Do you remember obsessive interests as a child?

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Skyrim looks gorgoues. Its already pre-ordered and everything. Play it on the day I get it.

I have been reading up on all the information I could when it came to Skyrim. I think I have become number on fanboy stalker. rofl.

I think if I saw any member of Bethseda they'd be lynched with a thousand nerdy comments.

Haha I can really help it, ES series is closest to a perfect game I have ever played. You whould try two worlds 2 it is awesome.

Already ahead of you. Been playing it, got it last week. That's kind of the reason why I am up right now at 3am in the morning. Though mine is for the 360 and I just turned the 360 off and went back upstairs to surf the web for no other reason until I collaspe on the bed completely and absolutely exhausted.

Elder Scrolls Oblivion, I beat all the quest this includes side quest and main quest, I did all the guilds and beat every single quest of the guilds, I got to all the statues. I literally have completed the game to its full potentional. I basically took the game, without its consent, and squeezed all the game I could out of it.

Haha I just finished playing TW2 as well. Haha fuuny.

I have also beat Oblivion to its full potental like five times.

Great game minds think alike oh yes they do. I was on Chpt 3, but the fire demon monster was to hard and I didn't make a good character the first time around anyway. So he made me realize how much I really needed a better character. Just when I get to a certain point I'm also to stubborn to restart even though I know I should because I feel I have gone so far.

Oblivion, oh I know....I have done the same. And people always have to ask me "didn't you beat that game". You're like...there is no end to a game that you enjoy.

It's definitely possible to be diagnosed with Asperger's, particularly as a women, without being able to remember having obsessive interests. For one thing just because you don't remember having them or you feel that your interests weren't 'obsessive' doesn't mean that they weren't. Plus as someone has already mentioned, it's often harder to recognise in girls/women because their special interests tend to be more 'socially appropriate'.

I can easily remember my special interests. Star Trek, rockets, space exploration, and astronomy.

Astronomy, mammals, dragons, folklore and cars before age 6 when I entered kindergarten. My Uncle Todd says that when I was like 2, I would sit in my car seat and imitate my mother's every move while she was driving. Apparently I have had an unusual obsession with Dodge Chargers since the year 1999.
And in first grade I dropped the folklore one for good and got my obsession with old school torture devices, which was assumed by my therapist to be a combination of the Renaissance festival and 9/11.

This resonates. I wish there was more research being done into the presentation of ASDs in females.

To answer the OP's question: I do recall having obsessive interests as a child. I personally fitted the 'classic' model of AS fairly neatly, with my topics of choice (street maps, evolution, plate tectonics, space) being 'unusual' as well as marked by intensity. This was one thing that led to my AS being detected and diagnosed early on.

I used to watch the same videos and episodes over and over and over. I could sit and watch cartoons for hours. My mom got so annoyed.

Video games. I used to play Mario Brothers with my nanny. We could spend hours on it together.

Stuffed animals. I had a huge collection of them and they took up the majority of space in my room.

I had a lot of My Little Ponies. I later collected Breyer Horses.

I loved anything that taught me science, particularly stuff related to astronomy. I used to have little glow-in-the-dark constellations on the ceiling in my room and a bunch of star charts and planet books.

I had a bug catcher kit that I used to take everywhere with me. My mom had to take it away from me after I brought home a black widow spider, though.

Um, that would be me. I loved my Greek mythology book. I took it with me to a summer camp and I don't really want to remember all the bullying I got from other children whenever they saw me reading it - especially after I told them that I have read it before. Freak, as they put it.



Oh very yes. In my list of books read thia way are Astrid Lindren's Emil of Lönneberga, Italo Calvino's Le Cosmicomiche (I actually had that taken away from me because my parents were worried), Dodie Smith's 101 Dalmatians, Rostand's Cyrano de Bergarac, Moliere's Tartuffe and Dom Juan. I still re-read them from time to time.

I used to watch the same movie and the same music clips hundreds of times. Still do.
I checked the TV guide weekly for my favourite show for about 5 years after it was shown last time. I knew it was a very slim chance they'll show it again, but nevertheless I hoped and hoped. And checked obsessively - to the point that when I didn't get the TV guide first of all the family, I became anxious.

