How did you play as a child?

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I don't know whether I have AS but I've been thinking about how I was as a child and a few aspects of my way of playing and relating to things seem a bit odd. Here are a few random memories:

I never liked playing "pretend" games such pretending to by soldiers, cowboys etc. because they didn't have definite rules. For example, how did you know when you had been shot or decide what weapons you had? I could have understood it better if we had water pistols or Nerf guns where it would be clear what was going on. I also felt tremendously embarrassed pretending to be something I wasn't.

In general I didn't like outside activities or sports. I had real trouble with co-ordination learning to ride a bike and didn't really manage to do so until age 22.

I didn't like human figures at all in my toys, so much so that I would cut the drivers out of toy cars. My way of playing with them was to pretend that the cars were alive rather than driven by people. I loved Lego but discarded the mini-figs and just built machines. I remember that my first bike had a cartoon picture of a child (or an elf or something) on the frame and I hated it so much that my parents had to cover it over with card.

They toys I loved were construction-based (Lego, Meccano, model making, model railways) or nerdy (a microscope, a chemistry set, electronics).

I couldn't mix my toys; at the start of the Toy Story movie Andy is playing mixing up different types of toy and has made houses out of cardboard boxes and so on. I couldn't do this: you couldn't put Matchbox cars in a Lego town - you just couldn't! It would cause me distress (only a bit). I also couldn't build a Lego model mixing up different colours. I didn't like things that weren't to scale or toy cars which had chipped paint etc (I was a fussy little so-and-so )

I did spend an awful lot of time on my own, playing almost silently, listening to the same tapes over and over again.

Does any of the above strike a chord with anyone? How did you play?

I didn't much like human figurines as part of my toys either. I know that in my earliest years I refused to take part in things like school plays or anything requiring me to wear a costume. Likewise, I disliked dressing up for Halloween and usually tried to do so with clothes I already owned rather than by wearing a costume. Most of my toys were representations of actual things that existed rather than fantasy items. (My mom also confirmed to me that during my early childhood I was extremely selfish and did not like to share with other children.) Starting at age 9 or 10 I wanted to own my own tools so that I didn't have to borrow them from family. Eventually, that is what I would spend my allowance on. I used to love going to the discount store and buy tools, spray paint, and anything I could get my hands on to work on the things I would drag home from other people's garbage. These would include mostly bicycles and lawn mowers. Ironically, I still do this today and the skills I honed at 11 and 12 have helped me to be able to scavenge all of the lawn care equipment I need and fix it rather than paying for new stuff.

Now, I did sometimes engage in some imaginative play, but it was usually focused around technical things. I also starred in a school play at one point too (much later, maybe 5th grade) and I think I did more than one of them. However, I was in a very small Christian school so it was easy for me to feel confident in a class of maybe 5 students.

I just remembered another odd thing about my childhood: I never crawled properly. My mom says that I could not coordinate the left and right sides of my body well and thus found it nearly impossible to get around until I was able to walk. I also had/have abominable handwriting.

I'll also note that this lack of wanting to do certain types of socially imaginative play is part of what makes me suspect Asperger's in my life. I do not have a formal Dx, so what I posted here is not necessarily an indication of what someone on the spectrum would do. It might just be the way I was.

I was quite normal playing as a child really. I don't see what's not normal, I mean I've seen NT children line up toys. They've got to play with toys somehow, and they don't all play with their toys scattered all over the place. And I've seen NT children use repetitive behaviour with slides, they go up the ladder, go down the slide, then start over again loads of times. But anyway, I can't remember how I used to play with toys before the age of 8. But I was very imaginative. I could play on my own for hours, and most of my imaginative games always involved social interaction with pretend people. I even remember playing one imaginative game for about 5 hours, pretending I was a dad going to work and having a family at home, and then going to the pub in the evenings. It was a fun game.

After I got diagnosed with stupid AS, whatever toys I played with I always pretended one of them had AS and was the outcast in the class. Like with my Pokemon beenies I collected when I was 9, I pretended Psyduck was the Aspie because it always looked like it had it's hands to it's ears so I made out that could be the obvious Aspie! And I got Squirtle and Bulbasour to be the 2 popular ones because they looked rather sociable and happy, and the others were just their friends (Jigglypuff was the girl who they fancied). Also with the South Park figures I had, I intentionally forgot about the actual episodes for a bit, and decided to play with them my own way, so I got Kyle to be the Aspie because he had 2 ear flaps and I pretended they were special earplug things, and I got Stan and Kenny to be best friends and Cartman just be their other mate, and the rest just the other kids in the class. It was so fun playing with toys that way. Even with my Thomas the Tank trainset thing I got Percy to be the Aspie, I don't know why, he just was. And Thomas, Henry, Gordon and James were a group of friends. I could've played with that for hours with my toys.

