Repetitive behaviours as children

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Do you remember what repetitive behaviour you did as children, i.e the stereotypical lining up cars etc..

Trying to remember back to stuff i did, i was diagnosed as an adult years later with Asperger's.

I loved organising coins by date, particularly pennies since they're so easy to accumulate. I'd stack them, or lay them out like a bar graph for each year. Then I'd get bored of them, dump them into a container, and organise them again shortly thereafter.

Picking apart things that were easy to break.

Like rubber balls. I had a strong urge to pick at them piece by piece. Or... multiple things. Like I would rips the layers off of cardboard boxes. Pick/peel at the wood of my desk. Pick apart the brittle plastic of the blinds on the sliding glass door...

And so my mom scolded me for being "destructive". Sometimes she asked if I was doing it because I was upset.

Priceless,,if this coulda been recognized early as a spectrum . Would have bern much better off , i think.
As a child , Music started to fasinate me ....And father told me about revords doing this . . . repeatefly if you did this or that was hooked on the phonograph record player by 6 yrs old . By 10 would put records on the area house stereo.
Was majic.Would just lay on the floor for over two hours at a time or more ....depending on my mindset ..
Only sitting up every five minutes to move the needle on the record player back to the start of just one song , for hours.
Somehow ,upon recalling those days , figured out it was a way to assauge my nervous system. And felt better to do it ,..But had not learned anything yet about the human body,except for health issues.
Probable listened to a total of Ten songs that way. For years .. But heard sounds and lyrics , sometimes after listening for awhile. Could understand the Lyrics , and felt someone else might have feelings like mine . or Visa Versa..?
Except instrumentals ...Somehow , Got hooked on the 1812 Overture , very early in life.No words just intensity. Still gets my attn. (whenever I hear it ) .but Alot of early popular music from the 1960s and before. Think the entire span of emotions had made it into music long before I came along. Beatles , Simon and Garfunkel etc. but usually always just one song for weeks at a time,in front of that stereo system.

My kid used to line up her Playmobil figures and animals. Rather than making scenes or playing out situations with them she'd just line them up.

Personally I was a dismantler. I wanted to know how everything worked and I didn't really mind breaking things in order to get inside them.

I dismantled/disassembled a lot of things.

I also used to line toys up like they were in a military review.

Playing the same music, over and over...
... At age 5. With a cassette player.

I dismantled a lot of things, too. Including the cassette player.

I don't have a lot of toys.
I used to hoard boxes instead with random stuff I thought it was odd looking.


This was long before television became my source of entertainment.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I used to drive everybody mad by repeating the same little phrase over and over on the piano in my attempt to master it.

I had a chain of paperclips
I would join them together to make a long chain when I was underestimulated or anxious
It got pretty long, in fact I tried to measure it, but I couldn't find anywhere inside the house big enough to measure it
I think it was my very first fidget toy.

I did go through a stage as a child where I learned you could make yourself burp, and I did that repetitively untill I ended up getting sick from it

I also had echolalia, new cool words (flambouyant as an example) would exite me and i would repeat it for a while untill I found a new word and so on.

Just a few examples, I am the repetitive type of person and enjoy repetition

Watching the same shows over and over, mostly. Which I still do now…

I don't remember doing that much repeatedly as a kid except maybe reading books or watching cartoons when I had already done it a million times. Apparently when an NT kid does is it's pretty normal because the kid finds comfort in how familiar it is, but when a kid with ASD does it, it's bad. Go figure.

When I was a teenager I collected troll dolls, and I would really line up and organize them. For example I'd have all the trolls with jobs in one part of my room such as a doctor, a nurse, a police officer, a firefighter and a mother troll with a baby. I explained to someone the mother troll was included because being a mother was the most important job of all.

I remember lining up my toys. Playing with them was: cleaning them and lining them up. I never played pretend. Sometimes I would sing to them. I remember lining them up and thinking "I have an audience now" So, I sang to them.

I also paced a lot, while talking to people in person and on the phone.

I was always twirling my hair, also sucking on my hair.

Super glad to learn that my dismantling things seems to be a common thing for us.

I was often scolded for it.