Special Interests in Kids With Autism and Other Disabilities

When Dr. Adam Hazlett was a child, he watched The Wizard of Oz nearly every day, watching the first half before school and saving Dorothy’s return to Kansas for when he got home. “I left Dorothy in trouble,” he explains. “I come home after a tumultuous day and Dorothy is restored. All's right with the world.” Watching the acclaimed film many years later as an adult, Dr. Hazlett realized that he was part of what he calls the PB&J formula: predictability, balance, and joy — an emerging concept for understanding how autistic people connect with objects, people, and media through special interests.

Society at large still largely misunderstands the special interests of kids with autism and other disabilities, such as ADHD and Down syndrome. Whether it’s a predilection for a children’s program like Bluey or a fascination with a niche topic, special interests reflect a deep passion in neurodivergent people that goes beyond a casual hobby or passing fancy. These special interests are often sources of comfort or regulation and are a means for the person to find their place in the world. Without support and understanding, however, these interests can also develop at the expense of the child’s other life skills.

To help us better understand more about children’s special interests and how to support children who have very targeted interests, we talked to Andrea Davis, PhD, clinical psychologist, owner and founder of Greenhouse Therapy Center, and president of the Coalition for Developmental Approaches; Sally Burton-Hoyle, EdD, professor of special education and communication at Eastern Michigan University; Adam Hazlett, DA, humanities professor at Henry Ford College, autism advocate, and founder of the Humanities 101 Foundation; Liz Angoff, PhD, licensed educational psychologist, school neuropsychologist, and founder of ExplainingBrains; Allison Ratto PhD, clinical psychologist at the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C; Breea Rosas, EdS, NCSP, LEP, school psychologist and founder of Neurodiversity Affirming School Psychologist; Susan Fawcett, PhD, RSLP, speech-language pathologist and director of therapy, behavior, and family support at the Down Syndrome Resource Foundation; and Pat J. Bradley, PhD, retired psychologist.

Special interests are surprisingly hard to fully define, and sources such as Dr. Hazlett and Dr. Ratto say that’s largely because of a dearth in research on special interests and their role within the lives of people with autism and other developmental disabilities. Both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) and the International Classification of Disease, 11th revision (ICD) have their own definitions for special interests, though they share diagnostic overlap.

Per the DSM-5, special interests are defined as a diagnostic characteristic of autism under the subcategory of B symptoms, which emphasize the presence of “restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities” — more specifically under B-3, which describes “highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus.” The ICD-11, similarly, says that the diagnostic rubric for autism includes a fascination with “one or more special interests, parts of objects, or specific types of stimuli (including media), or an unusually strong attachment to particular objects (excluding typical comforters).”

But in practice, special interests have both clinical and socio-emotional components and applications. Their clinical significance, Dr. Ratto says, comes from their connection to autism and how it manifests as a part of a child’s diagnosis. More than half of all children diagnosed with autism will develop a special interest at some point in their lives, and some research indicates the rate may be as high as 88% or even 95%.

Research over the last 15 years indicates that most people develop at least a handful of different special interests that ebb and flow over the course of their life, meaning that different interests can fade or evolve as a person passes through different stages of development and life experience. Recent data published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders indicates that, among the parents and caregivers surveyed, more than 99.7% reported that their child had at least one special interest. On average, children had nine current special interests, with most interests lasting more than two years.

When it comes to age, the onset of most special interests generally aligns with the average age of diagnosis for autism in the United States (approximately five years old), so it’s likely that discovering a child’s special interest may help parents better understand their child’s diagnosis. However, given the gender disparity and later diagnosis of autism in girls, parents may notice a special interest in their sons more easily than with their daughters. Data also shows that the age of onset varied depending on the type of special interest, likely reflecting differences in developmental and language skills. Special interests that were more socially based tended to emerge later, with the oldest average age of onset — around 8 to 10 years old — reported for interests in “people.” In contrast, interests in categories such as transportation, mechanical topics, and objects tended to emerge earlier, with an average age of onset around 3 to 4 years old.

In this clip, Dr. Ratto explains what special interests are by clinical and practical definition.

Depending on the context, special interests are also called restricted or restrictive interests and may fall into three primary categories as defined by the Thompson Institute:

• Circumscribed interest — “an intense and restricted interest in objects or topics.” There is a connotation that, without supports, circumscribed interests can overshadow and impair daily functioning skills.
• Unusual preoccupation — “an intense interest in an object or a topic that is unexpected for the child’s age or development,” such as enjoying children’s media as an adult or deep-diving into world history as a child.
• Atypical attachment — “an intense attachment to specific or unusual objects,” which can be both popular objects, such as dolls or toys, or innocuous items, such as a coloring book. We will discuss how an atypical attachment differs from a safety item later in this article.

