I think I played with toys weird

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I feel like I played with toys differently than other kids my age. I did not like playing with other kids. I never initiated play. I also would sit alone at recess and lunch. I would talk to myself or write stuff in a notebook.

I also really liked playing with my sisters dolls until I was 10. I would help her dress them and I was happy to do doll tea party type stuff. I also played with them by myself and organized their clothes by color and style. I would also play dress up with her. We had a trunk full of clothes. I would play dress up by myself too. I did that till I was 14. My sister did not like that and thought I was weird. She thought I was so cool when we were younger. I also used to play with my grandparents poker chips. I sorted them. It was my favorite thing to do. My sister would help. I feel like I was really weird. My sister and I got into fights when we got older where she told me I was childish and it hurt my feelings. She said she played with me to be nice to me and that I was an immature older brother.

You remind me of a kid that lived in my neighborhood. He had older sisters and I don't think they really wanted to be around him...but I hung out with him sometimes. He would bring their dolls out and stuff and we'd sit outside and play. He was a couple years younger than me and I also couldn't make friends because I wasn't "mature" enough for their tastes

I'm not sure I played with toys weird or not. What is the ''correct'' way to play with toys anyway? I mean, a child isn't going to repetitively play the same dolls tea party every time she plays with dolls.

When I was a kid, I made all of my toys socially interact. I had such a good imagination. One time when I was about 6, I was at a great aunt's, and there wasn't anything to play with there, but I really wanted to play. So my great aunt gave me a basket of clothes pegs to play with, and they were all different colours. I pretended they were all people socially interacting, in other words, my imaginative mind turned them into dolls.

But since I was diagnosed with ASD at the age of 8, I often pretended one of my toys was the 'Aspie' who found it hard to fit in with the other toys. For example, with my set of plastic safari animals, I chose the baby hippo to be the Aspie because it had quite a blank expression on it's face. So I got all the other cubs to play together while the hippo was awkward and often left out or having a meltdown if there was too much noise. Then my male cousins came round and just wanted to line the safari animals up or make them fight, with no social interaction involved. And they were both NTs.

Yep. That's highly subjective.

If one does not play with a car like it's a car, then it might seem like it's "weird." Or if they don't play "house" with dolls at the age of 5, say.

If, rather, they just throw the car against the wall, or seek to tear the doll apart---then, it might seem to a diagnostician that a child could have some sort of disorder, like autism.

But there are other, more subtle manifestations which could mean a disorder, and which also might not mean anything.

An assessment of "how a child plays with toys" is definitely part of an autism diagnostic interview.

I must have played with toys the correct way when I was a child then. I played families in my dolls house, played cities with my Legos (although I wasn't very good at building), played restaurants with my toy kitchen set, and played make-believe games in my wooden playhouse in the garden. I loved pretending I was a parent looking after my baby (which was a teddy bear), and I pushed him around in the garden in my dolls pram when I was like 4.

I even played socially. I rode my bike with other children in the neighborhood, shared my dolls house with my friends or cousins, and loved playing restaurants with my toy kitchen with other children. And I enjoyed playing doctors with my toy doctors kit, or playing shops with my toy cash register, or taking in turns drawing pictures in chalk on my blackboard.

I was never one to play with dolls much. I collected stuffed animals, especially cats. Siamese are my favorites.

I was always reading a book or playing outside doing something active. I do remember playing with toy Hot Wheels cars, unusual for a girl.

^^But you were playing with them like they were "supposed" to be played with.

Many girls did "boy" things when I was growing up. No eyebrows were raised, really.

Girls tended not to hang out with boys, and vice versa, though. Until about junior high school.

It would be "problematic" for a diagnostician if a 5-year-old kid was just throwing cars against the wall.

I liked playing with dolls. My stories were not very varied, in fact I followed one main story all the time.
But I was more keen on drawing comics than playing with toys. Again not many different stories, but the things I drew were a bit unusual.

I used to look at Barbies and feel the textures of the plastic instead of playing with them.

I guess I know what you mean about doing strange things with your toys like throwing a toy car or doll against the wall more times than playing with it, in a 'pointless' sort of way. Or sitting for ages spinning car wheels and never or rarely playing with the cars. But I'm just saying that there's no specific way of playing with toys, as every child is different.

