Hoarding Toys at School

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Our little guy who is 3 and just started preschool is hoarding all the toys at school!! ! He will take all of the fish from the water play area and place them in a basket and crawl in a tunnel and just sit with them. When the other kids try to share them our son becomes very aggressive. Fish are one of his high interest/obsessive areas. He will sit with them the entire time he is at school (4 hours). Any ideas how to let him hoard but also introduce sharing?! He had a huge meltdown today and the school called me to come calm him down.

In addition please keep in mind I realize hoarding is a typical toddler behavior. I am more worried about the obsession (length of just sitting with them) and the aggression/ meltdown associated with it. As we were leaving school a little girl was in front of us and she looked at our son turned to her mom and said he is a very mean boy!! ! Our son didnt notice the remark but I was very hurt by this. I have tried social stories, talking to him, positive reinforcement when he shares other things.....

It sounds like he's not secure there yet. I'm not sure what suggestions to offer. That's kind of tough.

Some kids will cling to something that represents comfort to them - something that is high interest would be a big one. Taking the item isn't as simple as taking an item. It's taking away his comfort. If there was another child or adult he could connect with, I would imagine sharing would come a lot easier to him. He'd be more apt to share his comfort zone with someone he finds to be nonthreatening.

It's kind of similar to invading his personal space I think. But I could be completely off my gourd too.

Have you ever brought him and left him before? Like to a daycare or something along those lines?

Well, what worked pretty well with my son in pre-k was a visual schedule along with guided exploration. He didn't hoard so much, but he would only want to play with one thing for the whole class. He struggled when it was time for a transition. Every day when he walked in, the teacher would show him his daily schedule (in pictures) and would then give him a choice between two unpreferred activites before he was allowed to do his preferred activity. When it was time for something else, she would show him the schedule again and slowly, but surely, he caught on.

The idea was to get him to discover different things, not to prohibit his preferred activity. I think the context is important. Instead of taking something away, you use it as a reward. He did eventually enjoy some different activites, but still had a relatively limited set of enjoyed activities. I think another reason why this was successful was that it often prevented meltdowns from occurring, rather than trying to end one that has already started.

I feel your pain on the little girl's comment . Try not to let it get you down. I know it's hard, but your son can pick up on your sensativities.

Now if I could only get my (NT) 2 yo to stop hoarding toys...

No, he has always been with me. I have never used day care.

I have thought about it all night and I think you are correct that it is a comfort thing. I will just keep talking with him and supporting him. Also chat with the head teacher letting her know he ma be using it as a comfort. Hopefully as he gets more settled he will stop hoarding!! !!



I did just roll it off when he was around. So I am conscious not to bring attention by my actions. The girls mom was very embarrassed and just said oh he is not!! ! The difficult part is our son is actually very sweet. I am sure this will also come around once he gets more settled and she will get to see how fun he can be. It was only day 3 and the 1st day I took and dropped him off.

Thank you for that. Was a good laugh Thank you for the support. Our son has only been diagnosed for a little over a month so we still have our training wheels on!! !!

The teachers at DS's preschool allowed him to hold one of his favorite items and carry it with him for as long as he needed to. For him it started with a tennis ball then moved to a matchbox sized toy car. He stopped needing to have ALL the balls or ALL the toy cars when he was allowed to keep one in his hand as a touchstone. Maybe your son could be convinced to keep just one of the fish and carry it with him from one activity to the next.

I think maybe toddlers feel more comfortable if they have some things to call their own.

Our 2 year old daughter - not on the spectrum as far as we know - started getting very possessive when our son became mobile enough to crawl to and pick up her toys. She started spending all of her time guarding her toys and keeping him away from him, without actually playing with them herself.

Once we made it clear that we still considered the toys hers, and weren't going to let her brother play with them without her permission, things got a lot better. She will even pick out some of her toys to let him play with, as long as it's clear that he's getting them from her and not from us. It also helped when we started buying him some toys of his own - she was completely in favor of his having his own things, since then he wouldn't be messing with hers.

Day care is a bit more problematic in this respect since the toys don't actually belong to individual kids, but letting him get a "long term lease" on one that he could keep all day does seem like a good solution. Another solution might be to let him take one of his own toys in, though that would depend on the day care being able to keep track of a toy that belonged to him rather than to the day care.

I did have a talk with him and the school about him just keeping one toy instead of the entire lot!! ! Will see how it goes . He does love going so that is a relief.

That's half the battle. You're ahead of the game!

How does he react when he loses one? If he has a short term memory loss with the diagnosis(?) then his fear of losing something becomes a need to hoard with Autism.