Help please! Obsession with girls

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Hi there,
Am looking for some advice regarding my 7 year old son with mild ASD. He is in mainstream school and is obsessed with a girl in his class as well as 2 other girls in different classes. He is in his third year of elementary school. In his first year, he was obsessed with a different girl and so, at the end of the year when the classes were being changed around, my son and this girl were put in separate classes. However, he then latched on to a different girl in his new class. It seems that whenever he is involved regularly with a group of children, he will inevitably become obsessed with one of the girls in the group. When I say obsessed I mean that he can't stop running over to her to hold her hand and say hello. When she's absent from class, he continually asks his classmates where she is and can become quite upset. It is really affecting his ability to focus on his work. When he comes home from school every afternoon, he simply cannot bear the fact that he won't see this girl until the next day and has a massive meltdown, shouting and screaming, lying on the floor, kicking and constantly calling out the girl's name. Myself and the school have tried social stories, to no avail. His school assistant also gives him 6 passes every day which he can use to run over to the girl to say hello. If his passes have run out and he still goes over to her, his reward time is reduced. He understands this system and it works some days. But on other days, he just can't control himself. As you can imagine, he is causing a lot of disruption in the classroom. I really want to help him work through this, but I'm simply at a loss as to how to go about doing this as I don't really understand the nature of the obsession. Has anyone ever been through this and if so, what can I do to help him?
Thanks in advice for your help!
Laurie

(Thread moved from Autism discussion to Parents')

Oh crap. I call that the Talisman- a physical object that the child is obsessed with and needs to be with for their anxiety to be manageable (the thing that makes the world feel safe). I've never seen it as another person before.

I'm just a parent and not medical, but I'd try to at least shift the dependency to a representation of the other person (photo album, diary where they can write notes to them) so they feel like the other person's there even when they're not.

It sounds like he is pretty high anxiety? If so, perhaps trying to reduce some of the other things around him that are anxiety provoking will decrease this behavior. My son went through a kissing phase last year - he just had to kiss other kids in his class ALL THE TIME. It wasn't as intense as your situation and it wasn't focused on any one particular person but it was a very hard behavior to stop. We did social stories and just stayed on him constantly about not touching other people at all. The only exceptions we made was for me and his dad who gave him as much hugs and cuddles as he wanted. I also tried to decrease other stressors so that his anxiety wasn't so high all the time. Is there anything else that holds his interest that would serve as a distraction? Does he seem to "ramp up" about it? If so, maybe trying to distract him with something else when you can tell he is just starting to get really intense would work. Hope somebody else has some ideas. This sounds like a tough situation.

Thanks for the replies guys. I wouldn't describe my guy as generally anxious. However, these girls do seem to trigger a level of anxiety in him that he doesn't experience with anything else. We did think for a while that maybe his attachment to these girls was a way of coping with the stress of the classroom. And so the school has worked very hard this year to reduce the demands being placed on him in school e.g. he no longer attends assembly as that would involve him being sururounded by all his girl obsessions for half an hour, and this is just too much for him. However, we have not noticed a decrease in his obsession as a result of these measures. I do think that the real problem is that they are within his reach for 5 hours every day. Proof of this is that he obsesses about a couple of girls in his sister's school when he sees them coming out the schoolgate at hometime. However, as he is not in their presence for long, it doesn't bother him much. Normally if we see that my son is developing an obsession with say a certain music CD or toy, we usually put it away after a few days, and he very quickly forgets about it. So with him it's very much a case of out of sight out of mind. However, because these girls are in his presence for 5 hours every day, understandably he is finding it hard to control himself. Another thing is that by eveningtime during the week and for the entire weekend he doesn't mention these girls at all - another sign that out of sight out of mind really works in his case. In an ideal world, I would like to invite these girls to our home on a playdate and try to desensitise him to them by helping him to relate to them through play in a more appropriate way. But as these girls now find him very annoying, I can't see them ever wanting to go to his house for a playdate. Also, I don't know their parents at all. If anyone has any other ideas as to how we might deal with this obsession, please let me know. I'd really love to be able to get inside his head and understand the exact effect that these girls have on him.

I should add that unfortunately, my son is not at the stage where he can talk about his obsession and we can discuss it with him. He is cognitively simply not there yet. And his writing skills are currently not at the level where he could write about it either. This means that we need to work on it with him at quite a basic level.

School can casue anxiety in NT kids, I can imagind for ASD kids, school is probably HUGELY anxiety provking, hence why he is able to be fine w.o the girls on the weekends and after school, as he isnt overly anxious out of school. He is smart, he probably learned that girls are USUALLY nicer, kinder, gentler, more understanding etc.. so he gravitates towards them.

I am not sure if any of these girls families know of this, but I wonder if you could get a pic of the girl for him to get access to rather then the girl herself. How do the girls respond to his kisses, and affection?

