Dominic has
been fixated, you really could call it obsessed with calendars for
several months. They cover part of our family room floor and if I try to
move them or if the hubby, Lauren or I accidentally touch one, he gets
upset. He spends hours on the floor looking at them and no matter how
many times I try to redirect him to something else, like putting
together a puzzle, he will tell me no, every single time. Last week, I
asked him to hand me the March 2018 page from our master family
calendar. This is what he handed me.
I
asked him where the rest of the calendar was and he brought over a bunch of torn
up pieces of paper, handed them to me and said, "fix it." I tried for about a
half hour to "reconstruct," the calendar and then realized it was a
futile effort. I told Dominic, "there are some things even tape can't
fix." I didn't get mad at him because I knew there had to be a reason
"why," he ripped up all those pieces of paper. I saw on another mom's
blog about a month ago that her son with Autism "hoarded," items. When I
think of hoarding, I picture rooms filled with so many things that you
have to crawl over piles to get from room to room, not a pile of torn up
pieces of our March calendar that currently reside under our family
room couch. I know basically nothing about hoarding and
"why," children
with Autism do it. When Dominic went to his private speech therapist
this past Saturday, I told her about what was going with the calendar
and the pieces of paper. I then asked her if she had ever heard of
children with Autism doing that type of thing. Her response back was
yes. My next question was
why. She told me it's a way to cope with
stress and anxiety. Hmm, okay. When I have watched the shows on television about
individuals that hoard, it makes no sense to the people coming in to
help clean up the piles, but it makes total sense to the person that
hoards. I asked Dominic several times tonight if I could toss all the
pieces of ripped up paper that are under the couch into the trash. He
told me no. I asked him if he could tell me
why. He told me no. Do I
really need to know
why? No. Does his hoarding bring him comfort?
Yes. Then, who am I to question
"why" he does it?
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