Should I ban Scooby Doo ???

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My son is 5 yrs old and presently being observed through the school system for Autism. We are pretty sure he has Asperger's. One thing is, he loves Scooby Doo movies/games and gets stuck on that thought. It seems to be affecting his behavior at home and school because morning he wakes making the ghost sounds and it goes on through the class day and till he goes to bed. Of corse, it's not a consistant all day thing, but it gets irritating and disruptive. He loves it so much and I hate to have to excommunicate Scooby and his gang, but I'm beginning to consider it. Any suggestions?
i just joined today and this is my first posting.

Hi,

I'm a parent and I have Asperger's. Special interests--and it sounds like Scooby Doo is your son's current special interest--is an Asperger's trait. It sounds from your e-mail like he's still being evaluated for Asperger's. If he does have Asperger's then the Scooby Doo special interest is an integral part of his well-being. (You can think of it this way--it engages him intellectually and creatively and makes him feel secure, happy and calm.) Taking Scooby-Doo away entirely will create a lot of stress for him.

Have a look at Tony Attwood's new book The Complete Guide to Asperger's -- it's just out in hardcover and it's excellent--there's a whole chapter that explains special interests and how to work with them. The bottom line is that there are creative ways to establish some boundaries with a special interest as well as exploiting it for both social and learning outcomes.

Even at 44 I have special interests. A year ago when I was diagnosed, I went through a period of being ashamed of my special interests and I tried to not have them. What a disaster, I became totally depressed. Now what I do is to engage in my interest with an eye to keeping track of both how much time and money I take/use on the special interest. This works pretty well. I stay connected with my family, am fiscally responsible but when I need to, I bury myself in my interest.

I hope this makes sense.

--keats

Wow, I sure am glad I found this forum...I really appreciate your insight, thanks so much because I never thought of it from that perspective...I always thought of these "special interests" as not so good and disruptive.
Thanks again,
Lauradiego

I dislike saying this, as Scooby Doo taught me ALOT about thinking, and detecting, and helped me cope, and gave me something to look forward to (to help me cope) but, it took me years to erase scooby doo specific memorized visuals from my nightmare image database, which I personally was prone (to experiencing).

glad to help Parenting sure is a learning process, my daughter is 9 and I'm still trying to figure out when I need to intervene and when to just let her be. However, so far she's doing well, a few tantrums still, but from what I hear this is normal for girls. Don't you wish our kids came with manuals?



keats

Special interests bring comfort, especially if the child is in a situation that is too overstimulating or they're feeling uncomfortable. You could use it to your advantage and see when Scooby behaviours become present because it might give you an indication of what's going on in his environment (too loud, too confusing, too many kids, he has to transistion etc). You also want to be careful not to make him feel bad about his special interests. As he gets older, he'll learn (through you) that there's a time and a place for them. My son is 8 and just recently grasping that concept. His special interests are Tom Nook (Japanese Anime character from the video game Animal Crossing) and parodies of Windows XP. The moment he meets you, he'll go into his little script telling you everything he knows about it. But now I have down to explaining it in only 3 sentences and it can only be to people we know. It takes practice but eventually it will all fall into place.

It's Pokemon at our house. The first words out of his mouth when he wakes up are always Pokemon-related and usually the last thing you hear him talking to himself about as he's falling asleep have something to do with Pokemon. It does get tiresome, but it's so obvious that he needs it for all the reasons people listed already. And since he's in school and has to spend that time Pokemon-free I know he really needs it at home.

We do occasionally have to take breaks for the sanity of the parents but he's free during those times to go talk Pokemon into his hand-held recorder or do something else Pokemon-related so long as he's not talking to us while he does it. He seems to be ok with that most of the time.

