How do you deal with the hoarding???

[JSerene]

My dd is 4.5 yrs old and has ASD and EoE. We are facing a number of problems right now, but the one in the spotlight this week is the hoarding. Seriously, how do you deal with it? I am overwhelmed. Our little house is overwhelmed. My husband is overwhelmed. DD has to keep EVERYTHING. Every scrap of paper, twist tie, toy that hasn't been played with since infancy, old clothes, old food ("that potato is my pet!!! It's name is potatoey!!"), wrapper, boxes, etc, etc, etc. She even keeps the dixie cup from preschool that she's given for water (almost every time she goes). When I sweep the floor she comes running to pull out any scraps of paper. We cannot throw anything away when she's around or it's a major freakout and none of our calming techniques work to convince her to let stuff go. If we get rid of stuff when she's not around she will eventually remember it, look for it, and get angry when she finds out we threw something away.

Do you put up with it or is there another solution? Is this a common experience? Should I try to keep a sense of humor about it all?

[sbgrace]

We aren't dealing with that volume and variety. It's papers with numbers on them here. But still I sort of identify. I got a plastic container that holds all the papers to keep. I do cull it tiny bits at a time of the things I know aren't particularly meaningful to him (like junk mail that happened to have a number) but having it all contained helps me mentally. I don't know if that would work though as I'm not sure of the amount of stuff you're dealing with. Will it all fit in a big rubbermaid?

[mountainsunshine]

my dd has a plastic bin for her papers. when it's full we go through it together. Garbage is garbage and thats where it goes. I just put my foot down at stuff like that. We aren't dealing with oardiong at this level. I would bring it up with your DR.

Sarah

[kme]

Hi there! My oldest son who is now in 6th grade and has mild ADHD used to be a hoarder when he was younger. (It has mostly resolved now so there is hope!!) I don't know if what worked for him will work for your son - my son did not have any developmental problems other than ADHD. And I don't know what EoE is.

Anyway, I bought a foot locker type thing that I found at Target. It is like a metal container - pretty good size, but it fit in his closet (my other son has one too at the foot of his bed). I told them both they could "save" stuff in it - whatever they wanted, but when it's full it's full. They would either have to throw old stuff away or new stuff. Keep in mind this was for stuff I would have thrown away, not real toys or anything of value. This was strictly their "crap" container. My older son's filled up pretty quickly with "crap" but the idea seemed to work. If he didn't want to throw something away that I thought was garbage, I would tell him to put it in his chest. To this day, it is filled with "garbage" but he doesn't really use it anymore. At least it kept the garbage all in one place.

And nothing perishable (obviously) was allowed in! For perishable things he wanted to keep, like gingerbread houses, etc, we took a picture of it by itself and and a picture of him with it. And then it went in the garbage!!

My (probable) ASD son generates a lot of paper - menus, calendars, fake money, score cards, etc but luckily does not care if I throw them away. They are all so different!

Good luck!

[PikkuMyy]

I'm a teacher but I would also recommend picking out a nice container for her and everything she wants to keep has to go into it. Once it's full, she has to get rid of older stuff. Also, I'd be very firm about not keeping anything perishable. A potato is food. It's eaten or thrown away.

[elisent]

My 11yo son has ASD and ADHD. He saves everything including trash. He keeps things like gum wrappers because they have memories. He has done a few sessions with a therapist where they went through lists and determined which things are typically trash and should be thrown away and which things aren't. I will sometimes go through his room when he's gone and throw out stuff to keep it from being too overwhelming or hazardous. At one point I filled a huge box with all his school papers for the year he'd been saving and told him they were going into storage for six months. At the end of the 6 months if he still wanted anything from them he could ask for it, without looking through the box first, and he could have it back. That was a few years ago and I still have that box and he's never asked for anything.

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by kme

Hi there! My oldest son who is now in 6th grade and has mild ADHD used to be a hoarder when he was younger. (It has mostly resolved now so there is hope!!)

It's much better with my DD now (she's 13) than it was when she was younger. I never really thought about it before!

When she was younger, it helped to get rid of things when she wasn't around and rearrange what was left.

[*LoveBugMama*]

My soon to be 9 year old son (no diagnose (yet), but he fits A LOT of the criterias for both Aspergers and ADHD) does this too. Not to the extent your daughter does, though. He has big trouble throwing stuff away, and it is always worst when we are away from our own home. Throwing stuff in our own garbage is better, he says. When he was younger he collected everything. Old milkcartons, pizzaboxes etc. Now it is mostly paper.

I have no solution for you, I`m afraid. I just have to but my foot down, cause we live in a 350 square feet apartment. But he still hoards, I just throw it away after a little while.

Being away from home is as I said, much harder. We love going to soccermatches with our favorite team, and last year that was really, really hard for him. He cried, cried, and cried, saying he couldn`t go. The reason: He could lose something. A hair that fell from his head, crumbles from a cookie if he was eating etc. So for him it was both about not throwing away, and the fear of losing.