Lining things up

Let us start with the following statement for those who are wondering if their child is autistic as they are often seen lining things up. First of all, autistic children often like to arrange things, namely objects lying around the house and their toys a certain way. And this can often be seen as taking the place of any regular and symbolic play. But please be mindful that this desire for order is not necessarily an autism trait. It might just be that they like to create some dome of order from chaos. Bottom line, please do not take lining things up automatically as an ASD trait.

My daughter has since forever, always been seen lining things up for as long as she has been able to pick up and line up anything. She now has an ASD diagnosis from medical experts in Dubai, and she does the lining up of objects less often as before. She also used to be very annoyed if one would move any of the object lined up by a milimetre. And now she has her days of her getting frustrated, angry, have a meltdown or would simply just let it go by without more than just a nudge, weird face, a quick glance, or no reaction at all. 

My daughter used to line up anything. She would line up the letters of the alphabet from A to Z, or from Z to A, or mirror each letter as she placed them in the line. She would take her toys or objects (including food) around the house and line them up, sometimes in a particular order of size, colour, first letter of the word, etc ... others it would simply be just lining them up as they come at hand, or group them by categories to line them in those separate categories. She would sing her song of the week/month as she placed each item in the line. She would repeat the lining and repeating her words, sound or song, over and over again.

As neurotypical children, neurodivergent children might also just be searching for order from chaos. Only that sometimes, the order they chose might not just be the same order as what others would perceive as the norm.