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What does it mean??

H

HIteacher808

New Member
I have a friend who has autism. She likes to take all of her toys out of the plastic bins they're in and put them on the floor every once in a while. When asked to clean up, she is compliant. She doesn't take the toys out of the bin out of anger, but more methodically. Today, she took out all of her toys/books from her shelves and put them on her bed. This isn't the first time this has happened. Does anyone have any explanation as to why she did that?
 
She left it on the bed, went downstairs, and took out the toys from her bin. When told to clean up, she did it. She doesn't seem to be upset at all or bothered.
 
I see nothing odd about this; to you it may seem odd, but to everyone else here, they too will likely say no. And it doesn't necessarily mean anything either.

I think my explanation will suffice: many people on the Spectrum like to do things methodically and like things to be neat and organized and in precise routines, alongside things being in certain patterns often.

I'll use myself as an example. I tend to try and get everything I need out when cooking or baking so I don't need to grab them when I'm in the middle of doing it, or even take my clean clothes and towel with me in the bathroom when I go to shower so I have it right there to put on afterwards, quicker that way. I even put the dishes away methodically. I'll open all the cupboards I need after looking at what's in the dishwasher ready to be put away, then put all the cups and mugs in their cupboard, misc. glass items in theirs, plastic containers and lids in their cupboard, etc. etc.

If something breaks those routines, I'll get mildly annoyed, but it won't be the end of me.
 
Ah! Thank you! Very insightful. I may have misspoke when I said "methodically". I may have said that to explain that it wasn't done out of anger? She has a lot of toys and books, and put them all on her bed. It's just not her usual behavior, and she does it every now and then .
 
What did she say when you asked her why?

Is she your age? "A friend" leads me to think that.

This sounds like an odd word problem or riddle.
 
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It may be a way of inventorying and re-organizing her toys. I'm constantly re-organizing anything and everything.
 
My son does this a lot, I can't understand why either other than he wants a change of scenery for his puzzles and toys.
 
When I was a kid I used toys in a way that was not their intended use. I liked to sort crayons by color combinations instead of coloring with them. I liked to stack things like coins or blocks by size, not to build something.
Mom told me when I was about 2 or 3 I would turn on the turntable, not to play records but would pretend it was an air conditioner. Lol.
 
I still like to organize my clothes or pencils by colour and I'm 46. It's quite soothing to create colour coded order.
 
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I played with the cars and people in the game of "Life" - didn't like the game. And my albums, as a teenager, I was constantly going through them, cleaning them and organizing them - was very picky about my albums.
 
I used to lay out all my paper dolls lined up, to look at them.

And later, when I had some, all my Barbies.
Not to walk them around and make them talk/have adventures.

Just to see them.
In their categories.
 
Me too tree! For playing, my brother had the good toys like matchbox cars! Those were cool because they could crash off the sofa and into LAVA! Lol
 
:laughing::tearsofjoy:

Sorry, this just reminded me I used to this all the time as a little boy. I totally forgot about it. I was quite happy when doing it, too.

As an aside, before I even knew I was on the spectrum, my in-laws endearingly coined me "the token master" because I was so particular about managing the tokens, cards, trays and pieces from our table top game nights. I will seriously take someone else's board game, see they have the organization out of wack with everything all mixed up, and I'll empty the entire thing out and properly organize it for them.

So, uh, what was the question? Why did she take stuff out and leave it on her bed? Because she felt like it. And bless her for it.
 
BraidedPony said:
When I was a kid I used toys in a way that was not their intended use. I liked to sort crayons by color combinations instead of coloring with them. I liked to stack things like coins or blocks by size, not to build something.
Mom told me when I was about 2 or 3 I would turn on the turntable, not to play records but would pretend it was an air conditioner. Lol.
Click to expand...

I often keep a pile of books or other things on my bed that I am using, or thinking about using. And I agree, spreading them out to take inventory, or because it would look cool to see a bunch all laying out, especially those by the same author or those of a series. I did that with my Sweet Pickles books.

I used to keep the original boxes for my toys, and stack them neatly in my closet. It was more exciting to open it out of its original box, kinda like getting a new toy again. Things like the smells of rubber tires and styrofoam would accumulate again.

Then after that was over, I would take it apart, put it back together, sometimes modify it. I didn't so much build things to play with them. I built things to see if I could mimic real systems, or to run tests and see how much weight it could pull or how much or a slope it could climb with and without soap on the ramp, or how much power it could take before something broke. I used a lot of Goody hair elastics as motor belts and the smell of burnt rubberbands was pretty common in my room.

I would also sort my Crayola 64 pack a certain way, and it would bother me if someone messed with it.

In college I had my own cheap record player that I used occassionally. But more often I would pretend it was a lathe and would use a screwdriver to shave curls of plastic off the disc. It was both addicting and relaxing.

Here's what my daughter did with her Halloween candy at age 2. Part of the photo is cut off but she sorted out all the candy.

candy1.webp
 
There's an NT at work who asks me about my weekends, what I did and what I'm going to do. He also likes to grasp my hand in his and move it slightly up and down every time we first come into contact for the day. Doesn't he know that's unsanitary? Why does he do these things?
 
This thread has me thinking... I'm not one to really care one way or another about kids...

But I swear, Autistic kids and their oddities are freaking adorable.
 
BraidedPony said:
When I was a kid I used toys in a way that was not their intended use. I liked to sort crayons by color combinations instead of coloring with them. I liked to stack things like coins or blocks by size, not to build something.
Mom told me when I was about 2 or 3 I would turn on the turntable, not to play records but would pretend it was an air conditioner. Lol.
Click to expand...

Omg, outside of the turntable (lol that one is funny) I did all of those too.
 
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