I have several shots, some you may not like. I personally felt that when a game became so important to my child that they would lie, cheat, steal, or the game interfered with life then a time out from the game was imperative. My son HATED this, and the first week was HORRIBLE. but each and EVERY single time, by about day 6 he was enjoying other things and by the end of the second week he was excited over several new interests and several old ones that he had dropped so that he could focus on the object of his obsession. He is an adult now and while he doesn't completely stop a game that he is obsessing over, he does give himself time outs from the games when he sees his grades dropping or the other facets of his life are suffering. He has admitted that if we had not forced his hand when he was younger he would not have the skills to take these time-outs.
I don't know if this is a game you should call a hiatus over. We usually had to stop ALL electronic screen related things and not just one game because he would do really crazy things to get to the game or whatever. I got a LOT of grief from my parents over this, at one point one family member threatened me with child abuse charges because my son could not play computer games' Of course that didn't get them anywhere, except I did bust out laughing when they threatened me, lol! (Totally NOT the reaction I was supposed to give, I guess.)
Is the pediatrician the only doctor your son sees? If this is the adult child, he needs a psychiatrist (psychiatrist) and psychologist (therapist) to help him with coping skills to handle his anxiety. If this is the 7yo, then you need the pediatric version of psychiatrist and therapist to help him. Medication SHOULD be at least discussed seriously because this inability to erase/get rid of things is hampering his ability to lead a normal life. If you get help NOW, by the time he is a teen he will have some coping skills and puberty/adolescence won't be a total trainwreck. As it is, he needs tools NOW.
Have you ever discussed how you handle things you are afraid you will forget? How you handle deciding what you need to erase/remove/throw away? One thing that can help with hoarding items is to donate them so they go to people who will enjoy and appreciate them. You can use freecycle.org to find people in your area to donate to and he can meet the people and give them the item himself. Or at least he will know it is going to Adam in Atlanta or whomever, and he knows that it is not lost/forgotten but is loved just like he loved it. We met a family with this problem in a young child a couple of years ago. I thought using freecycle was genius, because the child picked from several responses from people hwo wanted the item. The parents let us know via email what was going on with the boy, and we were able to be very careful to let him know that we would love the item and that it would never be tossed into the trash. It seemed to be helpful to him.
As for the computer game, is there any way to save it to an sd card or flash drive, then delete it? You might have to do some googling or go to an online forum for the game to ask how to do it, but it could be possible. He could save the disk on an sd card or flash drive and then delete it from the computer and do the other things, but he would still have the part in question.
That won't be a good permanent solution, but until he has coping tools to use to handle this anxiety, it might take care of things. I would hesitate to use this as a permanent strategy, but for a while, hey, sd cards are cheap. I got five 2GB cards online for about ten bucks shipped. I am sure that anyone of them would hold a lot of the game, wouldn't it?
He NEEDS therapy for anxiety and panic. If you don't start that NOW, life will be pretty awful for him. There are experts who deal with anxiety in children, and there are tools that work very well. medications are one of them, but not the only one. Until you can get into someone for medications discussion, look for breathing exercises and meditations for kids. You can google search for these and you should get some good free results or some not so expensive guided meditations you can buy.
One strategy that sometimes help with anxiety is talking about what is the worst thing that will happen if the game is replace/item is lost. I would wait and find a good therapist to do this with him, because that is one way they work with someone to help relieve obsession/anxiety/hoarding. I would start looking for books on anxiety and panic disorders. I used to have one that I think was called the anxiety and panic disorder workbook that was quite helpful. He isn't too young to learn to help himself through anxiety and panic, but he likely will need some professional help.
I don't know where you live, but I would be upset with a doctor who brushed off my concerns about my child's anxiety and just said that we don't medicate sensitive kids. Go to whomever is treating your son's Aspergers and enlist their help. they have to know how debilitating the hoarding and anxiety can be in a person with Asperger's, and if they won't help wtih medication monitoring, push them to do whatever is needed to get therapy covered. medications actually have the best results when combined with therapy, and vice versai, but if I could only choose one of them I don't know which I would choose for my child. for myself I would choose therapy, but for my child? I don't know. Some kids can participate in therapy at age 7, some cannot at age 17. It really varies from child to child. I know taht Wiz, my oldest, therapized rings around 2 different tdocs when he was 5 and 7.
Yes, therapized isn't really a word. What I mean is that we had gone to get help because we didn't have a clue why he was suddenly so angry and why he had such trouble at school. He managed to get both of the tdocs talked into all sorts of treats and rewards and he would use their own methods to convince them that up was down and in was out. It was a definite harbinger of things to come, and it was frustrating because both of these were tdocs with great credentials who worked with kids. They just hadn't run into a kid like him I guess.
If you run into a therapist who isn't good, or your radar says something isn't right, find another. But find someone who will work to find a way to help him learn to cope. ANd keep pushing the dr for whatever referrals. If you have not had an Occupational Therapist (OT) evaluation for sensory issues, get that done as soon as possible. Most kids with Asperger's have sensory issues. They contribute to anxiety in HUGE ways, and the therapies to help can be amazing. You can learn more about sensory issues by reading "the out of sync child" by kranowitz. You can get ideas to help your child by providing a sensory diet that will help the sensory issues with that book and with the same author's "The Out of sync Child Has Fun" which is a book crammed with activities to provide all sorts of sensory stimulation and wtih ways to do it for less money. Think about activities, sensations, flavors, etc... that your child seeks and that he avoids. Provide more of what he seeks, and realize that the ones he avoids will easily overwhelm him.
The other thing that can help is his diet. Make sure he is getting enough protein. Hunger is your enemy, and your son may not be able to tell you wehn he is hungry until it is so bad he melts down. Make sure that whatever he eats has a fair amt of protein and that the carbs/fat/protein ratio is roughly 403030. Balance and Zone brand bars follow this ratio. My kids all like the taste of them and they have saved us from a meltdown many times. I used to keep them in my purse at all times so that if we had to go do something we wouldn't be doing it with a kid without enough fuel to behave well. When kids are hungry it is much easier to be overwhelmed by sensory stimuli.
I hope some of this is helpful. I wrote a lot, and I hope that you can both get help with this immediate issue and figure out how to get help so this isn't a lifelong problem for him.