I played normally as a child. I played with Barbies and dolls, Legos, and Hotwheels. With Barbies and dolls I would play very imaginatively. I've always had a very active imagination. I would make up lives for the Barbies and pretend the dolls were my children.

Garbage was my favorite toy. I would (and still do) build things and little projects from paper, Pvc pipes, wood, card board etc. I enjoyed playing pretend games but only with my older sister. I don't remember ever pretending by myself without one of my siblings (almost always my older sister). I have always enjoyed computer games usually html embedded flash games when I was younger. Now I tend to play some higher caliber games. I'm only 15 so I've had the "modern" Internet my whole life. I will occasionally pretend with my younger siblings but not very often. I don't really have a favorite toy except the Rubik's Cube but only as of a couple years.

I definitely had an imagination, but I was totally off in my own little world. I had my own country (populated by stuffed animals and later a real pet), complete with a political process, cultural heritage, sporting events, etc. I spent all my time either acting out the events that took place in the country or drawing detailed scenes of them. I found the games other children wanted to play, like "House," etc., hideously boring. In general, I found other children vapid and insensitive and had no interest in forming relationships with any of them.

I had an active imagination and did pretend play. I played house, school, played with my Barbies, played with cars and Brio Train set, Tinker Toys, Knex, action figures, Polly Pockets, Mighty Max, Mega Blocks. I also lined things up and played with them and I also acted out real life scenes with my Barbies and Polly Pocket people and even out of TV shows. I also remember playing with my dolls and then when i go back to playing them, I would start over or start from where I left off last time. I also remember putting different outfits on my dolls and then taking them off and putting another outfit on them and then taking it off. I also remember getting these two bunny rabbits as a gift from my dad's friend and they were made out of socks. I made a house for them and it was just a box and I cut windows in it and cut a door in it and drew shades on it and flowers. But I also remember being rigid with my play too and as I got older it got more spontaneous and my imagination grew.

I had no imaginative play whatsoever.
Too busy staring at lights.

I didn't have much of a problem playing imaginative games with other children either. I remember playing ''Mummies and Daddies'' in the playground when I was 6 along with other children. But most other girls from my class always played horses every playtime, which I found boring. I did sometimes play horses with them, but other times I wanted to play something else.

The only games I found hard playing with other children was games like ''It'', ''hide and seek'', ''40/40'' and all those sorts of things. I just always had a sort of fear of losing, because whenever I ran while someone was chasing me, I always suddenly got into a panic and stopped dead in my tracks, and obviously they'd catch me up and catch me. So I always ended up whining in these sorts of games.

I played with things.

First, I made purrrfurrrt dirt piles in purrrfurrrt lines and grids, purrrfurrrtly spaced.

Then, I built byoootiful blocks into soooper doooper structures that iMother considered verry merry berry creative.

Also, I drew purrrty pictures of planes, trains, automobiles, cats, rabbits, and foxes.

Double plus good, I read books for the sights and sounds, not the stories.

I didn't pretend play.

Pretend, pretend, pretend. I'd play 1700's or "Carmen" (based on the opera) or medieval times or Ancient Egypt or Mayan civilization or the Holocaust (I was always a prisoner) or act out and choreograph my own solo ballets. I bet I made quite an impression on the other kids in my apartments. I also made shoebox dioramas of an 18th-Century early American home and tried to make an 18th-century gowns out of curtains and a bathing suit but it was not a success because my mom wouldn't let me use the sewing machine.

Never played games like kickball or tag or hide and seek. No riding bikes or skating. Video games didn't exist until I was 12 or 13, and even then I didn't have the hand-eye coordination for them.

In the summer I picked mulberries and made "wine" and wandered around the neighborhood alone if nobody wanted to play my history stories.

In the winter I stayed inside and read or played dress-up.

My older brother and I talked about an immense fantasy world of our design.

I barely ever played with other children, and if I did, I often did not properly understand the rules of their games.

I had a collection of little plastic animals, shaped very accurately and realistic. I used those to create epic roleplays. Every animal would have a name and a role and they often went on adventures. It was like a society with a lot of diversity, and I even included political or social criticism. For example, once I dropped one of the horses, and because it was winter the plastic was very hard and a leg broke off. From then on this horse was handicapped, and had to get used to it, and the other animals would either pick on it or accept it. Thinking back, I'm glad my parents never really were present when I did that. My stories tended to have a high percentage of death, tragedy or just general f*cked-up-ness. Really dark for a child.