Everyone who's responded to my question seems to be of the same feeling in that special interests are usually a way of comforting themselves, but, how does a parent like me find a way to find the patience with this when the LOUD ghost noises and chasing insue all around the house and in the kindergarden classroom disrupting the other children during lesson time and I must say, it can even sometimes drive me a little batty.
I tell you what, finding a forum to discuss my concerns and questions with others like me is such a blessing....I'm so grateful for all of your replies and suggestions.
How do I channel these special interests into manageability for my 5 year old kindergardener ? And, how are the teachers supposed to understand this behavior ?

It's Disney at our hourse. My 18 year old son with autism cna watch a Disney animation and tell you who animated it, along with a lot of other details. Of course, he has had to learn when it is appropriate to talk about it and when it is not, but it is always there for him to connect to.

As a father with two kids with autism, and a self-diagnosed aspie, I concur with everything that Keats has stated so well above.

At that age it's really hard because their impulse control is practically non-existent. What we used to do was use a special interest as a way to spend his break. So he has to do X and then he can have 10 mins to do Y. It's First/Then approach which can work well for a lot of kids.

I would suggest that his teacher put up a visual schedule for him so that he knows what order activities will be happening in and that there are break times where he can do an activity of choice (within control of course by the teacher) which gives him something to look forward to.

At home ~ Can you do something similar? After dinner it's scooby doo time without limitations on noise etc for a short while and if he wants to play scooby before that time, he has to remember that there's no really fast running and no being loud. He has to use (what we call in our house) a level 2 voice (level 1 is silent...that means I talk, he listens. Level 2 is a whisper. Level 3 is loud talking. Level 4 is yelling. Level 5 is your outdoor voice).

We use a lot of visuals around our house. So if it was time for quiet play, we had a quiet sign posted in the areas my son was in. Visual is key because it makes it easier for them to process expectations.

I totally get how hard it is. Trust me, I remember it well. Big hugs.

For my son, talking is a big part of what he needs. And it does get tiresome but it's also obvious how much he needs it. Usually if I'm feeling fed up I try to give it five or ten more minutes and then try to redirect him in some way. If it's obvious that he needs to be engaged with Pokemon I ask him to go draw a picture of the story he's telling. We've even stapled papers together and made books about Pokemon. Or I will tell him to go build a creature out of Legos. And sometimes that's enough to get him to switch gears but he still gets to play in his favorite world.

I think it's appropriate to have "volume" rules. Like ghost noises are ok at home, but not too loud. Put a limit on the behaviors that feel the most disruptive at home and encourage the ones that seem the most creative.

Would it be possible to have a NO SCOOBY at school rule? My son doesn't always remember but he knows that it's ok to talk Pokemon at home, on the bus, and at recess but when he's in the classroom w/the teacher he can't talk about it. Like I said, he doesn't always remember that, but he does understand the rules and he knows why they're important, and I think that's a good first step.

Hi again,

First things first. Get the diagnostic business out of the way--if it's Asperger's then you'll be able to tap into the whole picture of Asperger's--bear in mind Asperger's is complicated, not all Aspies have the same issues or the same degree of issues and many of us have associated issues like sensory issues that add additional stress. It takes a bit of learning, but if your son has Asperger's you'll first figure out what his version is, what aspects of Aperger's he's dealing with.

Once you've got the big picture, then you'll have some clues as to when and how to reign in the noisier more intrusive aspects of Scooby Doo delight. At 5, Asperger's notwithstanding, he's still a pretty little boy and full of energy from your description. You may want consider finding ways for him to let off some steam. Exercise, running, jumping etc. are all excellent stress reducers and for Asperger's folks the only issue is finding a place to engage in this activity that isn't a stressor (i.e. crowded, noisy, brightly lit, etc.).

You can also feed the special interest while creating a system of challenges and rewards. As a reward for being quiet and giving mom a break, he can watch Scooby. Perhaps Scooby can be enlisted as a character to help with basic social skills: i.e. "What would Scooby do?"

--keats

For my 17 year old girl, its the TV shows Pokemon, Digimon, Avitar, love of reading one book after another (now thats a great one!!) There must be comfort in the routine of all this..she knows when the shows are on, she knows she'll go to the bookstore when she finishes one book and needs another so I agree with lots of you, no need to break the routine. Now that I know she has AS. its all becoming clearer.

