Why is it wrong for a child to line up their toys?

Post Reply New Topic

I loved lining things up as a kid and I still do. I like tearing paper into little bits and putting them in rows.
I think parents get worried if they see their kid lining up because of what it might mean, I have an old video of me as a 2 year old lining up all my animals I think in order of size or some sort of arrangement, my mum told me when she filmed it one of her thoughts were "autistic people do that"

But "normal" kids do that sometimes as well but it's just that we do it more and instead of or alot more than conventional play.

I think the difference with normal kids and autistic kids lining up toys is that autistic kids will line up anything (like Spokane Girl said) but they'll do it for hours and hours. A non-autistic child might just line them up for an activity or to make their room look clean, but they'll get sick of it and do other things.
I used to collect things I found in the street and line them up on my bed then sleep next to them. I did the dominoes lining up thing too. I'd take over a whole room with it. And I used to make lines of play dough.
These days I'm more of a stacker, though I've known to line up empty beer bottles and coasters when out with friends.

Lined up cars, figures, Legos... anything I could find. Books and records got stacked and restacked in concentric piles. But it never seemed (or seems) to be something akin to being truly OCD either.


M.

My mom thinks I'm not autistic because I didn't line things up obsessively. Well, I didn't--I made patterns obsessively. Dried beans, buttons, pasta, Lego blocks, my stuffed animals and dolls, the contents of shelves and the junk on the bathroom counters... whatever it was, it got patterned by a fascinated little girl who liked symmetry and order. And Mom still thinks that because my patterns weren't straight lines, I can't possibly be autistic. (I really think this is because if she admits I am autistic, she will have to admit to herself that she probably is, too. Her stereotypes of disability and autism in particular are too negative to allow her to do that.)

I find organising things fun, but mostly for its own sake - I like the act of organising things and seeing how they relate to each other, probably more than I like having things organised. But I wouldn't want to do it for the same things repeatedly. I guess that's the problem. If you line things up a little, you're demonstrating (to anyone observing) that you're thinking about how things are, which is good; if you line the same things up a lot, you're demonstrating (apparently) that your thoughts are stuck in a loop. How true that is I couldn't say, whether a child lining things up is doing so automatically while thinking of something else, or genuinely just stuck on the same track. How relatively valuable that is, I have no idea. How much adult behaviour is futile repetition?

My 4.5 AS son has never lined up anything! I kept hoping that he did not have AS because he did not line anything up! He doesn't really stack anything either. What he likes to do is draw the same thing over and over.
My friend's son who seems to be NT lines things up a lot. I read in a parenting magazine that it can be normal behavior for a child. It is their way of making sense of the world. I think that the increased awareness of autism and all of the signs are making parents pay more attention to stuff that they never would have years ago. Sometimes I wish my son would line things up! I have trouble getting him to engage in play most of the time.

I don't see anything wrong with it, at all. It's just a different way of playing with toys.

I really don't know why people take it as a major sign of autism. Of course, I never paid attention to who did and did not line stuff up when I was a kid (which is when I was around kids enough to observe trends in behavior..) but, like.. don't they MAKE you do that kind of stuff in school?? Don't you learn about patterns and order and rainbow colors and size and stuff in like preschool, and on kid shows and in activity books and stuff?? So most kids are exposed to the idea of putting stuff in order or in lines, right? So I don't get why it would be THAT weird for them to do it.

On Yahoo Answers, I see questions from mothers every now and then asking if their kid is autistic and one of the quirks they list is, take a guess?

Hint: The topic of this thread.

There is nothing wrong with lining up toys. I did it. I still line up things. Then you hear that statement of being afraid that their child has autism. Autism??? Hmmm. So what? Autism is not a disorder or a disease (in my opinion). Autism is a difference. Without autism the world would lack part of its diversity. The world needs diversity. Without diversity, the world would be in serious trouble. It takes several types of peoples to make the world work---and autism is one of those ingredients.

So again, what is wrong with lining up toys? Nothing. In my opinion, I felt like there was more of a problem with not lining up things---it created chaos.

But why is it such a bad thing for an autistic child? Even if they do it for hours on end nonstop, what's so wrong with that? Is it because non autistic people seem to find anything diffrent or out of the ordnary as something evil or dangerous?

I'm not sure anyone said it was BAD and WRONG to line up toys--only that it is indicative of autism.