Is liking trains a red flag for autism?

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Dunno. I'm actually kinda scared of them, especially freight train horns. We were told as kids that a tornado sounds like a train and I thought they meant the horn. The sound still makes me freeze if I hear it too loudly. And I can't actually understand how anyone could stand Thomas the Tank Engine, much less become obsessed. Freaky lookin' sucker.

Ha ha ha!! ! I have to admit that as an NT, I often wondered that about my son - and in no way would I ever say that I completely "get" his world. Ha...far from it!! However.... the train has a face. That alone is freaky, and as black/white & literal as my son can be - I couldn't understand how he could be OK with the train having a face. I mean, he was always the first in our family to point out that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck at Disneyland can't possibly be real (I'm talking about the characters that wander the park) because "Mom, animals can't TALK!!" To each their own, I guess, right?

You want to talk about freaky...

My HFA son used to love Thomas and regularly watched the show, so much so that my wife and I would sometimes hum the theme song without even realizing it. The faces with the moving eyes didn't bother him. I guess it just looked like part of an inanimate object to him. Anyway, this season, Thomas has added CGI over the faces so that the entire face moves, mimicking normal facial expressions. It looks kind of creepy. The first time he saw it he ran away sobbing. It was just too weird. We don't watch Thomas anymore.

I think the NAS article and this statement has some truth. I was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine too. In my industrial placement year, I worked for Bombardier Transportation on a driver display system project for the drivers of the Guangzhou and Shenzhen metro systems. I now work for London Underground as an electrical engineer. In both cases though, it was coincidental that I ended up working with trains, as it happened to be about what was available at the right time.

I was in to trains for a long time. But then I moved onto planes...
Then the anti-gravity fields...
BOEING has already mastered anti-gravity but is still waiting for the Government to give them the thumbs up after disclosure.

Well, if not a red flag it's certainly a stereotype.

I personally don't particularly get excited about trains except I want to ride a steam train one day.

I have two boys that like to play with Thomas. One is 5 and the other is 7. The 5 year old is NT and the 7 year old has PDD-Nos. My 5 year old is phasing out of Thomas but my 7 year old is stuck on him. So much so that we have to go to the train park all the time. It's a park in Scottsdale that has a train you can ride on. Also my hubby is going to take him to a train hotel in Tuscon Arizona where he can sleep in a train car and also ride the little trains. he is a tiny guy and looks like he is 4 and acts the same age as well. Some times he acts more like my little girl who is 4 than anything. Once my second oldest son messed with my 7 year olds train line and he was pissed. The older boy picked up Thomas from the middle and put him on the end switching him with Edward. He didn't think that my 7 year old would notice. When he got to the room and saw what had happened he flipped out and started screaming. He said over and over "Thomas doesn't go here he goes here. Edward goes here and Thomas goes here. Thomas can not go here because Edward goes here and Edward can't be here because Thomas goes here." It happened liked that over and over until his anxiety level decreased enough for him to fix it. He also has his Thomas magic sunglasses. When ever he puts on his sunglasses nobody except for babies can see him. He disappears when he has the magic sunglasses on. It helps him when there are to many people around. He will get scared and then put them on and after he does he will calm down and be able to finnish our store trip or what ever it is we are doing.

My favorite show when I was an older child (age 7 to 10) was the Shining Time Station. It had a somewhat mature vibe to it (think Mr. Roger's Neighborhood as compared Barney and Friends). I liked watching what happens at a working train station, even if the whole thing was a acted out. In fact, it was one of the few situation where I enjoyed seeing people interact; their interactions were peaceful and rational, as opposed to the chaotic ways of real life. I'm thinking that this show, even long after I stopped watching it, sparked my interest in trains, which started sometime in 2003. As a kid, I liked the show, but ironically, felt quite indifferent about real-life trains.

In regards to all that, I was never a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. The whole show and its characters just seemed too cartoony and childish for me. I didn't really enjoy the excerpts from it shown in Shining Time Station, but watched them anyway.

I've personally moved on fromThomas to high-speed trains. My employer is sending me on a trip to Spain to see the high-speed trains (Spain's current state-of-the-art one is the Siemens Velaro A103). I liked it so much that I've opted to stay a few days over in Spain and travel all the way from Barcelona to Seville non-stop. The Madrid-Cordoba section was my favourite, with the train going through mountainous terrain at 300km/h.

My son has always been drawn to 0 gravity issues, batteries, magnetic fields, 2D 3D 4D etc.