Hi i had the same problem when my son was this age he is now 10 and all throughout the years he has fixtated on one program for a lengthy period of time then another. It really has not done my son any harm HOWEVER to help alleviate the problem of the disruptiveness we have schedules that are up on his door which allows for jobs and free time (to watch scoobydoo). Scooby doo can actually work in your favour. Try finding books with scooby doo and read them to him so he finds an interest in not only television but also books. Of course this will not happen overnight but it will happen with persistance. One of the big issues with AS children is time management. Deal with this and stick with it - routine is a must especially when they get older. Dont worry about ghost noises thats also a normal childs behaviour. We went through my son being a dog a cat and various other traits - it doesnt last forever!!

I can only answer for myself and my kids, not for anybody else.

I've been a outsider with very narrow interests (computers/computing/security) for nn years.

One point I've figured out was when I bought a Xbox for my kids, and refused to do more than in principle handing them a box. Then they where left to explore it. The first thing on the first xbox after installing a modchip to save the game-dvd's and a harddisk large enough to accomodate the images, was they by mistake formatted the disk. After short explanation and restore of backup, they never done that again.

The games we have is specific to three types for three types of children, dance mat with a couple of dance games for my daughter, Quake FPS style for my midst son, and games like Theme park for my youngest. Also a favourite among them is bomberman, trying to blow themselves up to ashes.

They even adopted very quickly the menues even though they could'nt read them first, because the language we normaly use is swedish, and they was way faster than I could have believed to learn how to even reseat the modchip. It was just such a hit. My fiancé by then thought I was crazy and that I bought the Xbox for myself. She has agreed it saved her sanity and that I wasn't interested more than maybe killing my kids in a game occasionally.

When I bought the xbox for them, they where 4, 6 and 8 and they quickly agreed on a schema for the gaming. It may sound utterly weird, but they play games rated 18+ in full blood´n´gore but has learned to understand fact and reality by that way. I find it utterly significantly probable that they will go out kill something because of that. It's their way of learn between fact and fiction.

I'll probably meet some resistance for this decision we mutualy have all five of us, but it helps to understand the differencies between real world and fictional world.

This is a discussion, like swedish governmental authorities tried to ban the game Barbarian on the C= 64

Let the kid watch Scooby Doo. He learn social abilities from that TV-show. What's right, what's wrong, what's accepted or not. I have to have news broadcasts in my ear when I do phone sales just to be able to deflow my thoughts.

Just my 2€ thinking.

I remember having similar thoughts about whether or not to discourage ds's interests, but quickly decided that his interests provide him with comfort, and a way to manage the agitation sensory issues create. They also clearly provide him with comfort when he just need to retreat from the intensity of social interaction when he's had more than enough. They've also started to provide him with some ideas for how to interact with other people.

In our house, 4 1/2 year old ds's interest are math (all things having to do with numbers, time, and measurement) and his Leapster games. The math thing can be difficult to make appropriate in social contexts, but we've found ways to use it to help get through some of those really difficult routines (e.g. we count how many seconds it takes to wash hair, get dressed, etc.). It also comes in handy when he starts getting really loud. Like Celtic Goddess we talk about volume levels (although we don't have a visual right now...that's a GREAT idea), and he responds well when we ask him to turn it down to volume #__. It's also become a good way for him to communicate to us when there is too much noise.

The Leapster games provide him with a "script" for playing that other kids can participate in. For example, last week at pre-school he and another boy who also has a Leapster, spent a long time "playing cars." For DS, that means a pretty elaborate ritual of running laps in a specific sequence...but he tries to involve other people in the process, and it seemed to work! We play with him, and often purposely do not follow his instructions & help him to learn how to manage the play with people who will not follow the specific script.

Great advice about the "First/Then" strategy. We use it often to get through the activities that ds could live without (like staying at the table, bathing, etc.).