For The Love Of Thomas, Sonic, Lego, Cars, Star Wars...Whats Next?

Nash's love with Thomas The Train started young, (The "Thomas" Photo was taken Halloween 2009, He wanted to be Thomas but thats about all his SPD self could muster to wear of the costume. He got a book from Grandma that year, he much rather have that than Candy! :) he was very typical when it came to it becoming obsessive and was one of "things" everyone referenced when talking about him possibly being on the spectrum. He knew every train, by name, type, color ect...still does. He loves the fold out papers that come with the trains that list all the trains on them so he could mentally go over which train he had, didn't have, wanted and in what order. I remember being asked by a neurologist once if we were "offering him other things" to play with. Pretty much asking if we were fanning the flames of this obsession or trying to cool it. We decided pretty early on that we were not going to really try to squash his love of ALL things Thomas. He came upon it naturally his brother who was only 22 months older than him had many toys, trains being one of them. We watched a range of shows mostly on PBS, Thomas being one of them. His obsession wasn't to the point of him throwing a FIT in the store if he couldn't get a new Thomas The Train so we considered ourselves good. He would however being upset if we tired to argue with him about weather or not he had a certain type of toy he would know specifically if we had it and usually when we got home would go right to it to gladly show us. Child 1....Parent 0 lol

As he gets older and now has started school 4 days a week, he slowly started showing signs in other things he wanted to play with. This is a huge step for him, because he would for hours on end just sit and play with a small piece of track and his trains lining them up. Dont get us wrong, we introduced numerous other types of toys into the house. Our oldest son helped with that easily. He is still very serious about his love for toys, he picks very few types and becomes very INTO them, trying not to use the word obsessive so much but you get the idea. He likes Cars "cars" and Lego regularly right now and he is also very into Sonic The Hedgehog (see photo taken April 2011), and starting to enter the world of Star Wars. Even with these new interests he has the same tendencies to be very literal about them all. If there is a instruction/picture manual, book or some sort of handout on it even better. He will *study* about the desired subject for hours. So we dont know really what it was but just over the last few month he has brought out Thomas less and less. He will go back to being overly obsessive about it if something is "off" in his life. Sick, very tired, schedule is off more than normal for like a vacation or long snow break from school. Things like that will draw him back into his Thomas world for lack of a better term. Its a best friend for now who will always be there, comforting and familiar when needed.

What can I expect in the future when it comes to things like this with Nash? Tips, Tricks, Ideas, or Stories to share. :) Would love to hear from you. Comment below!

NOTE: Nash has not been diagnosed with Autism or Aspergers. He did a full spectrum evaluation this past spring and we found that he barely met criteria for PDD at the time, however they noted his past history would have met full spectrum,we have had amazing early intervention and mile stones in the past year. So he is being monitored and will be re-evaluated at age 5 before he starts kindergarten at age 6 (due to birthday falling after cut off) he is in a Autism Spectrum (and more) friendly early education preschool class offered by the school district for the next two years.