Lining up and stacking

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Lining objects up or stacking them is often discussed as a behavioural phenomenon observable in autistic children. I'm sure it's not exclusively associated with children and that there are people figuring out quickly it's the same behaviour when they see a row/tower of something made by an autistic teen or adult, but I found that awareness of that this doesn't (always) simply "disappear" with age a little lacking.

Do you (still) row/line up or stack things?

I can't help but be amused when asked about how curious it looks to some that autistic children line toys up... and if I have any idea why anyone would engage in such a funny, strange or endearing behaviour that surely I as a young adult who can if necessary appear to be quite mature don't do but maybe have a theory about.

Depending on the exact phrasing, it can be hard to keep a straight face sometimes. (My default sometimes is an inappropriate grin rather than a blank face.)

I bought two huge cans of sweets yesterday (Haribo is amazing) and just spontaneously organised them according to shape and colours. So neat.

Too funny! It just occurred to me that when I show my Danes, this is what I do - line them up and stack them.

I play Bejeweled Blitz and Spider Solitaire (2 suits) I've noticed these kinds of games help me order my thoughts and actually make me more productive.

I like for things to be in order and I don't like it when someone changes the order I have established. In practical terms this means my roommate should quit messing around in my kitchen.

Yes I still love lining up red gummy bears first, then green and so on

I've eventually learned how to not be miserable if I'm stuck in a store is to organize their shelves for them.

Oh ya, absolutely. Mostly I funnel that urge into sorting/organizing though. I think as I've grown I've just found outlets that don't stand out as "odd" so much. There's a comfort to the process of organizing things. My DVDs have a shelf for each rating (G, PG, R, etc), and are alphabetized on those shelves. I've looked up the reading level of all the fiction we own, and put little labels in the with the reading level...and there's a shelf for each grade level - then they're alphabetized. It sounds crazy, but as we homeschool and the kids (being different ages) are allowed/encouraged to access different levels of media....it actually really simplifies our daily habits. It might help that the kids have ASDs too, so these over-organized systems are comforting and appealing to them. My NT husband can have trouble keeping track of it all, so I imagine an NT child might feel controlled instead of supported by all those little structures in their life.

Since my hubby things it's cute/endearing that I do this kind of thing and encourages it, I actually do it more than I used to. He has a massive sweet tooth, so sometimes he'll bring home a giant bag of MnMs for me to play with. I like to separate them all out by color. Then, poor them into a clear jar one color at a time, in a spectrum. It looks so cool when it's done. Totally pointless things like that, just for fun. =D

This thread reminds me of knolling,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CTkbHnpNQ

Always be knolling...not exactly what this thread is about, but I thought you would appreciate it...Tom Sachs has it figured out to a fine art.

I keep collections lined up but the difference is, I don't have fits if it's not perfect.

I read the description and thought no way, but then I have caught myself lining things up. I'm 33 and still doing it, but in subtle ways. Such as the 3 boxes of pizza I bought today or the organising the food on the conveyor belt in the supermarket. Or cutlery and condiments in a restaurant.

I never really got particularly stressed about it, the entire act i realise is just a distraction. Fiddling around with shopping occupies my mind, so I don't start getting panicked about the people in the supermarket.

Mind you once the checkout girl told me to just put it all straight in the trolley and bag it up later, I didn't comply and had the closest thing to a flip out in public,

I still like building towers with Lego or blocks.

Jason

When I was younger I used to have these counters that was suppose to help with counting but I used to stack them and see how long I could do it before they fell over.

I LOVE shelving books and straightening them at the library. I do it all the time at the library when I see a disordered section, and I shelve books on the reshelving shelves sometimes even though i'm not employed by the library. It always works just like it's supposed to.

I can remember as a little kid stacking my blocks. I did this because I wanted to see how high I could stack them before they fell over. I think I also sorted them by color because, just like M&M's, they look better that way. I don't think I ever pretended the blocks were cars, or planes, or anything.

Yup, I love stacking and lining things up. One of my Blu-Ray/DVD shelves is two-rows deep on part of the shelf, but only one row deep on the other half, so I have to make sure that the one half is exactly lined up with the front row of the other half. My boyfriend always pushes the Blu-Rays to the back of the shelf if he's putting them back on, because that seems the natural thing to do...but I scold him and make him line them up.

Lining things up has made me exceptionally good at hanging art/posters on walls. My friends frequently call on me to do so in their homes/rooms. If I have four framed posters on a wall, they are all exactly the same distance from one another, the two posters on the outside are the same distance from the corner where the walls meet, and all of them are the same distance from the ceiling. All of my furniture is either centered on a poster, or between two posters.

I like taking the coins out of my purse from time-to-time and stacking them up. In fact, my boyfriend's coin jar is filled, and he asked if I wanted to count and separate the coins so that he could take them to the bank. YES, PLEASE.

I love it! I'm fortunate enough to be working at a library, there's always books to sort and shelve.

When little I did. My nephew does it.

It's hard to see it as nonsensical though, as my nephew and I both line/lined things up in order, utilizing some structure regarding size, shape, colour, and whatnot. My mother thought it was intelligent how I did it as a toddler due to the structure.

I don't anymore for the most part. I've progressed to dioramas.