You have OCD....yeah you know me! Please HELP us!!!!

Let's be honest, all of us to some extent have OCD.  I for instance can only set an alarm to wake up on even numbers.  I can't explain why or when it started but I CANNOT make myself do anything else.  My husband cannot wear black socks, and if he has too he takes a shower immediately after they come off.  He also keeps his money a certain way and if it gets messed up, then he has to immediately stop and fix it.  It's obsessions, thoughts and weird stuff that we can't stop doing.  Washing hands repeatedly, etc.  Now by no means do I know what it like to truly have OCD, and this post is really not about OCD, its more just about the O:  Obsession. 

For the last couple of weeks, my aspie has been obsessed with knives.  All knives.  Butter, steak, Swiss Army, pockets, and everything else that exist in our house.  He loves the idea of them being sharp and shiny.  He tries to sneak them whenever he can and we have had to lock up all our kitchen knives, my husbands hunting knives and even the butter knives from our son.  Unfortunately, that has not stopped our son.  When he could not find knives he started looking for screwdrivers, toothpicks or anything else that has a sharp point to it.  He is now looking when we go to other places and tries to sneak things home.  The other day he got a knife from my in-laws and locked himself in their bedroom with it. 

At one point, he cut his thumb on a knife that he had found (prior to the lockup, before we knew how bad it is) and he never cried.  He was more worried about getting in trouble with the knife than anything else.  The cut was bad and we managed to get it to stop bleeding after about twenty minutes and never once did he cry from the pain.  In a way, we think the feel of a cut feels good to him and hence enhances the obsession.

I am writing this tonight in a desperate plea for help.  None of us (BSC, TSS, doctor, etc) know how to truly handle this.  Our therapist have told us in the 15 plus years of working with kids on the spectrum she has never seen this, as well as her co-workers.  We have tried everything from time out to replacement to down right screaming at him because we have been so concerned and stressed out over the issue.  And for letting him play with toy knives to replace the behavior, we tried.  He wants the real deal.  He cannot really tell us why he wants them, and as a whole we all think he truly doesn't know either.  He has torn our house apart looking for anything sharp.

And so I ask please help.  If you have any recommendations or have dealt with this kind of thing with your own aspie, please share and let me know how you handled it.  We are pretty desperate.  If not, please share this on Facebook, Twitter, where ever you can to get it around!  We are hoping that someone, somewhere can give us suggestions on how to handle this and what to do. 


Please understand too, he does not want to hurt anyone with them, he wants them for himself to feel and hold.  It is NOT a violent thing.

I ask and plea again, please share and any and all suggestions you have will be extremely helpful. Feel free to post on this blog or on my Facebook page!!!  Thank you in advance for all of your help in sharing and helping our family face this extremely delicate and scary issue!