Make believe

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I loved it as a kid! Especially when it was based on Winnie-the-Pooh or some pirate stories. But the older I get, the worse my imagination is

When I was a child I would play scenarios with my TY Beanie Babies and I would do this either alone or with my sister, however they would always involve the same scenario.
I would also play and act out scenes from either the Land Before Time (with my dinosaurs) or with my Lion king figures (The Lion King). I suppose then that was more of the obession and repeating but it was still enjoyable.

I always used to play with plastic army men, I would set them up in camps and groups as if they were ready for war, but I never actually pretended that they were fighting, after I had made a base I would pack them up and put them away.

I also collected dinosaurs, and set them up as if they would fight, but I never picked them up and made them hit each other like most children did.

I think that this also draws on to the notion that if someone else came into your imaginary world, that they would be able to manipulate it with you. For example, if you had two stuffed animals who were eating some fruit that they had just found, and a person (parent/another child) started to make the banana ring like a phone, whether or not you'd be able to adapt to that (or whether you'd become upset and insist that it is a banana).

I played with a lot of stuffed animals for a very long time, and I know that if anyone (mother/sister/whoever) would try to change my world, I would become very upset. Because the way that I saw it was if they are going to play in my world, they have to play by my rules. As for my imagination itself (away from the social element), it is very vivid, and my worlds were elaborate. I liken it to a very old trinket which only I know how to handle properly, because it would crumble at anyone else's touch.

According to NAS:
Source: http://www.nas.org.uk/autism

Difficulty with social imagination

"We have trouble working out what other people know. We have more difficulty guessing what other people are thinking."

Social imagination allows us to understand and predict other people's behaviour, make sense of abstract ideas, and to imagine situations outside our immediate daily routine. Difficulties with social imagination mean that people with autism find it hard to:

* understand and interpret other people's thoughts, feelings and actions
* predict what will happen next, or what could happen next
* understand the concept of danger, for example that running on to a busy road poses a threat to them
* engage in imaginative play and activities: children with autism may enjoy some imaginative play but prefer to act out the same scenes each time
* prepare for change and plan for the future
* cope in new or unfamiliar situations.

Difficulties with social imagination should not be confused with a lack of imagination. Many people with autism are very creative and may be, for example, accomplished artists, musicians or writers.

As I said in my previous post, whilst I did play with my sister and they would involve the same scenario it was my rules. When I often played on my own and someone joined me, the result of becoming upset when someone dared to either involve themselves or move a toy without consent or direction.

According to my sister, when she did that I would become very upset and aggressive that she then decided to do it deliberatley (along with my cousin) for a laugh.

I'm the same way. I always had a very, very vivid imagination & still do.

I very much agree with what Pensieve and Pandd have said.

Even now I find myself only able to pretend play scenes and characters of established stories, if I have enough information about them.
I also do my best to stay consistent with the established storyline, refraining from, or unable to, deviate in a substantial way from the canonical story.

I also find it difficult to enjoy fanfiction because very rarely do the authors stay true to the characters' personalities and their established backgrounds.

I can reenact entire scenes of certain shows, but ask me to come up with an original story involving characters that I know to their core and I'm completely stuck. I can not bring myself to make these characters do things that may compromise future storylines.