Many of the sources interviewed for this article emphasized the nuances that exist between describing such interests as special versus an obsession or hyperfixation.

“What we look for that sets them apart as something different from just an interest would be one of two things, and sometimes both,” says Dr. Ratto. “One is the topic itself — we’ll see folks who have interests in things that neurotypical people wouldn’t even consider to be fascinated by,” such as watching videos of storm drains or researching branded logos. “The other way is how intense or how deep these interests go. The topic itself might be something that lots of people from that individual’s age group or cultural background are interested in,” she adds, “but it’s the intensity of that interest where we sometimes hear about it as being all-encompassing.” This depth, she adds, can even rival that of subject matter experts.

Special interests fall under the category B symptoms for a diagnosis for autism per the DSM-5, which emphasizes the need for routine, repetition, and predictability, as well as other sensory input and output needs that we discuss more at length in our articles on stimming. When a child with autism is offered the appropriate structure and supports, satisfying a special interest can have similar positive effects on their self-regulation, ability to connect with others, and learning patterns. But how exactly autism relates to this capacity for passion, no one can yet say for sure.

“Like so many things in autism, it’s the million-dollar question,” says Dr. Ratto. “We don’t know for sure. What we see in autism is that sense of it goes beyond a sense of just comfort often, and it’s really much more of a need or or a way that drives joy. It’s not just comforting — it actually brings me joy. This is the place that I find the most happiness is in going back to this repeated interest and to things that are predictable.”

In terms of drive and motivation, Rosas adds that special interests are passions, and with passion comes the desire to dive deeply into a particular subject. “In terms of where they come from,” says Rosas, “I really think it’s just part of a neurotype, the way someone’s brain works to be able to really dedicate focus and attention in order to do that deep-diving. A lot of neurotypical people just don’t have that capacity. We like variety, we want to do different things.”

Special interests in neurotypical children?

Every child, no matter their neurotype, has the ability to develop a special interest. Focused and dedicated interests are actually fairly common among neurotypical children. A study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders found that about 30% of neurotypical preschoolers have specific interests in topics that overlap with neurodivergent children’s special interests, such as trains and animals. Per the study’s findings, however, these focused interests tend to peak during the preschool years and become less common or intense once children start school.

The study found that the biggest difference between a special interest and a typical childhood hobby often comes down to intensity, flexibility, and the type of interest; a child with autism may focus very deeply on a particular topic for far longer than a neurotypical child, and have a harder time shifting their attention to other subjects at a given moment. For example, a neurotypical 8-year-old who loves Pokémon may also have many other toys and interests and be comfortable talking about different topics. But a child with autism may be much more intensely focused on Pokémon, want to talk about it frequently, or become upset when they don’t get to play their games. Special interests often involve topics that are less typical and more niche for a child’s age, such as the specific makes and models of elevators.

Special interests and monotropism

The restrictive nature of special interests has contributed to new theories about their origins, one such being the theory of monotropism developed by Dr. Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser, and Dr. Wenn Lawson. Per the theory, all people are granted a finite amount of attention and energy they can dedicate to a task, topic, skill, or passion.

A neurotypical mind that can focus on a wide spectrum of interests — or a polytropic mind — can readily distribute its energy where and when it is needed. Monotropic minds, by comparison, have much narrower areas to which they can divert their attention (think “all or nothing”), which can lead to uneven skill development and more challenges when engaging with topics outside their interests.

In the article “Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism,” Lesser and Drs. Murray and Lawson write, “The cognitive effects of monotropism inhibit simultaneous awareness of different perspectives and limit the modelling of other people’s interests, so that the monotropic individual does not know how to fit in with them. In monotropic individuals, awareness of other viewpoints is an achievement rather than a natural occurrence.”

Dr. Davis adds that monotropism does not dictate how a child can develop across multiple areas, but understanding monotropism can help families recognize the best services to complement their child’s growth: “It can be very confusing for families to know how to help their child move past this egocentric start with interests and blossom into finding interest in sharing those interests with others and being interested in others as well.”

The language we use when talking about disability matters a great deal when it comes to understanding the needs and abilities of people with disabilities. Though a special interest may be described as an obsession, a hyperfixation, a restricted interest, or a savant-like skill, among other terms, there is nuance in the labeling and how a person’s interests come up in care team discussions. “In some ways, those are all synonyms,” says Dr. Ratto. “They’re all just different ways we have of labeling [special interests]. When I’m talking to families, I refer to them as ‘deep interests’ or passions, because that really pulls us out of the space of seeing these as problems that need to be solved.”

Parents, she adds, may refer to an interest as an obsession when discussing their own anxieties over how a child may be perceived by their peers or in the wider world, even if the special interest hasn’t had any demonstrably negative effects. A special interest isn’t, by clinical standards, an obsession. As the field moves away from a deficit-focused perspective, Dr. Ratto says many parents may seek out disability services if they feel their child’s special interest will negatively impact them socially or prevent them from connecting with others.