Maybe you should allow him to become obsessed with a toy or CD, and use that in school? I can imagine that this girl obsession might get harder for him or worse as he gets older!

good luck

Perhaps MMJMOM is on to something. Stop taking away the THINGS he is showing high interest in and see if his obsession about the girls decreases. Perhaps he is obsessing about them because you cannot "take them away" in the same manner as you take away toys or music that he is very interested in. Just a thought. Sometimes if what you are doing isn't working you need to turn it on its head!

Thanks for the advice. I definitely see where you're coming from re using his other obsessions to tone down the girl obsession. The only thing is that in the "rock, paper, scissors game" of my son's obsessions, nothing will ever beat the magnetic pull of these girls apart from a musical toy (such as the V-Tech ones that babies like to play with), computer or his iPad. He uses his MP3 player in school and is allowed to keep his favourite books on his table, but none of these hold the same attraction for him when he's in the presence of these girls. Given that he is in a classroom situation, we can't allow him the use of a musical toy due to the noise factor. We cannot allow him to use his iPad in the classroom as we'd never be able to get him off it without him screaming the place down. Also, he is doing very well at school academically and has at last developed an interest in learning, and I don't want the iPad to undermine that. He loves his reward time on the computer at the end of the school day, and his assistant uses this to keep him on track at school and to encourage him to stay away from the girls. Like I said, some days it works, but a lot of days it doesn't. And actually, today - a Sunday morning - he woke up for the first time screaming for one of the girls. So I really fear this obsession is starting to take over his life. I realise there is no easy solution here. I keep hoping he'll grow out of it eventually, but I am very afraid that it could get worse. He made an enormous developmental leap this summer and is doing so much better in school this year compared to last year, but I can see that this girl obsession is starting to undermine all this progress.

What would happen if you allowed more use of the electronic equipment at home? I am not experienced with people obsession as my son is indifferent to his classmates for the most part. So take what I say with a grain of salt as I am not sure it applies. I think what others have been saying is that maybe by reducing his access to his favorite things he has possibly transferred his obsessions to people.


If you let him get more obsessed with his other objects maybe his brain will let go of obsessing over the girls. Again, I do not know if obsessions are transferable between people and objects, as they are so different. My son usually obsesses over subject matters or games. He will be obsessed until he burns through it and selects a new one. He never transfers to people.

Is there any common factor with the girls he selected? Were they all nice to him and the other kids were mean? Was he lonely and they were nice to him? Maybe, he is obsessed because he needs more positive contact with peers and he has locked on to them? If that its the case maybe you can enroll him in some heavily supervised or parent and me activity where he has more social contact, but there are enough adults to keep bullies at bay.

Maybe it is some other trait, same color hair, I don't know. It is possible though that if you can figure out why his brain has chosen those particular girls, that you can find a way out.

What about the school working with him on social skills? How about skills such as how to have a conversation with peers, PERSONAL SPACE, appropriate ways to approach peers, etc...

You mention in a post that he isnt cognatively aware enough for you to talk to him about this. I would talk to him anyhow. If he is in a mainstream class and on grade level with school work, he has to have some good cognitive skills. Maybe make a picture story, not with words if he cant read them, but a social stroy with pictures. There is actually a great book, it is a social stroy book all with pics of real people. My son loves that book, and he has learned a few skills from there just by being able to SEE it in pictures instead of being told in words. It was in our local library, I am sure someone here knows what its called...

What is the school saying about this and what measures are they taking to help him overcome this?

Thanks for the reply. Yes, my son's social skills are extremely poor, and he needs a lot of help with learning how to interact appropriately with other children. Unfortunately he is not at the level where he wants to fit in and wants people to like him - he is totally oblivious to what people think of him. And so there is no real motivation for him to control his urges to approach these girls. The funny thing is that these girls have never really shown an interest in him and are now ignoring him when he approaches. On the other hand, there is a girl in his class who does show an interest in him, is kind to him and bosses him around a bit when she's trying to get him to play games. But my son does not obsess about her. We think it's a certain look he goes for, and yet we haven't been able to pinpoint yet what that look is, as we can't see what any of these girls have in common, apart from the fact that they are not interested in him. Maybe he is just a typical male and likes the chase

His school does work on his social skills with him e.g. he has 3 social skills sessions a week where he plays with one other child from his class. Sometimes the objects of his obsessions are invited along as play partners. He seems to cope OK with this. We do talk to him about his obsessions, but language-wise he is simply unable to explain to us why he likes these girls and what effect they have on him. If we ask him why he likes X, he will simply say "because I like X". We have done lots of social stories with him, and he can repeat these back to you no problem. But it is such a strong impulse in him that all the social stories go out the window once he feels the urge.

