Stuff

by Gail Steketee

  By some estimates, more than 90 perc ent of c hildren have a collection of something: rocks, dolls, bottle caps, action figures. But the story of Alvin and Jerry in chapter 10, who recalled an unbreakable attachment to sticks they found on walks, and stories like this six-year-old's seem extreme. When does normal collecting behavior in childhood turn into hoarding? Perhaps the best way to make the distinction between hoarding and normal collecting is to determine whether the behavior creates a problem for the family. Ted Plimpton, a colleague of ours and a child psychologist specializing in OCD, became interested in the topic of hoarding in children late in his career. He had seen very few such cases but admitted that he had never asked his OCD kids or their parents about it. When he did, he found he had several hoarding cases in his practice. Apparently, hoarding was not the most troublesome problem for these kids, so it hadn't come up in therapy. Still, it was serious enough for the parents to take steps to deal with it. Several of these parents agreed to tell us about their children who hoarded. We describe four of these cases here based on descriptions by one or both parents. Work such as this may lead to more and earlier diagnoses of hoarding problems in children, for whom treatment may be more effective than it is for adults, whose habits have had years to solidify.

  Amy

  For the first five years of her life, Amy lived with an abusive and neglectful mother who suffered from a host of problems, including alcohol and drug addiction, OCD, and AIDS. Both Amy and her younger sister were in and out of foster placements until they landed at the home of Krystal and her husband. Krystal's household contained a mixture of foster, adopted, and biological children, many suffering from various disorders, including Asperger's syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette's syndrome, and OCD. Amy and her younger sister arrived as foster children and were adopted by Krystal and her husband within two years. Krystal was a very bright and capable woman who seemed undaunted by the problems in her brood. She spoke of them all lovingly, without minimizing the significance of the problems they faced. At the time I interviewed Krystal, Amy was twenty-two, had just finished college, and was living with several roommates and working in New York City.

  Krystal and her husband noticed Amy's hoarding immediately. Even at age five, she saved every paper from school regardless of its importance. Both Amy and her sister hoarded food, hiding it under their beds. At first Krystal attributed this to the girls having been neglected and suspected that in the past they had needed to hoard food to keep from starving. She kept telling herself, "If I can just feed them enough, they will realize there will always be food there." Amy's sister's hoarding gradually stopped, but Amy's grew worse. Krystal worried that the food would attract mice and insects and that if Amy ate the rotten food, she would get sick. She finally decided to make Amy keep the food in a box so that it would be sanitary. Her approach paid off, and food hoarding became less of a problem, but Amy's other hoarding behaviors escalated.

  Like many moms, Krystal hung school papers on the refrigerator. In a houseful of children, these papers needed to come down regularly to accommodate the newest ones. It didn't take long before Krystal realized that Amy's refrigerator displays, as well as all her other papers, never left the house. Amy collected homework, notes passed in class, handouts, and magazines under her bed and in her closet—stacks and stacks of them—until by the fifth grade, they had become unmanageable. Krystal made Amy get rid of them, prompting an angry outburst.

  Despite the struggles, Amy settled into her new family and community. She was a remarkable child: beautiful, dramatic, engaging, and extraordinarily bright. After three weeks of kindergarten, the teachers suggested that she move on to the first grade. She could already read fluently, and her math skills were at the second-grade level. But she was a challenge for the teachers, too. Easily bored, she was also loud, abrasive, messy, and disruptive. Krystal suspected that this was another reason the kindergarten teachers wanted to bump her up to first grade.

  Amy developed a wide circle of friends, and when she went to friends' houses, they and their parents would give her things, especially if she hinted or asked. "She was such a sweet, charming, and beautiful child, how could you not?" Krystal observed. There seemed to be little logic to what she brought home. It might be a movie they already owned or clothes she didn't need. At first her friends and their parents were generous toward this interesting little girl. After a while, however, her behavior became more annoying than interesting. Krystal began receiving embarrassing phone calls: "Amy appears to have gone home with our daughter's shirt, her sneakers, and her doll." She didn't steal; she borrowed or begged these items. She couldn't seem to leave anyone's home without something. Often the item was on loan, but Amy seldom returned these things to their rightful owners.

