Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Introvert? Gifted obsession? Or social difficulties?

Hello all, I'm new here. My DS is 3.5 and I think he's likely to be gifted though we haven't done any formal testing. His most unusual gift is his memory and obsession with cars, which combined into an ability to identify the make and model of the vast majority of cars in parking lots and our neighborhood shortly after he turned 2 (based on the headlights and taillights as far as we can tell). He remembers the cars that all our relatives and friends drive. He's still obsessed with cars and we read library books about cars, tell bedtime stories about cars, use hot wheel cars while we paint and play play dough and of course play LOTS of games that involve cars. The other day he even gave me a decent explanation of how batteries and spark plugs in an engine work to cause combustion and make cylinders move in an engine. In terms of strict academics, he also learned to identify his shapes and colors pretty early and knows his letters and letter sounds and is sorta trying to sound out words, and can count pretty well and understand a few simple math concepts also. His verbal skills have always been ahead of the curve according to checklists and he remembers things from a very long time ago with good detail. He has a mild secondary interest in rocks and planets.

He currently attends preschool 2 days a week and seems to be enjoying it and having a good time. His teacher picked up on the car thing on day 1 (hard to miss) and has lately been telling me how smart he is and that he has an engineer's mind. I think school has been great for him and he's been expanding the type of imaginary games he wants to play in the past few weeks which is wonderful and a welcome change for me (Daddy loves cars too and has fed the current obsession but I'm over playing parking lot and junkyard every day). He also mostly says nice things about his friends at school.

My social concerns are actually more when he's not in school. I've noticed that at playdates and social outings when there is a group of children, he seems to drift to the outside of the group and doesn't really want to join in or stay with the other kids. He doesn't have conflict with anyone, he just doesn't really seem to need or want to stay plugged in with the group. In one on one playdates he seems to enjoy the other kid's company a lot more.

I guess my biggest question is whether anyone else had a kid who was similar and whether the lack of socializing in a group is a sign of something I should be concerned about or maybe just a sign that he's a bit of an introvert and independent thinker. I'm also wondering if anyone else's children sustained an obsession for a long long time and how that's played out in the future (we're at about 1.5 years of sustained interest in the cars).

Absolutely yes to the socializing and introverted angle. My DD found crowds a lot harder than one on one and so do I. She still prefers, at thirteen, small groups or one on one. It has a lot to do with being reserved and the additional energy required to break into an established group. Even at daycare she would hang on the periphery and survey the scene until she knew what was going on, every morning despite daily attendance for two years!

As a reassurance she has friends and is not actually shy...she just does what she feels comfortable doing. As she is getting older she is more able to manage group situations. Drama classes, gymnastics, martial arts have all been engaging activities for her where she can either do her own thing alongside others, the latter two, or move outside her comfort zone in a happy way (drama).

As to the obsession thing.....we have had serial interests rather than one prolonged one. I actually think the interest is good as it is driving him to develop skills so he can better learn about the cars which helps him have a reason to learn, be it colours or numbers or letters. It's great to know if you leave books lying around to do with cars he will progress his reading, he can learn science in the context of cars. Maybe he will grow up to design or develop cars, or maybe he won't but it's fine, apart from driving you a bit nuts. That's always a bit of a drag!

I saw a great science kit a while ago showing kids about car motors....see if you can find something like that.

Let's see...sibling, sibling's kid, other sibling's kid, spouse...ranging from at least MG to PG.

All of them do fine with one or two people, but are observers in larger groups. And two of them specifically had the car thing, one for at least six years, and the other branching out to all vehicles (neither one ASD, either).

My younger brother was obsessed with planes from a young age. My father would take us to air shows and he could identify virtually any WWII plane by the age of 7 (most from the ground while they were in flight). He got his pilot's license before his driver's license and went on to become an engineer. He got married and has a good job, has friends, is not weird. No one has ever suggested he was on the autism spectrum (and he is not). He still flies (but also likes rowing and running).

In short, I would accept this as one of his quirks and not worry too much about it.

Hello and welcome. I had to respond to your post because it really struck chord with me; my DS9 was exactly like this when he was your DS's age. In fact, it was around 2 when he started showing us his incredible memory with cars. He also could recognize model and make of cars from lights and he could also recognize them if just the little bit of the back end of the car was visible (rest of car blocked by car parked next to it). I have to tell you, whilst he has serial obsessions to this day, this one he can't seem to get past. We had a set of approximately 30 to 40 thomas the tank engine books sent to us from the UK and he memorized the stories for the entire set when he was a preschooler. He spends of his free time creating new products for his made up companies and also draws vehicles, then draws the detail of the lights in boxes on the same page. So he is clearly obsessed with car lights! This is how we discovered he could read; by reading and remember make and models.
He also had very little interest in playing with other kids his age in preschool but he wasn't quirky enough to stand out; just always played by himself, and wasn't interested in interacting with them as much as wandering around and discovering the world. We worried about that a lot when he was younger. He is still very introverted today and usually has 1 to 2 close friends but so much more sociable, once he gets to know them, i.e. in a class setting. He is well liked by his classmates.

However, DS used to line up cars a lot and used to love watching fans. He was finally diagnosed with aspergers 2 years ago but I started questioning the diagnosis when I discovered he and his little sister are highly gifted. If he is, he is definitely on the mild end of the spectrum, but the results on the WISC IV did indicate that perhaps he does has ASD. He scored highly on the verbal subsets except for comprehension and average on processing speed. He is also highly disorganized. These are apparently results similar to ASD kids. The tester did not believe he is on the spectrum though.

I wouldn't worry too much about the social piece as you might find once he starts school he really starts to blossom in that area like my son did. And doesn't sound like your DS has any stimming behaviors.

ETA: One thing I always thought was interesting about my DS is that he never shares his intense obsessions (other than minecraft) with his friends. He told me he didn't want them to think he was weird.

Take a look at How Cars Work by Tom Newton on Amazon. They also have internal combustion engines to build when you feel up to that with your DS.

Wow slammie, yes, our little guys sound very similar! Your description fits exactly how DS can identify the cars and his first drawings lately are already of cars, ha. He also seems to refrain from talking cars with his friends. I've heard him give it a try: 'Hey there's a Honda Odyssey!' but then the other kid will say 'No, that's a van!' and he quits trying.

He doesn't stim but he does line up cars around the house quite a bit and he sometimes flaps his hands with he's excited. He also has always shown very very little stranger anxiety and never had any issues at drop off at any sort of daycare/preschool situation. He does love to explore new environments and always seems to gravitate to the edge of where he's allowed to check things out before he returns to the activity at hand. None of it really feels that unusual though to be honest. He mostly just seems like a happy, confident little boy who is very curious about the world. DH thinks I'm nuts for worrying about anything.

I think maybe my main worries are not so much ASD but whether I need to look out for him feeling isolated from his peers and need to pursue getting him into some sort of specialized environment or something like that. I may be projecting a bit though - when I was young we moved a lot and I was always the smartest kid in my class and felt like I was a 'weirdo' (probably a lot more than I was actually perceived).

May I ask why you decided to have your son tested for Asperger's? Or did it come up in some other context?

Thanks aeh, this is exactly what I wanted to hear!

Thanks so much SouthLake, I'm sure DH and DS will be going to car shows for many years in the future. Thank you so much for replying.

Thanks ndw, that was very helpful. DS is still so little as well that he and his friends don't strictly socialize yet in these big groups as far as I can tell. Well, they do but it's mostly running around yelling. The car thing has definitely been a good scaffold for learning, and I'm glad it's an easy one to go into more detail with. It's also pretty great on road trips since he entertains himself looking out the window.