By the way, I think I have the social stories book you mentioned. It's The Social Stories Picture Book by Jed Baker. Thanks for reminding me about it, as I will pull it out again.

And in response to another poster who suggested that we let him indulge in his other obsessions as a way of reducing his girl obsession, I would say that we let him have ample downtime at home indulging in his iPad, computer, books and music. When I mentioned earlier that we put away a particular book or CD if he starts getting very obsessive about it, he then simply moves on to something else. And that is all fine. It's just we find that it's good to keep him moving along every couple of weeks or so as he tends to get stuck in ruts quite frequently. And he is very happy to move on to a new book or CD. We're still allowing him to indulge in his books and CDs, and so he's not being deprived or anything. We just need to change the record every so often so we're all not driven demented

I do hope that the obsessions will decrease as his social skills improve. But as we all know, it takes a long time for social skills to improve in a child with autism. And so I'm trying to find some kind of interim solution to help him control himself so that he can get through the school day. Like I mentioned in a previous post, giving him 6 passes every day to allow him to approach the girls has definitely helped a good bit. But on some days, it's not enough. And I guess I'm looking for similar solutions to help get him through the day while we work on the longer term goal of improving his social skills.

Many thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply.

How do you know its "all fine"? There is a possibility that he is NOT OK with this but just as with explaining why he likes the girls he likes, he cannot verbalize this to you. Not to be mean but you are assuming you know how he feels and there is a possibility that you are not correct.


Good for who?


This may be true but what if he really needed to spend more time indulging in the one you just took away. I think you really should consider not interfering with the books, CDs, games that he becomes interested in for a while. Maintain the same time limits as you have now but just let him keep those particular things that he is attached to for a while longer and see if that produces any different results. It's worth a shot anyway and doesn't really have a down side except that you might get a little tired of the subject matter.

My son is very quick to let us know if he's not happy with something - see my previous post about his meltdowns after school when he can't see the girls. When we think it's time for him to move on to a different book or CD, we say to him that maybe it's time to get a different one, and we let him choose which one he wants next. He is is perfectly happy with this system and will immediately suggest a different book or CD. I think he actually needs us to move him on as he's incapable of doing so himself. Now, if we need to get him to switch off the iPad, that's a whole different story!! ! Also, we wouldn't take the book or CD off him while he's in the middle of using it. We would wait until the next time he asks for it and then suggest he try something different. We have found this system works very well for him. I would never believe in depriving my son of something he needs. And yet I realise too that if he is to progress, he needs our help to move along. It's all about getting the balance right for each child. If we hadn't moved our son along in this way, he'd still be stuck in a corner pressing the buttons on some noisy baby toy. I have thought about what the previous poster said, but I really don't see a connection between the girl obsession and us helping our son to switch to a different book or CD.
Anyhow, thanks everyone for all the replies. This was my first time to use this site, and I will definitely be back.

I think the point might be that maybe if you let him obsess over something else, like a book or CD (maybe do less switching) then there might be a small chance that he may get hooked on that, and less on the girls. Cant hurt to try?

Good luck, this must be a difficult obsession for him, hope it gets resolved!

Oh dear. I wonder if he's developing crushes on these girls, and has no idea how to handle it...I know it happened to me a lot when I was young and I never knew what to do about it...always pretty much kept it to myself.

I wish I had advice for you, but unfortunately, I don't. My 7 yr old son had a similar thing going on, but it seems to have subsided for now.. He developed an obsession on the only girl in his special needs class last year. Fortunately, her mom invited us over for a playdate and then shortly after that, his obsession subsided. I remember him carrying on for about 45 minutes one day about whether or not she would be in his class the following year. I just tried to talk him through it and tell him not to worry about the future. Then several weeks later, he never even talked about her and when I asked about her, he told me that he didn't really like her because she was not very nice. So, that obsession ended pretty quickly.

Then he developed another obsession on a girl in the general ed class that he went to for homeroom. He would talk about her alot, and he kept asking me to please set up a playdate with her. The problem is that I did not know her mom, and I thought a 6 yr old girl might think it was odd for a boy that she didn't really know to be setting up a playdate since most girls that age are mostly into their girlfriends at that point.

It turns out that my son got transferred to a different school this year, but this summer when he realized that he would never see that little girl again, he broke down. I felt so bad for him---honestly, it was like a teenage boy sobbing over a broken heart. I comforted him and explained that maybe he would meet new friends at his new school. Funny thing is----he NEVER mentioned her again. So far this year, he has not developed any attachments, but I am always aware that it could happen again.

So, I just wanted to share with you that you are not alone. I am definitely keeping my eye on this situation because I feel that as he gets older, it could become more difficult.

My son also interacts more with his teachers than he does students. He really has no friends, but has always shown an intense interest in teachers and moms. I think there is some merit to the fact that maybe women are more comforting to him.