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Wow, let me first say thank you all so much for your replies!
This makes complete sense to me. My son's imagination and use of pretend play have a very unique and intense quality to them. In fact, at age 2 and 3, he would insist each day that we not call him by his name but instead use the name and role that he assigned himself for the day. We were on tour meeting lots of strangers. He had no interest at all in the strangers apart from his desire that we introduce them to his "pretend" alias. The first time in over a year that he didn't tell us "I'm not Tommy" was the day after his brain surgery when he woke up mute and paralyzed on his right side. Two days later, I was scrambling to get some index cards together with pictures of his aliases so he could at least pick one, when he got his voice back. He's been Tommy ever since but still loves to pretend and relies on it heavily in difficult social situations.
About the co-morbidity question, we first ran into the idea of "Asperger's traits secondary to a medical condition" on the forum of folks who've had the same type of tumor that my son had. It's interesting that some things about him - his motor skills, speech and sensory issues in particular - have a pretty direct link to the havoc that the large tumor caused in his left thalamic region. His social differences and uniqueness have existed since birth, it seems, so Asperger's may very well exist alongside his medical condition instead of secondary to it.
Thanks again everyone and I'm so happy to find a community of people who will, to some degree at least, understand my son.
All the best,
Carolyn in Maine

I may sound like an echo of previous posts but I was always and many times still am "in my head". Its there that we can create a safe and happy place for ourselves. On all my report cards in the comments they always said "April day dreams too much". My 8 year old Aspie son is the same. It can be turned into something more positive or useful (although it is both for us regardless) like writing (as was mentioned). I have been writing since I was in fifth grade. I have not done a lot with my stories but I may try to publish one of my books someday. For now I share them with friends and family. Its nice for me to be able to share "my head" with the people I care about. Maybe if my life had been different and my childhood more positive and filled with more understanding as our children's lives should be, perhaps I would have been a more successful with my writing. Perhaps it would have been my career I may still make it so even though I am old!

No, that's not rude in the least bit! As you may well imagine, we've spent way too much time trying to determine which issues can be attributed to the tumor, one of its bleeds, the surgery, his seizures and/or his personality -- without a whole lot of help from all the specialists because they're, frankly, quite so specialized that none of them seem to really see tommy as a whole person (but that's another story).
The thalamus is responsible for a whole lot of stuff but then during the surgery, of course, they had to go down through other parts of his brain to get to it. At this point, we're just happy the tumor's gone and doesn't appear to be growing back. In the meantime, Tommy is an absolutely amazing, albeit quirky, kid who I think I understand pretty well. It's other folks, school in particular, who we'd like to help to understand him better. So if explaining him as having HFA or Asperger's traits will be helpful to those working with him, all the better.
Thanks for your reply,
Carolyn

Sorry if this thread is a few days old.

Looking back now, I see that I had three different types of play:
Friends-play
Brother-play
After-dark

When I played with other kids my age, play was usually very rigidly scripted - I'd play the same scene over and over with different people. Imaginative play without toys made almost no sense until 3rd grade or so, when I'd try to play, but could never follow the storyline enough to understand what was going on, and so kinda wandered off quickly whenever I tried (a point of great frustration to me back then)

When I played with my brother, my play was usually very concrete. He and I are close in age, but I'm older. So, I'd create things for him, such as houses out of legos and then he'd play with them on his own.

I pretty much only played creatively after bedtime. I had a number of dolls on my bed. But, the play didn't really involve them much. Each night, I'd line them all up in a row, to set them up for the scene that night. Then, I'd lie down and close my eyes. I wouldn't talk and I'd barely move, so the entire game would be acted out silently in my head.

I don't know if anyone else did anything like this as a child? Creative play, but without words or actions.

Eagles, I don't know that I necessarily had props - but I had an incredible imagination as a child, including a complete series of imaginary worlds (a different one for every room of the house) I would interact out loud, I think, though.

My son is VERY imaginative! He is constantly creating his own little fantasy worlds and you should see his drawings! I remember reading that children with AS are often over-imaginative, rather than what is seen in classic Autism. I have seen this in action a number of times.

For example, recently, I was doing an activity with my students that involved me describing an imaginary "creature" to them, and they had to draw it. This was in speech, as we were working on auditory language processing. My children with ASD had a very hard time completing this activity. One child said "I quit, because how can I draw something that I have never seen?" He could not imagine what a creature might look like that did not exist, and that he had never had contact with. Another observation I would see in younger children, is that they had trouble playing with toys in non-conventional ways. For example, picking up a toy car and pretending it is a gun, or something that it is not. I have noticed that my students that have the most trouble with pretend play are also the most literal.

I have noticed the opposite in many of my AS students. Some cannot get their noses out of fantasy novels and have very active imaginations. Others can read stories with me, and create multiple alternative endings that are so creative and wonderful. They can pick up objects and see things that others cannot see; they create art out of little pieces of paper they find on the table. I have also noticed that these more imaginative children are less literal and understand figurative language and sarcasm with ease.

Yep this discussion chimes with my childhood experience. Heck, I'm still there lol.

I had a very very vivid imagination as a child and I would often play by myself and found hand flapping helped make things even more vivid for me. This spooked my parents of course as I was never even suspected of having AS until I was in my twenties so they had nothing to relate it to.

Other children would ask if I could come out and play with them, but I never wanted to, again freaking my parents out I think. When I did play with other children, they complained I was bossy and wanted to play a certain way,

I think I was always more interested in the flights of imagination in my own head. I'd often pretend to be someone or something else in my mind, probably just to escape the bombardment of the outside world for a bit.

So yeah, I never wanted for imagination, though I would often play with toys the way I wanted to rather than what the packaging said it was for! Which I guess shows no lack of imagination.