So, I went to this conference last week..and I found myself admiring pretty, shiny things, mostly other peoples bling and baubles. When seated with others from my..party, I often found my eyes seriously gravitated to their necklaces and rings to the point where I had to either consciously self-restrain myself from touching or I would ask to see said pretty shiny things. Most people proved to be pretty okay with allowing me to touch their goods with one woman even going so far as to remove her ring and let me play with it for a moment:)
This got me thinking...
So, upon my return home, I scoured the internet to see if there was a correlation for Aspergers/Ausitm and pretty shinys and/ or if the obsession with all that glitters was a psych or "named" syndrome.
It took me awhile to stumble upon "Magpie Syndrome" and, even then, only on an obscure, single website,"Urban Dictionary". I wasn't sure Urban Dictionary was a legit site, so I search wikied it and it seems legit.
Here is what it says:
Magpie Syndrome- an irrational affinity for shiny objects. When a highly shiny object is seen by the sufferer it often may induce a compulsive need to claim it and several minutes of staring at said object. This will later end in the sufferer pocketing the object to add to his/ her collection by a sunny windowsill at home. If a shiny object is outside of a sufferers grasp it will usually result in a strong, though usually short-live obsession over it.
Okay, so it is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and it is a site where individuals submit words and definitions but it really,really fits.
I find that it is irrational and definitely obsessive to the point of distraction and nothing else matters, albeit momentary or temporarily.
Just yesterday, I was picking up my phone and the tech helping me had on a bright, shiny necklace with a semi-familiar symbol on it. After a few minutes of figuring out when it was appropriate to ask, I did. Of course, I do not touch things directly upon a person like that, but I was able to do the second best thing and overtly stare at it as she described what it was.
My son, my eldest with the Aspergers, has this to an even higher degree. Back when he was quite young, 4 or 5, we noticed bright, shiny, expensive small things missing from the house...jewelry, crystals, things like that. He had been pilfering items that were sparkly. So, as biological mom, I gave him more than one good talking to but the behavior persisted.
It became quite clear that this was something that was obsessive and outside his rational control. My ways of coping were to simply start going through his room once in a while, locating the stash and returning them to their proper place.
His pocketing never stopped. And I lost a number of very expensive items to his Magpie Syndrome.
Anyway, I would be most to curious as to if other Aspies, Autistics have the same symptoms
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