14 Jul 2010, 1:54 pm
jdenault wrote:
I bought Stuff by Frost and Stekatee. Well written and informative, I read it virtually non-stop. Hoarding is complex: partly OCD but clearly sounding like AS in many ways. The writers first (and frequently referred to throughout the book) subject had a lot of theories about why she hoarded. One stood out as pure AS. She collected articles she was "certain her son and daughter would find interesting" even when the son not only refused to even look at the article, but threw it out. No matter how many times he flatly rejected her articles, she just didn't accept what he said because she couldn't grasp his thought patterns. Her husband eventually walked out on her because of the hoarding. The authors didn't go into why he didn't just hire someone to cart everything away. That would have been interesting to read. He had some control of the situation--while he lived there his wife wasn't allowed to pile paper on his side of the bed and didn't.
Perhaps he knew that wouldn't solve anything in the long run.
This reminds me of a friend of mine, who I strongly suspect is an Aspie. She kept her old jeans for the daughter she would have someday, which I found utterly illogical. Now she has two sons... I wonder if she still have the jeans.
I confess to having stockpiled an enormous number of children's books and being pretty sad my son doesn't show much interest. He does like to read some, but nothing like the voracious reading that I did, and his tastes are somewhat different. I will have to go through his books and do a lot of discarding in the coming years and that will be very sad for me.
14 Jul 2010, 3:08 pm