“The most common time when other people come to us,” says Dr. Ratto, is when “they are most often worried about [the impact] socially. With that, I often think about it as a reframe. The interest in and of itself is usually not problematic. How specifically is that getting in the way socially?”

A hobby, however, lacks both the depth and intensity of a true special interest; as Rosas explains, the emotional stakes can be much higher with a special interest, both in that it can bring joy when a child gets to engage it, and it can bring distress if they are removed from it. “Generally speaking, they are really dedicating a lot of their resources and energy to [this interest] and might feel distressed or upset when they’re pulled away from it. When that interest is redirected or shifted elsewhere, their attention’s being pulled away, [and] they can become very upset.” Read more about how special interests can affect socialization in our article here.

Savant skills

The expertise and breadth of knowledge that can come from a special interest may sometimes lead to a misconception that a child with a disability is a savant or has savant syndrome, meaning the presence of a significant skill or ability is co-occurring with an intellectual or developmental disability. Many media narratives that demonstrate savant skills exaggerate or negatively portray people with disabilities, and Rosas adds that the concept often gets misunderstood when in conversation with special interests. In short, they aren’t interchangeable terms and shouldn’t be used as such.

“We might be really good at our jobs, but not necessarily wanting to do that outside of work. As an example,” says Rosas, “a student might demonstrate really high math skills. If math is already their special interest, then [they] develop those skills and now they’re super strong. But other people just have really high math skills. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a special interest in math, even if they are neurodivergent.” Additionally, a special interest does not develop because of an inherent ability in that topic, nor does an interest need to be skill-based.

Just about anything can be a special interest! While special interests can pertain to a lot of popular media, such as television shows or media franchises like Pokémon or Dungeons and Dragons, special interests can also be incredibly niche, and with a depth that few neurotypical people have with their own interests. Given how special interests operate within a more monotropic way of thinking, many special interests may also operate with a repetitive or predictable element, such as the repetitive mechanical processes when observing an air-conditioning unit or flushing a toilet. Interests can also apply to other sensory experiences, such as how brands execute their logos and visual marketing, or the formulaic structure of certain movies, TV shows, or YouTube channels.

We want to note here that while a special interest in a topic can motivate a child to develop a deep well of knowledge, the interest does not necessarily translate to a precocious or “natural” ability for a certain skill. As you see in this list, special interests reflect many deep wells of knowledge across genre, topic, and sensory engagement.

• Visual interests, including platforms like television or YouTube: by far the most common special interest relates to something from a visual medium, whether it’s watching the same movie every day, learning about every aspect of a particular franchise, or focusing on a particular character. For many children with Down syndrome, their special interests often have a strong visual element, like a character from a television show or movie. Dr. Ratto says that anecdotally, many girls with autism participate in fandom culture through writing their own narratives about characters they love.

• Sensory-related interests: many special interests involve a strong tactile or sensory element. For some, this can mean engaging with toys or items that require the child’s input, such as building LEGO kits or taking apart toys and machine objects to understand how they work.

• Languages: some children find learning languages incredibly gratifying, both on its own and as a complement to their other interests. Dr. Ratto mentions that a child with a special interest in Japanese animation, for example, might want to learn Japanese to be able to access more resources for their research, inadvertently creating new opportunities for creation and connection.

• Vehicles and transportation: many children enjoy studying, watching videos of, and engaging with various modes of transportation, such as the different models of cars, trucks, trains, or planes.

• Animals: around 50% of special interests involve acquiring knowledge about animals, such as studying all the species of dinosaurs from a particular era or amassing a repertoire of facts about sharks.

• Construction: this could include building with LEGOs, with some children spending hours building, collecting thousands of pieces, following detailed instructions, and creating their own designs.

• Art: Different styles of art were a special interest for 43% of children in the study mentioned earlier. This included activities like drawing, as well as playing with modeling clay and kinetic sand.

• Machines: some children develop a strong interest in how things work, including cars, trucks, elevators, and other machines. They may be fascinated by movement, spinning objects, textures, buttons, or the mechanics behind how things are made and may enjoy taking toys apart to see what’s inside.

• Reading: books and reading is another common special interest, particularly with genre fiction. Some children show a strong preference for specific books or topics with a lot of world-building, such as books about Greek heroes, gods, fairy tales, etc. Some children also loved reading and writing, including writing their own books about themselves and their friends, animals, or animal facts. They may also engage with writing platforms like Archive of Our Own, where authors can post their writing in various forms for other uses to read and give feedback on.

• Political or social causes: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was 15 years old when she gained fame for her activism. She has spoken in interviews about how her drive to stop global climate change comes from her “superpower” of autism and her special interest in environmentalism.