  Amy's childhood was otherwise remarkably normal and active, with tennis, soccer, prom, and boyfriends. The charming and attractive child grew into a strikingly beautiful young woman. "She could be Miss America," said Krystal. "Her features are perfect. Her teeth are perfect. Her dimples are perfect. Her hair is perfect." No matter how she dressed, she caught the eye of every person in the room.

  But her "collecting" habits belied her personal charm. When something left the public domain and entered Amy's bedroom, it became hers. A family DVD in the den was hers as soon as it crossed her threshold. When a friend asked her to return a sweater, Amy felt insulted. "How dare they? They're accusing me of stealing!"

  "But, hon, you've had it for seven months. It looks like stealing," Krystal would reason.

  "I'm a nice person. I don't steal things!"

  When she was in her sophomore year, a friend's mother called Krystal and demanded that Amy return an expensive camera she had borrowed. Amy was livid. She couldn't understand how the woman would have the nerve to call Krystal. In fact, Krystal found four digital cameras in her room, only one of which belonged to Amy. She knew to expect more angry phone calls.

  Family members' personal stuff migrated to Amy's room as well: clothes, jewelry, hair clips, and more. Sometimes she talked family members out of them, and sometimes she just took them. Mostly they were small items, but sometimes she took expensive things, such as her father's binoculars. Krystal recalled a time when they had just taken in a new foster child, a young girl who had been neglected and came with only the clothes she was wearing. Within a few hours, Amy was wearing the child's sweatshirt. "But it's a cool shirt, and she didn't mind," Amy explained. Never had Krystal been so angry with her. "How could she take the only shirt off this child's back?"

  Retrieving things from Amy's room required a confrontation. Typically, Amy ended up angry and hurt, and the fight became about the insult to her rather than the missing item. When Krystal suspected that Amy had added her tape recorder to the treasure trove in Amy's room, she avoided trying to get it back because she didn't want to spark an argument.

  Discussions with Amy about taking things frustrated Krystal. "Amy, if it doesn't belong to you, and you don't have permission, it's stealing. That's the long and short of it."

  "But it's not stealing if it's your family," Amy would insist.

  Confrontations about the number of things she acquired were equally frustrating. "Just how many pairs of nail clippers do you need?"

  "Well, I don't know, but I can never find them."

  Amy just didn't have the same understanding of ownership that most people did. Krystal described Amy's philosophy to me this way: "If she ever owned it, it's hers; if she wished she owned it, it's hers; if in the future she might own it, it's hers; if it belongs to anyone she loves and who loves her, it's hers."

  Amy's recognition of her hoarding fluctuated. If she was in a good place, she could acknowledge that her life was more difficult because of the hoarding. But if she was in a bad place, she would say, "It's nobody's business but my own." At those times, even the criticism of friends and the anger of family members didn't have an impact.

  Amy shared a room with her biological sister. Both g
irls suffered from OCD but couldn't have been more different in their symptoms: her sister had symmetry obsessions and ordering compulsions, while Amy feared contamination and germs. Krystal knew that Amy didn't like to be dirty, but she didn't realize it was a problem until Amy was about fourteen. On a trip to the mall, Amy stopped at the door. With a baby in her arms, Krystal couldn't open it and motioned for Amy to do so. Amy said, "I gotta wait until someone else goes in."

  "Why?" Krystal asked.

  "I'm wearing short sleeves!"

  "And?"

  "I can't touch the doorknob!"

  Krystal realized then that she had never seen Amy touch a doorknob in the nine years she'd known her. Although Amy managed this problem better as she got older, she still wore long sleeves to the mall so that she could pull them down and not have to touch the door.