At the age of 5 I became very interested in cooking and general householdy stuff so at age 7 I was perfectly capable of cleaning the house and cook dinner (and I did, because my mother had enough on her plate already with my brother who was ill all his life and my Aspie father never learned how to feed himself, let alone feed his own child). Thing is, nobody made me do it, I volunteered and did it for years.I didn't consciously try to help my family by cooking and cleaning, it just felt good to do something with a routine and with lots of repetition. I was perfectly capable of throwing any of my parents out of the kitchen if they dared to interfere.
So I think it must have been an obsessive interest after all. I must have read the 800 pages of The Perfect Housewife's Handbook about 1000 times between my 5 and 10th year.

I was never interested in dolls and stopped being interested in cartoons before I went to school. Somehow my interests looked too mature for a kid and a bit weird for a girl - apart from the kitchen obsession, that is.

Last edited by Severus on 11 Feb 2011, 10:27 am, edited 2 times in total.

presidents, video games (especially Zelda and Myst), sci-fi stuff and insects (especially ants).

Dinosaurs, outer space, science, mythological monsters, and video games. I played video games almost constantly as a kid. In my teens I fell out of the loop with gaming, and now I tend to randomly fall in and out of the loop.

i have a really difficult time remembering most of my childhood.

i do remember though once when in grade school i was doing really bad in learning the 50 states and their capitols. my teacher actually had to talk to my mom about it.
my mom called one of my aunts who was a teacher, and my aunt sent some cool flash cards with a picture and name of the state on one side, and the capitol on the other side.
i don't remember specifically how long me and my mom studied those cards. . .but it seemed like at least 2 months.
i LOVED those cards, and couldn't wait to go through them with my mom. we'd do it several times a day, and i just remember being really excited over the cards lol (i've through the years have always been obsessed with some kind of "cards").
anyhow, in the end i ended up getting a 100% on the test we took. i was able to name every state, and every capitol. . .with my eyes blind folded, while i slept. lol

not sure if that was "obsessive" or normal. . .just something i remembered.

Not sure if these qualify as obsessions but...

The Chicago "El"/subway and Metra system. I had to know the routes and where the trains went when they came across junctions and stuff. I collected city maps that displayed the tracks and station locations...where the trains actually entered the tunnel (or stayed elevated).

Airplanes/airports - as a little kid, I knew all the different types of planes that flew into our airport as well as the layouts of various airports. If flying, I could usually tell which runway we'd land on by the flight path we were on. Or I would go check a map before leaving so that I could possibly be able to point out streets and other landmarks to determine where we were. I could even do this for some destinations with a fully cloudy sky and the plane above the cloud deck all the way until just moments/seconds before landing.

Most of the time, I would be flying to the same places over and over and would learn them quite well. Since O'Hare has/had runways pointing in all directions, determining the way down was/is always interesting. Even Midway can be a bit unpredictable, though most of the time the same landing patterns seem to be used for one particular runway there.

My mother always says that I seemed obsessed with cars because I could name them all on sight from a very early age.

Wow, thanks for all your answers everyone, sounds like you all had interesting childhoods, that's great

I have been thinking more about it and I do recall watching this same Swan Lake video over and over and over again as a young girl, as well as this same story book - Dogger - that I wanted read to me all the time. I then got obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles when I was about 8 or 9. As a teenager I watched Dirty Dancing and The Breakfast Club more than 50 times each lol I used to read my weekends away - I was obsessed with Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club (argh! lol) and this other series. And as an older teenager I became one of the biggest experts on the band Everclear (and got to meet them twice, yay!).
They never felt like "obsessions" though... Would this stuff count? Or is this all normal? (I get so confused with what is "normal" and what is not lol)

Liz

Oh, and I was definitely obsessed with computer games in my teens. I would lose sooo many hours. One night I stayed up very late even though it was so hot I was sweating all over, just trying to get past a certain level, and another time I was so obsessed with Mortal Kombat, trying to get past that darn Kintaro guy lol that I hardly even noticed our family friends had come over for a swim. I didn't even say hello, and when I finally beat Kintaro I just sat there crying lol I would get so angry at the computer all the time too! Yes, I was definitely obsessed with computer games lol