I only lined toys up when I was playing a game like schools; I would be the teacher and my toys were the children, so I obviously had to put them in a certain order because it was part of the game I was playing. I was the sort of child to stop halfway through a game to play or do something else then plan to come back to it later, which is why I threw tantrums if someone moved my things, it was only because I wanted to keep them in one place so that I can finish playing with them later.

It seems like you played with things "normally," Joe.

Of course, kids had to "line up" when they went to "school."

But it is frequent that kids diagnosed with autism play with car wheels, rather than the cars themselves (because they are into "parts" of things, rather than the "things" themselves.

I knew a severely autistic boy when I was growing up. He was not able to speak. All he did was spin things----all day.

Yes, I was a rather typical child in that sense. My behaviour and emotions was more what brought concerned attention, like being highly anxious at school, socially awkward around other kids (mostly lacking self-awareness skills for my age), tantrum-prone (had tantrums at school until the age of 6, but continued having tantrums at home until
early teens), expressed fear of loud sudden noises like dogs barking or school bells ringing, was very hyperactive, and had difficulties paying attention in school and needed help with maths, science and technology. I didn't have any obsessions until the age of 11, although I seemed stupidly obsessed with burps but I felt too embarrassed to admit it to family or friends. So, yeah, I wasn't a stereotypical Aspie child. God knows how I got diagnosed so early in life.

I frequently played dolls with my sister too. I don't really remember how their social interactions went. I do remember we built coffins for them once to hold doll funerals.

Another time I stuffed their outfits with other clothes while chanting "eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat..." to the tune of the lead-in to the "charge fanfare". I don't think that counts as "unusual" play in the grand scheme, though it may not be politically correct these days.

I'm not sure whether there were any toys that I played with strangely, but there were definitely only some kind of toys that I was interested in playing with. Everything for me revolved around either making things or learning factual things; drawing, Lego, Meccano, home electronics, microscopes, knitting, sewing, computers a bit later on, and lots, and lots of reference books. Nearly all of my pastimes were ones I'd do on my own most of the time. I wasn't really interested in multi-player games, and hated anything that involved role playing. I'm really not a lot different now; I got coerced into some live role-playing in my student years and was just as awkward and bewildered as I had been as a primary-school kid, and I'm still as reclusive as ever most of the time (the "toys" haven't change a right lot, either.)

As a child I liked solitary play as well. I had a vivid imagination but only for daydreaming and creating make-believe worlds in my head. I tried including other children in my imaginative thoughts, but it didn't work out. I didn't know how to include them or incorporate their ideas. I didn't like role play and I was afraid of any game that I didn't know how to play. For example, my cousin had Candy Land but I didn't know the rules so rather than ask, I developed extreme anxiety if she suggested we play. I would refuse and make up reasons why I wouldn't play.

Likewise I never played Checkers or any card game. I was too shy to interact with other kids. I still don't know how to play Checkers.

I was given a lot of dolls as gifts but I wasn't sure what to do with them. I loved their scent, which smelled like baby powder and vanilla, and to me that was the best part. I named them all the same name (Amy), so I wouldn't get them mixed up. I liked to hand wash their clothes because I loved the smell of the soap, and I would fluff up their beds to put them to sleep so I could ignore them. I didn't know how to nurture them or create stories.

My favourite pastimes were reading, riding a Big Wheel (sensory heaven), playing with pinwheels, or climbing things. I liked to organise coins or stuffed animals into categories. I also wrote a lot of tiny books with poetry or factual information, such as "The Life of Elton John", or books about caring for pets.

That's awfully familiar, and not just from my childhood, either. Two player games l could handle sometimes, but only if the games were short, and not if there were any socialising or commotion going on at the same time. I was the same in my twenties, when I'd sometimes meet up with a few friends for games-console or poker night - their efforts to get me playing became a running joke, but I'd never budge. If I'm ever forced into it, I've never been too proud to lose deliberately so that I can sit out the rest of the game.

I've had the opportunity more recently to explain my executive and sensory traits to a couple of them a little bit, so I guess I've finally come clean; after forty odd years of making up something on the fly and then spending the rest of the time feeling anxious like I'm the little kid who's homework was eaten by the proverbial dog!