Trains? No, never an interest. But, he's always wanted to ride on public transportation, and had a preoccupation with it at one point. He would always nag me about it. But, we don't live in the city so it faded.

I find myself interested, somewhat, in the plane schedules because it is somewhat reassuring. I don't like the sound of planes overhead and so I am aware of schedules when they pass overhead. It is a slight awareness. But, not to an extreme. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be an aspie and intent upon systemizing to create comfort (to a higher degree so that it is actually debilitating).

As I type this my son is on 60 bottles of beer on the wall, and if he messes up, he will need to repeat the whole thing until he does it perfectily. LOL. New song...not sure where he learned it. UGH. Very repetitive. 31 now...almost done.

: )

My 2 year old who was recently diagnosed is obsessed with trains - he even sees train track patterns where others would never think to see them! This is interesting...I do know a few toddlers who are into trains though, so I don't think it is a huge indicator in and of itself.

My two younger half - sisters both went thru a phase where they absolutely LOVED Thomas the Tank Engine and would watch nothing but Thomas VHS tapes, etc. But as far as I know, neither of them are autistic.

I also went thru a TtTE phase when I was a toddler - I had a Thomas sweatshirt outfit, a Thomas hat, and a die cast Ertl Thomas. I'd sometimes watch the Thomas show and the Shining Time Station show, as well. For some reason, the episode where Percy is frightened by the Dragon Train scared me when I was a kid...maybe cuz Percy was so scared by it. Some years later, I also bought a small wooden Percy train, cuz I thought he was so cute.

However, as a young adult (who's not sure if she has AS or not), my most predominant special interest is Cars. I enjoyed Thomas when I was younger, but it never reached the point of "obsession" for me. I think it might have had to do with the fact that it seemed like the Thomas characters were always getting on one another's case for petty reasons. The Cars characters are mostly very friendly.

Well, one of my recent conditions while house hunting was it had to be withing walking distance of a train station! But I am not officially diagnosed with anything...

Well, one of my recent conditions while house hunting was it had to be withing walking distance of a train station! But I am not officially diagnosed with anything...

My son has very little interest in trains, if that helps...

There could be other possible explanations:

Anecdotally speaking, I understand boys have a reputation for taking longer to become toilet trained than girls, and I Googled and came across this, but there are probably lots of other articles that suggest there might be a gender difference when it comes to toilet training: http://www.parentdish.com/2009/05/01/po ... ifference/

It could simply be a gender-related thing, or it could simply be more about different individuals developing at their own pace.

And as for speech, well, I'm guessing that when your daughter arrived, as new parents, it took you a while to learn 'baby talk', to try to understand what different cries and grunts and gestures meant when you were raising your first born child. It's possible that with your second born child you're more used to anticipating and interpreting non-verbal communication, so perhaps obviating to a great extent your son's need to communicate verbally.

Whereas with your daughter, an outstretched arm or wail might have resulted in a 'conversation' about 'What's the matter? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired?' 'Would you like some milk, can you say "milk"?' Whereas now you're more experienced parents, perhaps you can better interpret various wails and gestures, and you will either feed your son or comfort him accordingly, without his having verbalised his problems or needs.

And perhaps a helpful older sister might also be able to interpret his wants and pass him a cup of juice or a biscuit if he grunts or gestures, rather than waiting for him to say the word "juice" or "biscuit"?

I'm just guessing here. It's possible, as others have said, that it might be indicative of a child being on the specrtum if they have obsessive interests, but then again, it's also possible that there's a perfectly logical explanation for an NT child behaving as your son is doing. As others have said, it depends on other factors, whether there's a lack of imaginative play, whether there's an obsessive 'ordering' of toys, whether you and other family members are anticpating and fulfilling his needs by interpreting his non-verbal communication, which means he's perhaps been a bit 'lazy' in terms of language development, or whether that's not the case and he is genuinely having some communication difficulties...

Have the doctors/health visitors commented about his development? When he's been for vaccinations and other medical check ups, have they expressed any concerns? The thing about development stages is that they are based on averages, so whereas some children will be fast developers, others are average, and some develop their skills more slowly, but still within an acceptable range. Is he well outside the norm in terms of development? Or is he perhaps still in the average range, but at one end of that range, rather than the other? And again, all children are different. And it's not necessarily gender related. I have a sister who is a year older than me, but I learned to ride a bicycle and learned to swim before she did. It might be just a matter of individuality.