good road trip games for Aspies?

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Any suggestions for road trip games that work well for Aspies? I have a book of games, but most of the classics don't seem to work well with my son's processing speed. We have had fun with Mad Libs.

Incorperate special intrest into a game. That's what my mom always did with me when we went places. For instance you have to take turns naming as many animals that start with a certian letter. You could probably change it to makes of cars or train parts.

When my son way young, I was miserable if I hadn't packed games for my son. Any colorful game that he could manipulate by himself worked. Discovery Toys had Mavelous Marbles or something like that where you press buttons or levers to put certain colored beads into place to form a picture. I also bought magnetic boads w/ pieces to form pictures. Peg boards also to form pictures. Now I buy Thinkfun puzzles for any time he'll be sitting around for a while. For the car we get novels on CDs from the library. HTH.

I don't think his special interests lend themselves to road trips. Though I suppose we could see how many Pacman shapes we could find.

We did manage to salvage a bad Disney trip by concentrating on hidden Mickeys. He loved those and you can find them anywhere.

I do not know your son's age, or if this would be at his level, but when I went on long road trips with my family, I would play "The License Plate Game." I do not remember if I made it up myself, or got the suggestion from someone else. The game is easy. Find all 50 states. (Bonus points for Canadian Provinces and double bonus points for another country). It really isn't about the points, it is about getting ALL the states you can, and the next time, trying to beat your score. My grandparents lived 14 hours away, and on the trip there once, I found 49 states and Washington DC. I believe I did not find Hawaii. If I was really bored, I would count how many of each I counted by making tick marks (excluding the state I was in). There are so many variations you can do with this, and as long as there are cars around (and there is an interest in something like this) it should keep him occupied for some time. If this is a shorter trip (the trip to my dad's house was an hour, so we made rules to extend the game), then you can play "The Alphabet Game." This is simple, and it involves more than one player. Look for all the letters of the alphabet, in order, on signs as you pass. Some of the rules to extend it were as follows: You cannot find letters on cars (ever) inside ANY car, including the one you are in (ever), or license plates (unless it was a J or a Q). Z had to be on a sign. You have to actually "see" the letters and not just know they are there (The sign "Watch for Ice on Bridge" has A-I on it, so it did not count unless you said the letters slowly enough that it at least appeared that you were looking at the letters. Usually the one with the best view of the last sign of the trip won (and who yelled Z the loudest) won. LOL. That brings back memories!

I just bought my 5yr old daughter a travel version of Guess Who. I thought it would be good to help develop her concentration skills. She'd never played it before, but I didn't even have to explain the rules, she picked it up right away. She really loves it. Of course, the driver can't play this one.

I was always noticing license plates, so sometimes we would play to see who could find the most different province/state license plates. I also had an obsession with flags and liked counting, so sometimes we played a game where everyone would get a point for each flag they saw. Sometimes we also play "bingo" where we may a list (or bingo card shape list) of different things we needed to spot to see who could get the most (or who could get two lines, etc). This was good because of my attention to detail, I often was able to spot things.

I agree to incorporate something the child is good at and something they are interested in. Regular games never worked for me. Of course, I was also content to just sit there and silence and look out the window while rocking endlessly. I didn't even get bored by long stretches of trees as long as I could keep rocking, so I guess it depends on the child if they even need to be entertained.

sing along games like 100 bottles of (rootbeer) on the wall, little bunny foofoo, where really fun as a kid.

also a magic doodle board was fun too after mom was tired of singing and you dont have markers with lids off staining the apolstry and crayons melting in the back seat. Also audio books where a great way to enjoy a trip.

also counting a certain number of a chosen color car was fun too

but keep the mad libs for back up!

Audiobooks are a great idea! He loves to be read to.

Yup, audiobooks. They have saved our lives on many a road trip. We don't leave home without them.

Heyy Momma!

Gonna go right ahead and admit how jealous I am. I've always loved road trips. I didn't have to be alone in my room, and I didn't get slapped in the face for not acting right, or answering fast enough. The back of the station wagon was an island of peace and a window on freedom, and everything I had to look at was already safely behind us. I'm moving from Pittsburgh to Seattle with my best friend Steve come June 1st. A friend of his uncle is providing the ride and I'll have to do a third of the driving I bet. ):

THE SILHOUETTE GAME
If you're not the one driving and the point is to have interaction with him, and provided these skills are only a tiny nudge beyond his current level of expertise, I recommend The Silhouette Game (as I call it). Think: the back of an animal cracker. What you do is draw the outline of some irregular shape like a puzzle piece taking up a relatively small portion of the paper. Then its on another player to render your line the border of whatever they see the shape to be. There's only two rules: Don't go outside the line; and don't exclude any part of the shape from your drawing. When that player is done, he draws a silhouette for the next player, connected to the other(s) like a puzzle piece. I add the rule: no ghosts or amoebas, because they're basically a cop-out. Each turn takes about ten minutes, so it's a great way to practice polite conversation, and not even notice (pinned down a couple girlfriends with that one lol). I recommend a felt tip rather than a ballpoint pen if he's still working on his fine motor skills.