• Collections: things like rocks, swords, model planes, branded toys, action figures, perfume, and comic books can all be special interest collections.

• Historical time periods: some children enjoy acquiring knowledge about a particular period in time, from the specific monarchs of 15th-century France to Axis leaders of World War II.

• Individual and item interests: behind every niche topic is an even more niche topic. These can include easily accessible items, such as clothes hangers, or larger, fixed machines, such as drains, ceiling fans, hand dryers, or storm drains. Other interests could include makeup or perfume.

• Areas of study: similar to interest in a period of history, special interests can also pertain to specific areas of study and schools of thought. These can be academic, such as psychology, anthropology, or literature, or more cultural, such as astrology or true crime narratives.

• Music and auditory interests: music is also one of the most common special interests. This can be an interest in a particular artist or genre or an interest in movies or stage musicals. Some children may also have an interest in learning how to play a musical instrument or use music production tools to compose their own music. Other children may play music all the time and remember words to every song. But the interest can be even narrower, with a preference for specific instruments or sounds, such as a toilet flushing.

• Learning itself: a special interest need not be an item, a piece of media, or a field of study. Both Drs. Hazlett and Bradley describe their special interest as the process of acquiring knowledge, rather than knowledge on a specific subject itself. “My biggest special interests have been reading and research, doing deep dives, that kind of thing,” says Dr. Bradley. “Information has always been not only an interest, but also a coping strategy for me.” For Dr. Bradley, this manifested in her youth as a deep interest in theology. But, as her relationship with religion changed, Dr. Bradley used her special interest to later earn a PhD in psychology.

Safety objects

Some interests, as we discussed, are tactile, such as a Rubik’s Cube, a toy collection, or a seemingly mundane object that a child may want to carry around. This means that special interests can often look like safety objects, which are items of comfort that can help a child regulate themselves during times of stress, such as a child with a special interest in anime carrying around a figurine of their favorite character.

While they may overlap in many ways, Rosas says, safety objects don’t fulfill the same satiation for curiosity and joy that special interests do. “Safety objects or transition objects can be related to a special interest — that can happen,” she says, but a safety object more often provides the child sensory input rather than being a point of fascination. “Maybe it’s something that’s really soft that they can touch and feel more regulated by, or something that they can manipulate in their hands. Sometimes it’s connected to a special interest, but it’s not a special interest in itself.”

Like a special interest, safety objects can have a time and place. Dr. Burton-Hoyle says that her brother carried coloring books around with him, especially when they went to public places. But rather than have him bring the books around in broader public settings, their family created limits on where and when he could have them. Instead of letting him have them at the table or around others, he could access the books in the car or after running an errand.

Special interests are not exclusive to people with autism; many neurodivergent people develop special interests in a variety of things, though their special interests may not have the same endurance and intensity as exists in people with autism. Regardless, these people can still experience all the joys that come with indulging in special interests, and sources including Rosas and Dr. Fawcett believe that special interests can be used in a variety of ways to complement a child’s development and skill set.

Special interests in people with Down syndrome

In this clip, Dr. Susan Fawcett explains how children with Down syndrome develop special interests.

The high co-occurrence rate of autism with Down syndrome means that a significant number of people with Down syndrome develop special interests, though not all of them will also have autism. There’s no way to predict what kind of special interest a child will develop, but some characteristics of Down syndrome, such as a high response to visual stimuli, may inform where their interests develop.

Dr. Fawcett says, “It tends to be a lot of characters from movies, and watching the same movie over and over again, or even just little clips of one movie.” Similarly, the special interests of people with Down syndrome can be niche and unexpected, such as different kinds of potatoes or facts about hair.

Much like in other populations, special interests bring people with Down syndrome a lot of joy; they can also help parents, friends, teachers, and peers connect with the person. Dr. Fawcett adds that special interests can be an incredible asset of motivation for people with Down syndrome, who may have lower intrinsic drive than their peers to execute tasks revolving around self-care, schoolwork, and professional skills. “We want to use this strategy of utilizing their preferences as much as possible,” she says. “We have to make things more extrinsically motivating for them. Meaning, their environment has to be richer — we have to make things more fun. One of the best ways we have to do that is to use their own interests.”

ADHD and hyperfixations

Many children with autism also present with traits of ADHD, though the exact rates of co-occurrence vary by source. As an article in Frontiers in Psychiatry argues, the overlap is more complex. As Rosas explains, both autism and ADHD give a child the ability to deeply focus on a topic. Many children with ADHD can develop a hyperfixation, which bears many similarities to special interests. What distinguishes them is that hyperfixations, while they may have the depth of a special interest, are often short-term and fluctuate more frequently.

“For [people with ADHD or co-occurring autism and ADHD],” says Rosas, “there is that need for variety and difference. They might have a special interest one day that seems to suddenly change, and now they’re interested in something totally different; that’s okay, too.”

