Don't Bug Me...I'm Busy!

Ian has a new fascination: bugs. He looks for them along doorjambs, in sidewalk cracks, on driveways, in dirt. He is obsessed.

When the Thomas the Tank Engine phase passed, I hoped his obsessiveness would fade as well. Asperger Syndrome does not permit its children that luxury. One odd episode fades into the next, perhaps even fosters it. Funny thing about obsessions - they certainly make Ian extremely knowledgeable. Not in a Cliff Claven sort of way. Cliff was more about B.S. than factual information. And Ian has a fashion sense that Cliff could never understand.

Ian dives into a favored subject with passion. He goes to the library at school and researches each new topic. When I see non-fiction books coming home in his backpack, I know he has found a new interest. I have to admit that I am an accomplice in his search for information. Every other Thursday is new book day at our house. This week, I gave him Animal Planet's Buggin' with Ruud book. He loved the cockroach facts. Next new book day, a text about stink bugs and other disgusting things I don't want crawling in my kitchen.

I admire his adeptness at focusing on something so completely. What I don't like is his inability to pull himself away from studying these creatures. He wants to bring pill bugs to the dinner table. He adopts pet fire ants and wants to keep them in a jar in his room. If he finds a cool spider, he talks to it and asks it to spin a web for him, preferably one with words like in Charlotte's Web. EVERY multi-legged creature gets a name and a personal invitation to live inside our home. It is beyond my scope of understanding, yet I am intrigued by his love of these Hemiptera, insecta and arachnids.

What is a mother to do? Set limits on learning? No way. Prohibit science experiments in the house? Don't think so. I guess I'll just have to accept the ways of an Aspie boy and learn to savor the moment, even if it means a few unconventional dinner guests.