Time stands still

The other day, I finally felt like Lizzie's OT was hearing me about her behavioral issues. I mentioned a concern about Asperger's and she was quick to point out that giftedness alone can explain some of her quirks. I'm not sure. She is nearing three. That really is too young to make a definitive AS diagnosis, but at the same time I feel like she needs something. Some way of helping her through the sometimes paralyzing nature of just being herself.

The OT did her best to engage her in some pretend play with Cora's new dollhouse. She didn't get very far. Lizzie was mute and unable to play along and pretend the part of the daddy or anything. She eventually did follow along and make different toys sit at different spots at the table for a meal. But that's really not so out of the realm of what she always does. Arranging is the thing. When the OT and I went back to talking, Lizzie went right back to rearranging the toys and furniture in the dollhouse. She does this with her Little People and the Little Tikes school bus. That's her play. The end in it self. There is nothing past the arranging. The bus never gets to school. You have to prod, prod, prod. When it's me, she just gets mad and yells at me ...."leave me be" or similar.

One suggestion the OT had was for things like this or the incessant book reading ....set a timer. This way there would be something in between me and her telling her that it was time to stop and move on to something else. Well, I tried. She has a set of Sesame Street blocks I got for her on eBay that she loves to stack, arrange or whatnot. She calls it building a "castle" sometimes, but it usually isn't much more than blocks stacked in groups of 8. She was starting to lose it when Cora dared touch her "buddies" Cookie Monster and Elmo so I let her move them to the table and set the timer there. She ceased playing and began protesting the existence of a time limit. "I don't like the timer go beep, beep, beep at me" ...this was with 5+ minutes to go (I had only set it for 7 as she had been playing with the blocks for 20+minutes already). She understandably pitched a fit when her time was up. I tried again today with her 'ibrary books and she quit reading and clutched the pile of them to her chest. Imposing any limit was just more than she could deal with. Change just doesn't happen without great bodily or verbal protest of some form or another.

I can only surmise that for her time stands still. There is only now and what she is doing right this very minute. She will move on, but it doesn't flow for her. Another suggestion was to take pics of things from her daily routine and set up a daily order of events so she'll know what comes next. The past few days have seen me scouting out various local parks, stores and what have you for drive by pics along with ones to represent bath time, nap time, meals, etc. I went ahead and ordered a laminator for these as we'll also be making a ring of index cards that she can take when we grocery shop. Maybe just maybe she'll focus on something other than what registers are open or which aisle we're shopping in. I don't have high hopes. Every Monday morning shopping trip is like the movie, Groundhog Day, except the script is a little less enthralling. "Mommy, number 8 is open!! ....I want to check out at number 8, not number 5.... I don't like number 6.... I don't want to be in aisle 5 ...."