ADHD hyperfixations aren’t always about hobbies or activities — they can also be about people. A child or teen might become intensely focused on someone they have a crush on, thinking about them constantly, replaying interactions, or imagining a relationship with them. This can overlap with limerence, a term psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined to describe an intense preoccupation with someone you have romantic feelings for. For someone with ADHD, a crush can become a hyperfixation that’s difficult to shift away from.

OCD obsessions versus special interests

The word “obsession” comes up in the discourse with special interests, sources like Rosas say, most often with a negative connotation. Some clinical indicators of an obsessive-compulsive (OCD) ritual can be mistaken for a special interest, and vice versa.

As the authors of “Differential Diagnosis of Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders” write, “The difficulty in differentiating between OCD and ASD typically relates to distinguishing ASD-associated repetitive motor behaviors from compulsions, and distinguishing ASD-associated restricted interests or insistence on sameness from OCD-related obsessions, as they may appear very similar at first glance.” One example given — a compulsion to wash one’s hands repeatedly throughout the day — could be mistaken for an interest in drains or water systems.

In practice, Dr. Burton-Hoyle says an obsession means that “they can’t do anything else. They’re unable to do anything else. If it was an unhealthy obsession type of thing, if you were to interrupt that, there would be huge behavioral meltdowns.”

But, Rosas insists, “Special interests are not obsessions. They’re a sense of passion that brings a lot of joy and excitement.” In other words, special interests stem from a positive and curious place that facilitates joy, whereas an obsession stems from a place of anxiety that begets distress.

To an extent, yes, but they aren’t as different as we might assume. “At a baseline level, there are a lot of overlaps in neurotypical and autistic boys and girls. You’re going to find someone who has interests in TV shows and video games, [and] most kids go through some sort of animal phase, right?” Gendered distinctions, Dr. Ratto adds, tend to become more apparent as children age.

While extensive research on gender differences in special interests remains lacking, a study by SPARK and Dr. Ratto’s anecdotal experiences indicate certain trends in interests among patients. “We do tend to see boys having some often more mechanical interests,” she says, such as gravitating toward trains, buses, robots, and electronic items. By comparison, girls may show stronger interests around objects, such as collecting certain dolls and stuffed animals; doing arts and crafts such as sewing, knitting, or drawing; or wearing certain fashion brands.

Girls also engage more with the fandom communities of books and media. “We’ll see interests in girls that are celebrities, movies, musical theater, but also things that show up online and on social media,” Dr. Ratto adds. As with stimming, some girls may be able to mask their special interests better than boys, or their special interests may not register as such due to more conformity with gendered norms. A special interest in a book series, for example, does not stand out as much as a fixation with ceiling fans.

But it’s important to remember that any child can have any or none of these special interests, and a child’s developing gender identity cannot predict their interests. While the field of study remains small, some research analysis indicates that people with autism may be more likely to express their gender in a nontraditional way, and this can create unwarranted conflations that can result in assumptions about both the child’s gender and their neurodiversity. “We have some autistic people and some neurotypical people who don’t fit neatly into cisgender boy or cisgender girl,” says Dr. Ratto, including trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people. “Sometimes as they’re exploring that world, that can become an interest that they are really passionate about.”

But, she adds, we shouldn’t always conflate identity with a special interest. Pathologizing a special interest or what we perceive as a special interest can also alienate a person trying to parse how they want to express themselves “instead of us accurately understanding it as part of their identity exploration.”

The consensus from our interviewed sources was unanimous: a special interest is a net-positive for neurodivergent children across multiple spheres of life. A special interest can inspire in a neurodivergent child all the same rewards of finding something you love: joy, accomplishment, motivation, discipline, and community. For children with autism and other developmental disabilities, special interests can also be incorporated into their IEP to complement their learning, help them build self-care and socialization skills, and help them find a fulfilling career path.

Learning and motivation

Despite the assumption that a special interest can inhibit or distract from learning, more emerging research indicates that the opposite is true. A paper published in the Review of Educational Research indicates that incorporating a special interest into a child’s learning has positive impacts both in and outside of the classroom.

Educators, Rosas adds, can use special interests to develop more individualized learning plans, such as using special flashcards with a child’s favorite character on them or doing spelling lessons with their favorite songs. “Special interests are super important to lean into in an educational setting. As educators we can get really rigid,” she says, “running a classroom full of students who all have different needs. There’s a lot of focus on conformity and compliance. We can still have kids meet [the academic] standards, but incorporating things that are really important to them or interesting to them is a great way to kind of facilitate that.” For example, a student who has a special interest in Roblox, she says, can learn fractions faster when the game is referenced in word problems rather than using a standard textbook approach. “If you don’t connect with it, you’re not going to learn from it.”