TOWER OF HANOI
If he's like me, very few actions get relegated to the unconscious part of his mind. I'm still tweeking how I brush my teeth.(My method will be perfected one day!) So this classic ancient simple game of strategy is totally addictive and surprisingly fun!

BUDDHA BOARD
This one could be risky for obvious reasons. The whole point is that it challenges the mind's propensity for material attachments, not to mention bragging rights (so no documenting his talent with your camera-phone). But it can also cater to repetitive actions and it involves an open container of water (though there may be models with alternatives like a sponge pen). Parental Discretion Advised!

DIFFRACTION LENS GLASSES
If you haven't heard of this yet, than every fond memory you have of being a car passenger at night will now be only bittersweet. I seriously used to close and squeeze my eyes till the green "tv static" would flood my sense of sight with electric magic and search for shapes of things like one does with clouds on a sunny afternoon(or like that sweet silhouette game). All the fun without the retinal damage! Plus all the colors of the rainbow. Its a private fireworks show without the scary noise.

3-D AUDIO THEATER IN SURROUND SOUND
nuf' said


I'm a 35 yo newly identified. I just learned the term Aspy (I prefer it with a capital 'A'), and I Love it. To me its one part "how black people use the n-word" for empowerment and group solidarity, one part "playful-disarming-self deprecation" for the benefit of those who have mistaken my social ineptitude for disrespect, and one part celebratory affirmation of the value of my differences.

I don't think 'they' even knew about Asperger's when I was a kid, and my mom fought pretty hard to keep me from being labelled(THE SHAME!! !). When I was three or so, I would go into semi-catatonic shock when she yelled at me (she still scares the Christ out of me!). Then some genius shrink told her it was better to hit me than let me stare off into space, and she really took that ball and ran with it. In the subsequent years of my upbringing, my condition was fairly pronounced, and she did her best to beat it out of me. Not as well as Loving me would have, but honestly it kinda worked. Although I'm pretty sure that now-a-days I would hesitate to warn her if a bus was headed her way. I'm adopted though, so I was just supposed to be grateful she didn't ship me back to the orphanage.

I'll give her this much: She was an English professor, so now I have the option of teaching higher level English as a second language anywhere in the world. And I'm writing an extensive book, somewhat of a scientific digest, because I know how worth it it is to look things up and figure things out on my own. And I was once one of the greatest romantic poets I have ever known, though now my eloquence has gone the way of the crushing depression, anger, and angst that fueled it. I've gotten more than my fair share of miracles out of life, and they pretty much just keep on coming. If karma is real, she's why I get so many breaks.

I say all that in support of this unhumble opinion: As much patronizing as we get in the rhetoric of the our support community, i.e., friends, family, doctors, teacher, and the girl with the gummy bracelet, our condition is thought of as a disorder, an epidemic, a cancer amongst society. The reality of the situation is quite simply this, (and its kind of the thesis to my book so please give me credit if you quote me): On the spectrum of graduated souls who have seen fit to descend back down to this level and bless this sick world with our light, you may think of those of us you call "high-functioning" as surgeons here to piece back together what is shattered, extract what has infiltrated, and strut what is withered and deformed. And those of us you call "severely impaired" ought to be revered as a precious vaccine here to awaken the antibodies of empathy patience, compassion, and unity in you healers, helpers, and caregivers, the white blood cells of the body of humanity so that together we may finally gain some purchase over the sickness of apathy, materialism, corruption, and isolation. And those of us who fall neatly or otherwise somewhere in the middle, are here to finally undo the curse of Babel, to unstop our ears and reconnect the sounds of our mouths with the utterances of our hearts.

They call me Ben. Thanks your letting me share!

I am going to include a caution: Depending on your child, you may not want things with parts or pieces, or even crayons that he can lose.

This can cause meltdowns especially if you cannot pull the car over -now- to look for whatever was lost.

We used a lot of the "I Spy" books when DS was small, and I will third or fourth Audiobooks. When I was little, my brother and I used to make up a narrative about the scenery as we went by...we had a set of stock characters that we would put into the landscape, and use that as a story prompt. Maybe you can do that for your son? (Like a story about rabbits or deer and how they navigate the changing areas you drive past)