Eat more than 3 foods? Never in a million years. Eat more than 3 video game controllers? No problem!

So my son has developed a new habit/stim/quirk/etc and that is chewing stuff. In the winter, he chewed his coat and his hat and his gloves. Since those were replaced with.. uhmm… nothing, it’s warm… he’s now taken to chewing other random odd things. Most notably, video game remotes.

It started with those rubber grippy things on the Wii remotes. I easily solved that problem, I removed the rubber grippy things. Wait, that’s not what they’re called? Well, what ever. You know what I’m talking about.

I thought, ever so foolishly of me, that the Xbox remotes would be pretty safe since they’re really quite solid and hard. I mean, he wouldn’t chew on those right? Wrong.

xbox chew toy

So yeah, now I have 2 rubber grippy things that are trashed (just the edges are nibbled on really but you just can not hold them in your hand with those edges like that) and I also now have 2 Xbox remotes that look like what you see in the photo (click for full size).

Yes, I have other stuff for him to chew, but does that stop him? No, it just gives him other stuff to chew.

If it’s not his nails, it’s random threads from clothing and if it’s not that, it’s my appliances.

Is this an autism thing? I don’t know. I’d like to think not. I mean, kids do these things sometimes.

Still though, not every child does. And that makes it one of those things that I can write about. Not to shame him or make him feel bad when he’s older and possibly reading this (Hi Cameron!!), but just as something for other parents to read and go “I totally know how frustrating that is!”

And hey, who knows, maybe one day Cameron will have a child and that child will eat his rubber grippy things. Or… new age polymer type stuff. What ever those new fangled toys kids will be playing with then.

If that happens and he tells me about it, I’ll refer him to this post. (Hi again Cameron!!)