Role Playing/Enacting

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Hello,

I am new to this board, so hope you'll have patience with me as i navigate my way around.

I have a 9yr old son with Autism, who loves to spend most of his time re-enacting movie/tv scenes and recreating events. He will impersonate characters or make up new ones himself and is very good at remembering details.

We have never seen this as a problem before and have participated with him, in whatever his character is to get him to comply with intructions. eg; if he is Ben 10, then we will address him as Ben 10, to get him to do things.

His teacher told me this morning that this is becoming a big problem in the classroom, hindering her ability to gain his attention and get him on task. She said she feels that he needs to learn that there is a time and place for imaginary play. He had this teacher last year and she said that it has always been there, but becoming more of a problem this year.

I have been searching the net this morning and came across some information on "scripting", which sounds very similar to what my son does. Has/does anyone here have same issues with their child, or any information that may be helpful to me, to understand this more. Does this sound like something he does to self soothe, like stimming?

Any opinions and thoughts on this would be very welcome.

Thanks

Hi, Gemjar - yes, it does sound like "scripting" to me. Many people on the spectrum have difficulty using their own words, and so communicate with borrowed language. Your son's teacher needs to be sensitive to this: if it is in point of fact scripting, it isn't imaginary play at all, it's your son trying very hard to fit into the classroom and communicate with other people. I'm curious that the teacher doesn't seem to be familiar with this, is she trained in autism?

Hello
Scripting might be a part of it, as he can use the sentences from the cartoons to communicate aproximately what he means, but if he is asking to be adressed as the character, this looks more like a special interest to me. My son sometimes becomes Link (from legend of zelda), or Mario (you know him), but he's 9 now and even if I sometimes play along, he's starting to understand that he cannot go shopping dressed in green thights and a weird hat or ask anyone else than me to call him link.
Did you have a little talk with him regarding the rules of the classroom? When my son was still in school (he's homeschooled now), I realized that he wasn't sure about the rules except raising your finger to speak and remain seated on his chair. You could add the "respond to your real name" to those. Just an idea

Thankyou for your replies. Momsparky, i spoke with his teacher this afternoon and memtioned to her what you have said. She understood straight away and said that she could see that this is possibly what's happenning. She is a great teacher and wanting to learn more, but is she autism trained....no! The school my son attends is a special school, but not autism specific, so there are a lot of different needs within the class/school.

Ediself, my son has many special interests, mostly natural disasters (floods,tsunami's,earthquakes,volcano's,etc...) and in between these obsessions, he will revert back to movie characters, so it is hard to discern what exactly is going on. We are getting some professional help, where a psychologist specialised in challenging behaviours will work within the classroom with the teacher and at home with us. Our first appointment is Thursday, so it will be good to have some of this information to take with me. After 5yrs of non-verbal communication, he has developed very good verbal skills. In saying that, he often asks me to "talk" with him like i do with his sister. I know he means having a conversation and this is where the challenge is, but i am so thankful that he is able to express his desire to communicate "normally".

His teacher told me this afternoon that he slapped a relief teacher last week and that horrified me, as that isn't like him at all. She was unsure whether he was in imaginary play when this happenned, as she wasn't there and it was the first time this teacher has taught this class. So that's something new to worry about!

Thanks again, i appreciate your feedback.

If it's totally unlike him, you may want to ask him what the teacher did exactly to make him angry. My son bit a teacher once because he was being chased around the schoolyard by a boy who had said he was going to "kick him hard", when the boy caught up to him and tried to kick, my son tried to push him away. The teacher saw two boys fighting and decided to punish both of them, when my son tried to explain to her that he was only trying to not get beat up and shouldn't be punished for it, she repeated endlessly "I don't want to hear it, I don't want to know anything". He had a meltdown over it, she tried to catch him by the arm to put him in time out, and he bit her.
Biting a teacher is totally inappropriate. But I was not "horrified". I understood his point of view, and remembered that urge to bite when cornered. I probably would have bitten this teacher too, had I been in his shoes.(and his age, of course, I don't go around biting idiots anymore )
Once you understand what happened, you will probably be able to explain to him that teachers make mistakes too, they are not perfect, and slapping them is completely forbidden no matter how right you think you are.