Before Josiah was diagnosed with autism, he had a love that was great. This love was of Veggie Tales movies. This love of Veggie Tales started when he was around 9 months old. Whenever the Veggie Tales theme song would come on and he would bounce to life dancing and singing and so excited. For many years, I could never get Josiah willing to watch any movies other than Veggie Tales. I didn't mind, I mean, if he was going to love something so much, it could have been something worse. I noticed that after Josiah would watch one of the different episodes, he would completely memorize the video. He would talk to us about the videos and the characters with way more knowledge than anyone should have, and most of the time we didn't know what he was talking about. This obsession with the Veggie Tales was not only with watching the movies, but one of his favorite things to do was go to Goodwill and look and see if they had Veggie Tale movies. He would go into a Goodwill, run over to the movies racks and start calling out excitedly the names of the movies and whether or not we had that movie at home. This was such a delight to him! Around 4 1/2 years old, he finally watched another movie besides Veggie Tales and immediately had a love for Toy Story. He watched it once or twice and basically had the movie memorized. At night, when it was time to go to bed, we had to start setting a timer for 15 minutes and instituting this time for Josiah to "say his movies" as he lay in bed. So, for 15 minutes he was allowed to recite his movies and when the timer went off, there was no more talking and it was time to sleep. This was a wonderful way for Josiah to understand that there is a time for everything. It worked well! Josiah has now branched out, but still doesn't watch too many varieties of movies. He has his favorites, and with these favorites, he has them memorized backwards and forwards and loves to break out ofttimes "saying his movies". Some of the movies that are his favorite are: Monsters Inc, he Incredibles, Cars, Finding Nemo, and by far, Lilo and Stitch has seemed to be his favorite movie EVER! He loves hearing about all of "Jamba's Experiments" and loves learning their names and numbers...which brings me to another of Josiah's obsessions...
He loves numbers and anything to do with numbers. We hardly ever watch TV and don't have cable, but we have been known to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy two or three nights a week. We had to start turning the TV off or muting it during commercials because before we knew it, Josiah was memorizing phone numbers in the commercials. His favorite was a lawyers commercial and he would tell everyone to "Call Kalfus and Nachmann on the Hurtline now" and they would state the number. Oh goodness, he loves numbers. In the movie Lilo and Stitch, before you watch the movie, in the directory, you can watch a special about all of the experiments. There is an English speaking narrator telling about the experiment, their name and their number. Josiah now lays in bed at night reciting the experiments, their numbers and functions...which leads me to another obsession....
Josiah also loves movies or shows that have a narrator. We have recently been watching a National Geographic special about Animals in the Wild. His favorite is one where the English speaking narrator speaks of Arctic Polar Bears and Arctic White Foxes. He is so funny! He hates it when the movie is silent and just shows what the animal is doing, Josiah gets frustrated and wants to hear the narrator.
Also, speaking of numbers, Josiah's teacher contacted me and said that he was showing significant boredom when in math class. She said that even when she was almost positive Josiah wasn't paying attention to the lesson at hand, he would work quickly on his papers and then move on to working on his classmates papers or telling them how to do their work. So, they decided to move him into what she called "the gifted math class". He is doing wonderfully and keeping up well, He simply loves his numbers!
These are not the only obsessions Josiah has. He moves in and out of obsessions quickly, but one he has had for a long time, but has recently seemed to take a back seat to others is in regards to anything with "fire". The fire alarm at school sparked this. While he is now okay with the fire alarm, in the past, he really goes crazy when the fire alarm in school goes off once a month for training. This sparked an obsession with fire alarms in public, a fear of fire sprinklers in public places, emergency signs in public places, fire trucks, fire extinguishers, and emergency exits in public places. This was a hard obsession to work through with Josiah. He was afraid that if anyone touched any of these things that fire would come out of these things. Thank goodness, we seem to have overcome most of this obsession!
A few other obsessions:
- Bugs - he loves his play bugs and loves to read about them and loves to know what they eat
- Hair - can't stand to have his hair brushed, or for me to wet down his hair
- Toys - can't stand not to take some toys with him everywhere he goes...has to have a toy in the car and a toy to sleep with
- Asking the same questions over and over again even though he knows the answer
- Can't stand for us to go a different way somewhere other than the way he is used to..for example, he used to scream and cry if I told him we were going to Meemaw's house an I took the interstate as opposed to the backroads that we normally take...guess which way we ALWAYS go to Meemaw's house now?
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