Other people's stuff and boundaries

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My DS4 is very outgoing and curious. When we go to the park he is fascinated by other people's belongings to the point of reaching into bags or trying on unattended bicycle helmets.

Bringing his own toys doesn't help because he is so drawn to novelty that he ignores even his favorites. I've tried to explain that if it isn't ours, we need to leave it alone, or ask the owner if we can play with it. It's been 2 years that I've been dealing with this and it still isn't sinking in.

Most people are pretty understanding about it but I've had a couple of downright ugly responses to his inquisitveness.

DS, at 12, still struggles a bit with picking things up in stores and at museums (oddly, he wouldn't cross the boundary of someone else's purse - why he can make that distinction but not the other I don't know.) He knows the rule, but sometimes he just has to explore with his hands. It's better than it used to be - but the more tired/overwhelmed he is the less able he is to inhibit that impulse.

For a while, we tried making the rule that he couldn't go in a store unless he kept his hands in his pockets, which made a small improvement but didn't solve the problem.

It's interesting that someone started this thread. I had the opposite problem. When I was little, even as young as age 3, I had a ironclad sense of distinction between "mine", "someone else's", "public", "nobody's", and "expendable". (To explain the distinction between the latter three, "public" is toys in a waiting room, "nobody's" is stones on a beach, and "expendable" is something "mine" that can be given away, like candy or paper airplanes.) I followed this moral guideline religiously, and even felt uncomfortable playing with someone else's toy, even when that kid willingly let me borrow it. I willingly accepted candy from other kids. When going out to a park or playground, I never touched anyone's toys more than absolutely necessary. I much preferred to play with the toys I brought (until I stopped taking any of my toys outside my home) or with random objects ("nobody's") I found in the park, rather than with other kids' toys. I also had zero problems playing with the toys at my preschool, because they were "public". I never brought my toys from home to preschool. After I've had kids grab them from me, plus one time, I never got it back, I decided that boredom was better than losing my toy.

As I got older, bullying increased. Kids on the playground began to grab my toys away from me and play "keep away" with them. I'd scream like a banshee, of course. My parents had to intervene each time to get my toys back, then yell at me afterwards. The bullies' parents adopted a more laissez faire approach. Eventually, I stopped bringing anything outside my home, except "expendable" things, like a paper boat made of newspaper that'll disintegrate in a puddle anyway, or a red Solo cup to use in the sandbox and toss at the end. If bullies tried to take those things from me(and they did), I didn't care.

Ironically, I tried to pet every dog I saw on the street, despite my parents' teaching me to at least greet the owner first. Maybe because in my mind, I was just petting a dog; no material items were changing hands. So by petting their dog, I wasn't taking anything from them, so I didn't see it as a boundary violation. Such is the irony of an aspie child's thinking. Was there any other kids that had such a strong distinction of property ownership? Like "mine", "someone else's", "public", "nobody's", and "expendable" (or some equivalent thereof).

My son is 11 now, and the message still isn't getting through!

The other day we went out for lunch. As soon as we got out our car he went over to the car parked behind us, and started, I don't know, stroking the car bonnet! When I told him not to do that, it was someone else's car I got the grumpy face. I explained to him that sometimes people damage other folk's cars on purpose, and he is old enough now that someone might think that was what he was doing, and he could be in big trouble. He understood it at the time, but I would not be at all surprised if he does exactly the same thing next week.

It doesn't seem to be an issue at school - at least I've never been alerted to it being a problem there and they are good at sharing information with me.

Sorry, no advice here, and I'll be interested to hear what others have to say. I've spend years saying, differing versions of, "if it's not yours, don't touch it!" to little or no effect.

We do not have this exact problem, but we do have an "attractive nuisance" problem in that my son likes to touch things in places he perceives to be public spaces.

You probably won't like my answer, but when we are near things I know are too compelling to resist, I scaffold the heck out of it and hold his hand through the trouble area. (There are certain places in the supermarket, that he has trouble resisting, like the ice in the fish section)

You could try rewards and the like, if your child is responsive to that and you think it is realistically achievable for him to stop. Otherwise I recommend holding his hand in the playground when you pass other people's stuff, until you can get him on the slide or whatever.[i]

My son had serious issues with impulsivity at 4. It continued until the age of 7, when he was put on adderall. All of his impulsivity stopped and he became much more focused. It really allowed him to learn many social rules that I had tried to teach him, but he couldn't learn due to his lack of focus.

I'm not saying your kid needs meds because there is no way for me to know that. But I think there are certain skills that are very hard to teach until something "clicks" that allows for the skill development. Until that "click" happens, the only thing I could ever figure out to do was be hypervigilant and try to head potential problems off before they developed. A lot of it was extreme repetition. For example, before going to the playground "We do not wear other peoples' helmets. We do not wear other peoples' helmets" etc.

Thanks for everybody's suggestions/comments. I think my guy has ADHD. In addition to his impulsiveness, he's never still and the only things he'll really focus on are sprays of water like from a hose, tub or fountain, or things that light up, like flashlights. He can play with those all day.

Fish ice

Yeah...

Luckily the ice that is accessible does not have unwrapped fish on it. It has the wrapped packages, but still yeah, gross. You never know what has leaked on to it, what else the ice might have touched etc. He just loves to play with the ice and watch it melt in his hand. No matter how gross I tell him it is, he cannot resist the ice. There are a few other things he likes to touch, but that is the only nasty one. The rest of it is stuff like the scales in produce. It is just easier to scaffold at this point.

Oh, yea - we have that one! I sometimes have him weigh out the produce we are actually going to buy so he can get it out of his system.

We do let him weigh some of the fruits and veggies, but he'll run back there if we don't hold his hand when we leave the produce department. It is really cute, but not really conducive to getting out of the supermarket at a reasonable hour.

Our fish counter problem is keeping him from "swordfighting" with the live blue crabs and a pair of tongs. I can kind of see where that is irresistible even to some adults.

Fortunately, the last time we went to a Chinese market, they had very cute signs prohibiting that - I forget what they actually said, but it kind of personalized the experience for the crabs somehow in a very polite way, which made him think about it and decide not to do it from that point forward.

So true. I was in an Asian supermarket to pick up some sushi (so much better than the grocery store kind), and I stopped by the counter with the live blue crabs. Like you said, I saw a few adults play-fighting the crabs with metal tongs. The crabs were fighting each other too, to the point of breaking each other's claws.

My guy likes to observe the lobster tank. It's like a free trip to the zoo.