While we are not focusing on IEP or 504 services in this article, Dr. Burton-Hoyle adds that interests can be implemented as part of a student’s accommodations, such as allowing a student to listen to their favorite podcast in a quiet place to help them self-regulate and refocus in class. “I encourage my future teachers to find their strengths, because you need to lead with strengths, and it’s a way for them to process the information.” If a child shows a need for alternative learning aids, those can also reflect their interests. In one example, she wrote a Social Story about raising hands in class to feature Britney Spears, one of her student’s special interests.

Special interests can also be used to scaffold a child’s routine and help them execute skill-building routines, such as making time for homework, brushing their teeth, and going to bed on time. Approaching a special interest as a comfort rather than as a disruption creates opportunities for both the child and the interest itself to adapt.

We want to note here that while special interests can help many children focus and achieve in academic and social areas, many of the sources interviewed do not recommend parents withholding a child’s access to their special interest as a form of punishment.

Career and employment

For many neurodivergent children with special interests, with adult life comes the need to seek out and follow a career path that supports one’s needs and, hopefully, fulfills them in some way. Multiple sources, including Drs. Ratto, Hazlett, Davis, and Bradley, say that special interests can be a huge asset to guiding a child toward a job they truly enjoy or even innovating a new path through an established field.

Many interviewed for this article mentioned Temple Grandin, an academic, author, and inventor credited with major innovations in animal husbandry, including unique designs for livestock facilities and strategies to reduce animal stress. In past interviews, Dr. Grandin has attributed her autism and her special interests in animals and their sensory experiences with helping shape her work.

Dr. Davis notes that Dr. Grandin continually emphasizes that a supportive and neurodiversity-affirming family dynamic was instrumental to her success. “She became incredibly productive in her beloved engineering field because she was allowed and supported to develop her special interest in mechanical things into a way of inventing new things to change the world. If we start to reframe [a special interest], this could become a real strength for your child. It could become their vocational interest. It could turn into a career.”

Dr. Ratto adds that the focus and commitment of a special interest makes it a boon for competitive career paths, like academia. “If you’ve ever talked to someone who’s trying to finish a PhD, they definitely have a special interest in whatever their dissertation is.”

As a professor, Dr. Hazlett has worked directly with families to help them realize just how many options his students with special interests have. ”I meet with parents all over; when they say, ‘Well, my child’s special interest is this, and they’ll never be able to find a job,’ I list seven jobs that are within that special interest. The idea for the parent is that the special interest isn’t an end; it could be a beginning.”

Special interests and autistic joy

Beyond tangible markers, Dr. Angoff adds that special interests also give neurodivergent people a unique prism through which to observe the people, places, and things around them; beyond building skills to navigate the world, special interests help children enjoy the world.

“They are ways that you explore different concepts; they’re metaphors for different things out in the world,” Dr. Angoff explains. “They’re the place where we feel most ourselves. It’s really important to see the special interest not as a deficit, but as that really special, authentic place, and really helping kids explore the depth of that instead of restricting it, and that [it] really can help them expand that interest into a passion, into a career, into a motivator, into something that is going to help them make steps forward in their life, whatever those steps look like for them.”

For Dr. Hazlett, his autism diagnosis as an adult helped him better understand himself, the things he loved, and how to tap into the full depth of his joy. “I got a PhD in understanding humans, but I couldn’t understand my interactions. I couldn’t understand why, all of a sudden, friends would not want to be friends anymore,” he says. “It was an alleviation of that, and it started to help me understand that I wasn’t broken. All of those things that I had rightfully or wrongfully put away because other people told me to, I was free then to go back and discover those.”

In this clip, Dr. Hazlett explains how his autism diagnosis helped him embrace joy and his special interests.

Not every special interest inherently enriches people’s lives. There are situations, Dr. Fawcett says, where a special interest can interfere with a child’s routine or unintentionally cause them distress. Kids with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities who have special interests can become too enmeshed in what she calls “fantasyland,” in which they may neglect their studies, friends, and activities to live out scenarios with their favorite characters.

Dr. Fawcett tells us, “We don’t want the special interest to become something that they’re obsessively thinking about, because then it can be difficult to pull them out of that fantasy world. We definitely want them to still want to participate in all the things that they do in their daily life and still be excited about those things.”

Even without a fantasyland, many kids may choose their special interests over independently working on life skills, including their communication, school work, and self-care, regardless of the stress that can come from this gratification. The biggest tool parents have if their child is showing signs of regression in an area of their development is to help them build up a routine with clear and predictable boundaries. “It’s not 24/7 that my child gets to [do their interest] because that’s not healthy. Parents have to work toward an ideal schedule where these things are part of the child'’s life. As long as it’s predictable and there’s a lot of pleasure throughout the week, we can limit, and we can set a schedule and redirect,” says Dr. Davis.

