talks about the person all the time and gets really excited about the person. I am not even sure if the other person even knows that he is fixated on them. Then all of a sudden, that person will fade out and another person will start up. I don't know if I should be concerned about it, but I don't want him to become obsessive about people and be viewed as strange by the person. I know that is really out of my control, but I am just not sure how to handle this. It is easier if he is stuck on an object or a topic.

Have you read about Pathological Demand Avoidance, a type of autism that's recognized and researched in the UK? These kids often have a person as a special interest, just like you describe. You can find some good info online but best is the book.

No, I have never heard of it. Thank you for the information---I will check into it.

I know from reading the love and dating board over the years that having people as a special interest can turn extremely problematic, so while you may not be able to stop it, I believe that you are going to have to teach him that it is behavior he will HAVE to control and learn to manage appropriate. Whatever you can do to get him to understand how this could affect the person he is fixated on will help, as will learning the potential legal consequences, so that he learns to keep the interest to himself and also learns what lines he can and cannot cross while having the interest.

I hope this is just temporary or mild because using people as a special interest can really hinder one's life, from what I've seen. It gets very difficult to keep relationships in the healthy box. And I worry that once you've taught him the concerns in my first paragraph, he will feel he has no choice but to isolate himself from people. Basically, I think you are going to be walking a very, very fine line and hopefully the book previously recommended will have some ideas on how to manage it without having it all backfire.

Thanks DW...thus far his fixations on others has not caused any real problems since he is still relatively young (9). I am really concerned for his future, and I try not to worry too much. All I can do is be aware of the potential for issues and talk to him as best I can. I would love to protect him from getting hurt the rest of his life if I could. Right now, he has no real friendships and I am afraid he does not have a clue how to make a real friend. My heart breaks for him sometimes. I am going to read up on this PDA that the other poster mentioned because the brief description that I read, my son does seem to fit into the category.

I have been working on trying to help him make friends, but this is the dilemma---He has a hard time socializing with typical peers, but when I put him in groups of other autistic children of varying degrees, sometimes he starts mimicking behaviors that he didn't have before. And also, those children obviously have deficits in peer relationships too, so he hasn't really made any friends that way either. The one kid he has been fixated on is a non-verbal autistic boy that does interact with him on some level by making faces and acting silly with him. And I have seen my son try to talk to him before. I hate to discourage that, but at the same time, I don't want to see my son fixated on this kid.

I posted on the general discussion board and got some good input from over there too. I guess all I can do is hope and pray that this doesn't go too far. I tend to be a worry wart about things, but at the same time, I guess it is good to be aware.

I think awareness is, just by itself, very useful. Good luck!

This is something I've seen, in my dd and in some others on the spectrum. In my experience, it tends to be in those who are more socially competent, rather than less. Girls on the spectrum may seem very social and have strong attachments, but there is something that doesn't quite work, so they develop unrealistic understandings of the other person. I know of at least one boy who was like that, too. I figure that it can be hard for a child on the spectrum to make friends, so when they do it is normal that the person becomes almost a superhero in his or her mind. The problem is that a child on the spectrum can't read the signals well enough to know if this friend is a close friend or a friend at all, so they can push things pretty far: texting or posting on FB constantly, wanting to sit next to the person all the time, or, if they are shyer, talking about them all the time. We had problems with the former, until my older children gave strict rules to follow: text once, wait 30-60 minutes and text again, then drop it, or something like that. I'm not sure what to do about the second case, but I do know that it helps if you can tell them that no one is perfect, even the object of affection/fixation, and that's ok. I was a bit like that, and turned my infatuations into characters in stories.

Thanks....My son really doesn't have any real friends. The child that he is fixated on is a non-verbal autistic child. He smiles a lot and makes funny faces with my son, so bingo, I am thinking my son is just enjoying the attention of another child seeming to be interested in him. It is just becoming a bit too obsessive. He is only 9, and he doesn't have a phone (I will definitely hold off of that for as long as is possible! ) so right now I am not worried about texting and FB. I really wish I could help my son make some friends for himself.