  Amy's side of her bedroom was a sea of stuff, chaotic and disorganized. In contrast, her sister's side was picture perfect and clutter-free. She spent a great deal of time lining things up just so. Like Debra (see chapter 5) and Alvin and Jerry, she knew the instant she entered the room whether any of her things had been touched or moved. If she found that a hairbrush on her dresser had been moved even a little, she exploded. Amy didn't want anyone to touch her things either, but she left her stuff in such disarray that she wouldn't have noticed. The line down the middle of their room made the space look like a before-and-after shot. The sisters struggled constantly with these conflicting demons.

  Although every possession seemed important to Amy, she drew some distinctions between her things. Krystal thought there were some things that mattered to her more than others, and although she couldn't part with any of them, she took better care of the ones that mattered. For instance, cluttering Krystal's house were boxes of notes from Amy's friends—"every note every friend ever wrote her in the history of the world"—each folded carefully into a tiny triangle. Amy's clothes, however, didn't matter to her. She couldn't get rid of them or give them away, but she usually ignored them, leaving them scattered about the room. Krystal doubted whether she would notice if any of them went missing.

  Amy also saved mementos from every place she'd ever been. Krystal pointed out that she saved pictures that were out of focus or showed the back of some unknown person's head. When Krystal suggested that Amy try to get rid of them, Amy reacted strongly. "You know I loved that concert. How can you suggest getting rid of these pictures?" Just as we've seen in many adult hoarders, Amy's things seemed to be parts of her personal history and identity that she had to keep close. Krystal found it ironic that Amy fiercely guarded her third-grade spelling tests and blurry photos but had lost the "Life Book" Krystal had made for her. The "Life Book" contained all the information Krystal could find about Amy's biological family and her early history. It even contained her adoption decree. Krystal lamented, "She keeps stuff that isn't important, but the stuff that genuinely matters, she doesn't have."

  These behaviors plagued the family even after Amy moved out. A few days before our interview, another of Krystal's foster daughters asked when Amy was coming for a visit. When Krystal said "tonight," the young woman spent the next few hours working in her room and came back to report. "I think everything is okay. I packed the things I really care about away in the back of the closet, and I put them behind all those boxes of books. And I hid all my hair stuff and jewelry."

  Amy had another characteristic we often see in adult hoarders: the "just in case" syndrome. Wherever she went, she carried an enormous amount of stuff with her. Krystal noticed that compared to her classmates, Amy always had a bigger, fuller backpack or duffel bag. Our studies have indicated that people with hoarding problems believe that they need all the stuff they carry in order to be prepared for any sort of emergency. One of our clients always carried two shopping bags full of things other people might need—a comb, Band-Aids, a sweater, even extra shoes. She felt obliged to have these things on her person, or she would feel guilty and inadequate.

  Chaos and disorganization typify hoarders. Many could probably function quite well if they could simply keep their stuff organized. As mentioned in chapter 10, our research has shown high levels of attention deficit problems characteristic of ADHD among adult hoarders. Although Amy was never diagnosed with ADHD, Krystal wondered in retrospect whether her behavior fit the syndrome. She was always losing things, and her room was pure chaos. Her difficulty focusing at school also seemed to fit. At twenty-two, she remained as disorganized as ever. Krystal recalled the last time Amy had come home for a visit. No one had been able to reach her for three weeks. Amy said she had lost her phone charger for a few days, and before that she couldn't find her cell phone, so she had missed all her calls. When Amy finished her explanation, Krystal handed Amy her driver's license.

  "Where'd you get that?" Amy asked.

  "Somebody mailed it to us. Why did they find it at Fenway Park? Give me a reason that your driver's license was at Fenway Park!" Krystal insisted.

  "Oh, man, I took it out. Now I remember. I took it out, and I guess I didn't put it back."