Parents shouldn’t expect to shoulder implementing these strategies alone, and they do not necessarily need to wait until they believe a special interest is impacting a child’s skill development. Seeking out additional services for a child doesn’t mean that the special interest is inherently harmful, Dr. Ratto says. In this next section, we will explore a number of therapeutic practices that providers can adapt to include special interests.

If a child is receiving disability services, such as occupational or speech therapy, and begins developing a special interest, sources encourage parents to incorporate their child’s special interests into their services.

“I love the team approach,” says Dr. Burton-Hoyle, “and the team should be based on what the needs presented are. If [a child’s] anxiety is caused by the environment, we’ve got an OT. Then that impacts their ability to communicate, so then we’ve got the speech and language professional. And what if that impacts their ability to eat? Then we’ve got an eating disorder specialist.”

A special interest can be a powerful conduit for conversation and communication with others, whether it is by info-dumping, using flex topics, or using an object or program to broadcast their feelings and needs to others. An SLP, for example, can incorporate themes related to a child’s special interest into helping the child achieve their language goals.

If a special interest has begun to cause a child distress or if a family wants to proactively prevent that from happening, Dr. Fawcett says that families should look into behavioral therapy providers who specialize in developing positive behavior support.

One option available in her work at the Down Syndrome Resource Foundation is the Family-Centred Positive Behaviour Support (FCPBS), where people with Down syndrome and their families collaborate with the person’s care team to help the person develop the skills that matter most to their quality of life. Rather than seeking to hit certain behavior metrics or interventions, Dr. Fawcett says that positive behavior support strategies should reflect the person’s individual needs, and incorporating preferences and interests is central to the practice. “In positive behavior support (PBS), we like to refer to this as teaching somebody something, or trying to modify behavior that’s become not as functional for the [person].” I would bet that none of us could do our job unless we used kids’ particular interests in the way that we teach them.”

A child may also simply need a regular therapist. As we discuss more in our article socialization and special interests, there are a select few circumstances where a family may want to intervene with a child’s special interest, and one of them involves a special interest that could lead to a behavioral or clinical challenge. “Is it behavioral or is it clinical? Because they’re very different. If it’s behavioral, you can help them create different kinds of routines that work for them. A special interest, if it’s illegal, immoral, or unethical, then that’s a clinical issue. If it’s clinical, then you need a psychiatrist,” says Dr. Burton-Hoyle.

DIRFloortime therapy

One of the biggest supports all children benefit from is a network of healthy developmental relationships. Some children and their families may benefit from a DIRFloortime approach rather than from traditional talk therapy. Rather than the therapist, parents, or other adults leading sessions or determining goals and strategies, the child is almost always leading DIRFloortime. And play is the point.

“The core of developmental relationship–based approaches like DIRFloortime is reciprocity and reciprocal interaction,” Dr. Davis says. “The back and the forth, the two-way communication that makes it a hallmark of satisfying, meaningful connection. You follow the child’s lead during play times and during times that we’re conversing — times we’re trying to connect. We read their cues and we adapt ourselves [because] we want them to develop those initiative skills.”

In this clip, Dr. Davis explains monotropic interests and the benefits of DIRFloortime therapy.

Rather than measuring skills or reaching a certain threshold, Dr. Davis invites parents to recognize a metric of joy. “It’s so essential for a person to feel thrilled and gratified in their life, and to have the ability to share joy with others. That’s how we work with special interests — not to be a reinforcer for a skill performance, but as a way to enter the child’s world, join and enjoy what they enjoy, see them for who they are, and invite them into the opportunity to share the enjoyment with somebody else.”

Where parents take control, or “put on their leader hats,” she adds, is around a child’s executive functioning and creating scaffoldings that help them learn the importance of schedules and rules when they leave a DIRFloortime session. “They need lots of experiences, lots of interest, and lots of chances to experience the real world versus the digital two-dimensional world.”

Some questions that parents can focus on developing for themselves during DIRFloortime are:

• What does it look like to take on an authoritative role with my child?
• What is the right way to support back-and-forth interaction with my child?
• How can my connection with my child help them develop bonds with others?
• What capacity is my child’s special interest having during our therapy sessions?
• What support does my child need to help them engage with people and topics beyond their special interest?
• What does a healthy schedule that balances their special interests and responsibilities look like for us and our family?

While a special interest can be wonderful, sources insist there is a line between enjoying it and indulging. Helping a child balance their interests with the responsibilities of their day-to-day life requires both structure for the child and a commitment to enforcing said structure.

Create a schedule with a sense of predictability. “There needs to be structure in the child’s day,” says Dr. Burton-Hoyle, regardless of how happy a child seems in their interest. “Let’s get a calendar for the day or an agenda for the day and figure out when is a good time to do that [interest]. You want to start with support and structure, so that they know when and how it is that they could do it.” This can look like setting specific blocks of time for special interests throughout the day and week and giving verbal reminders throughout the day. “Helping things to become clearer, more visualizable, and therefore more predictable to the neurology of the person when we do need to set limits,” says Dr. Davis.

