Cars!

Since a very early age, Reuben has had a love of cars.

From around 1 year, Reuben had the "whizz around car garage" from ELC which came with chunky coloured cars that had magnets that allowed the cars to connect together. Reuben played with these all the time, lining them up and parking them in rows etc.

At around 3/4 years Reuben moved on the the matchbox cars. He has millions of them and will play for hours with them. He now has a big car garage with a giant sized car mat in his room and will spend hours at a time playing with them. Reuben also like to line the cars up in front of everyones bedroom doors (so we have to watch out when we come out of our rooms)

Now, at the age of 6 years. Reuben has become even move fascinated with cars, especially "real" cars.

He knows a lot of the model names for the cars and remembers models of cars that family members have got and had in the past.

In fact, I would go so far as to say Reuben is quite obsessed about the different models of cars.

Most average 6 year old boys are happy to play with any toy car but for Reuben it has to have the name badge on the front and he has to know what the name of the car is.

As you can probably imagine, buying a new toy car for Reuben can be quite a headache as we have to sift through the baskets of cars in the toy shops, making sure that they have the model badge on them and it is a colour or a model that he wants at that time.

But most toy cars are generalised and are just meant to be just "a car" not a certain model.

Reuben is completely fascinated by Mercedes. That has to be his all time favourite model. He loves the badge design and gets very excited and happy when he comes across one when we are out.

When Reuben spots a Mercedes (which he does quite often) he will happily go up to the car telling us all it is a Mercedes and then stands and looks very closely at the badge. He can stand there for quite sometime, fascinated with this little Mercedes badge. He will then move slowly around the car, inspecting every last inch of it.

This can become quite awkward when in a public place as obviously the car will belong to a member of the public and we don't want Reuben scratching it or marking it in some way. It can take some persuading to lead Reuben away from the car.

Reuben is happiest when we take him to visit a Mercedes car dealership. He can spend hours in there looking at the various models, looking and touching the badges on them and generally inspecting them over.

We often joke to friends and family,  that if they are thinking of changing their car, they should go visit Reuben as he has so many car brochures in his room. There are all kinds of brochures for different kinds of cars. Obviously he has a lot of Mercedes brochures, but there are also, Vauxhall, Ford, Chevrolet and BMW and many others.

Reuben's memory of cars is awesome!

He can remember the model and colour of the car that family members have had in the past.  One example being that my parents had a grey Ford Fusion about 4 years ago,  but Reuben will still spot and point out that model of car  (it doesn't even need to be the same colour) then tells us it is "Nanny's old car".

Reuben's favourite thing to do whenever we have anyone visit our house, is to see what car they have. He is straight out of the door to have a look then is very pleased with himself when he already knows the make of the car. If not, he will ask us and he will then memorise the model until next time he either sees a car like it or that person comes round again.

I can't help but find Reuben's obsession with cars quite fascinating and find the fact they he can memorise models of cars from day to day and way back in the past completely amazing. It just shows that even with his needs, he has the most amazing memory, which can only make me think there is nothing wrong with his cognitive skills. But, it does makes me question weather or not Reuben's car obsession is a form of Autism.

For a while now we have thought that Reuben has autistic tendencies and have mentioned it numerous times to various professionals at the various appointments we have. At the moment their views are that his global development delay may be the reason for his certain behaviour.

My question is....if that is the case then why did my other children not behave this way when they were at that stage of development????