  It was her fifth driver's license. "ATM cards we can't even count," Krystal said. As Amy was leaving, Krystal asked her, "Amy, you forget something?"

  "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the other backpack."

  "Anything else?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  "Your cell phone?"

  "Oh, where is it?"

  "You're charging it. It's over there."

  When Krystal finished telling me the story, she let out an exasperated sigh. "If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny."

  Out of college and working, Amy now shared an apartment with several friends. It was not exactly neat and tidy, but it wasn't as bad as her room at home. Amy believed that smoking marijuana helped both her OCD and her hoarding. Krystal didn't like to hear about Amy's drug use, and she thought it was particularly ironic since Amy refused to try any psychiatric drugs to treat her symptoms. But Krystal had noticed a difference in Amy's hoarding and the chaos surrounding her since she'd started smoking pot. (Although there is no evidence suggesting that marijuana helps hoarders, several testimonials to this effect can be found on the Internet.)

  I was in awe of Krystal's insight into Amy's problems and of the fact that she did not display any disappointment or regret about them. In our study of family members of hoarders, most expressed a striking level of frustration, disappointment, and hostility. Not so with Krystal. She described Amy as "my charming, beautiful, and sweet daughter." Amy's ability to learn how to live successfully despite her hoarding was undoubtedly due in large part to her remarkable adoptive mother.

  Eric

  Eric, a smallish twelve-year-old with thick glasses and an anxious smile, began having trouble with objects just before the third grade, when he was eight. At that time, he started to save the boxes things came in. Since then, it had been a constant struggle. He came from a family with a history of hoarding on both sides. His paternal grandmother filled her home and her car, making it impossible for anyone to ride with her. His maternal grandmother saved virtually everything and even hid money and savings bonds in the pages of old magazines stacked in her home. Eric's mother described her as "a world-class hoarder."

  Eric hoarded three types of things, each for different reasons: Lego-related products, school papers, and mementos of special events. Playing with Legos was Eric's favorite activity. He spent hours by himself building or planning construction. He kept not only his creations but also the boxes, instructions, and packing material the Legos came in. Eric was proud of his elaborate structures, and his parents believed that creating them gave him a sense of competence in a world in which everything else was a struggle. For this reason, they were reluctant to push him to dismantle or get rid of his creations. Eric was intelligent, but he had to work extremely hard to compensate for a learning disability and a lazy eye that made reading difficult. His intense perfectionism and desire not to be seen as different made school tough for him.

>   Eric's Legos lined the perimeter of the family room. No one was allowed to touch or move them. Whenever they impinged on the center of the room, however, Eric's parents insisted on a cleanup. These were major events for Eric, who needed weeks to prepare for them. He insisted on doing all the moving and cleaning himself because he couldn't tolerate anyone else touching his things. Still, the cleanings were accompanied by major meltdowns. These were not temporary emotional outbursts that subsided quickly. Rather, they began with crying and screaming and then escalated, sometimes lasting for hours. "He will really let everyone know he's having a rough time," said his father. The episodes exhausted Eric, as well as the rest of the family.

  Once, when Eric was younger, a few neighborhood girls came over to play, and one of Eric's Lego constructions got knocked over, perhaps by the girls or perhaps by Eric's cat. Eric erupted and physically attacked one of the girls; his father had to restrain him. After that, no children came to the house to play with Eric. When his brother's friends visited, his parents sent Eric to his grandmother's house, where he would fret about the safety of his things.

  In the summer before the fourth grade, Eric developed some odd rituals. He began touching things in a peculiar way. If he thought he hadn't done it correctly, he would do it again, until it felt right. He gave no reason—just that it felt like the right thing to do. A short time later, at the fourth-grade Halloween party, one of his classmates got sick and vomited in the classroom. Eric became convinced that germs from the vomit had contaminated the school and anything associated with that day. He no longer enjoyed Halloween, and for a long time he refused to wear anything blue, the color of the shirt the boy who vomited was wearing.