If they’re open to it, find interest-related activities. If a child wants to share their interest or indicates that they have a desire to connect with others, Dr. Ratto encourages parents to find activities that activate multiple skills: “There are lots of local versions of different clubs and meetup groups. Allow them that space to explore it. If they’re shark lovers like I am, they can go to a marine science camp. If they love LEGOs, they can join a LEGO robotics team.”

Let go of performing “normal.” A special interest is not a deficit, but if a child starts to feel that their parent wants to change, it creates tension not only for the child, but also for the parent-child relationship. No potential services families consider for their child should aim to mask their interests or focus on adhering to social standards. “It’s really important to distinguish between approaches that aim to make a child look more like the other children around them. Trying to teach a child to look less autistic, like ‘Don’t overfocus on your special interest so you don’t look so autistic,’ is the wrong way to go about things, because we hear from adults with autism that that pressure to mask is what leads to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, suicidal tendencies,” says Dr. Davis. “The embracing of who they are naturally, and just seeing ourselves as here to support their growth, is what we want to be doing. That’s the right way to go: being curious, wanting to understand, wanting to help that person flourish in who they truly are.”

Connection over questions. Helping a child learn common social cues and recognize the rhythms of conversation with others, Dr. Davis says, can be a starting point for helping a child connect with others. But, she says, regardless of whether the child is working with a therapist, SLP, or other specialist, the focus should be on helping both parent and child build an inherent desire for connection and curiosity, not just ask the right questions. Without that, they’re merely going through the motions. “Facilitating that social thinking and that emotional and social comprehension isn’t so much a skill that you teach and reinforce and measure as much as it’s a growing internal capacity to notice and to care about the mind of the other person and care about connecting. We want to use the special interests as a jumping-off point for finding meaning together.”

Involve the whole family, with limits. At home, chances are everyone will know about and engage with a child’s special interest with some regularity. Responsibility doesn’t just fall on parents; a child’s siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives should all be able to engage in the child’s interest to some degree, or at least understand how to support the child in it. “Having conversations just like you talk about cultural differences and religious differences, that our skin is all different colors, that we come from different backgrounds,” says Dr. Angoff. “Celebrating the diversity that we have in our communities, and neurodiversity is part of that diversity.”

Enjoy it with your kid. Maybe you have your own special interest. More and more emerging research points to genetic characteristics of autism, making it likely that many parents may not realize they have their own special interests. Both Drs. Hazlett and Bradley believe that one of each of their parents had (undiagnosed) autism and each showed characteristics of having special interests. Dr. Bradley and her mother bonded over books and reading, for example. “I think it’s important to validate it,” she says. “Show the kid how valuable it is, and how they can really succeed in different areas of their lives, both academically and socially, with that. My mom got the concept of my reading when I was little, and she’s the one who taught me to read. For Christmas and birthdays, I would get piles of books, and she always took me to the library. She really cultivated that.”

Start an open dialogue early. Dr. Angoff encourages parents to begin acknowledging their child’s special interest and neurodiversity sooner rather than later. It’s more than likely that the child has recognized their neurodiversity long before others do. “As early and as intentionally as [you] can, talk to kids about their neurotype. They’re developing their self-narrative from that early age, and we want them to have a narrative that is true, and we want it to be positive and empowering: ‘This is how my brain works, and if it’s different from the way most brains work, that’s not only okay, that’s important,’” she says.

Communicate with your child’s care team. If your child is receiving additional services through an IEP, through a 504 plan, or outside of school, the team might all benefit from knowing your child’s special interests and how to engage your child. “It doesn’t mean I’m not going to have challenges,” says Dr. Angoff, “but there’s a team to support me, and we all support each other with all of our different ways that we show up in the world.”

Looking for more ways to support your child’s special interests? These resources can help parents better understand their child’s interests, build supportive routines, and find new ways to connect.

• Read Life, Animated by Ron Suskind. It’s a memoir of his son’s diagnosis of autism and how their entire family learned to connect with each other through unconventional communication, including stepping into the dialogues and roles of favorite cartoon characters.
• Explore Autism Level Up templates and schedules. Scheduling and routine are huge assets for most children with autism, but especially for those with strong special interests. These templates help parents and children collaborate on finding an ideal schedule for a child’s needs, wants, and interests.
• Visit Explaining Brains. Dr. Angoff’s website has numerous books, webinars, and tools to help parents, practitioners, and educators better understand the nuances of neurodiversity, including disability-specific resources for ADHD, autism, and more.

If Dr. Hazlett has any parting words for our readers, they come from what a wise 103-year-old woman once told him: “Have more fun.”