Pretend play not possible for kids with asperger?

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My son is wildly creative with his play scenarios, and often same-age peers don't "get" the game he is asking them to play and he gets frustrated when they don't go with his game. When he was 3-4, he would often get so immersed in his imaginary world that it wasn't clear whether he understood the difference between pretend and reality. One time, he was pretending to me a mother bird protecting her nest and he attacked a kid when they stepped on one of his imaginary, invisible eggs. He was actually quite enraged that the kid had killed his "baby" even though the kid was just walking somewhere and had no idea what he had done. He seems to have grown out of this (he's seven now), and is also more willing to go with the flow with pretend games other kids come up with. I think the inability to pretend might be more accurately defined as "inability to follow another's framework for pretend scenarios". They definitely develop their own frameworks which can be quite complex. Ability to play pretend something that develops with time, and not something an Aspie can never develop. Look how many people on here are into role-playing games.

I played pretend... In very limited ways. I loved Superheroes and medical stuff, so it was either cats with super powers or a doll slowly dying of a nonexistent terminal illness.

Slightly disturbing creative play.

I pretend played with my younger brother and occasionally with other children. When I was by myself I had repetitive activities that other children thought were weird or boring. They weren't unimaginative though, just repetitive and not particularly social. My pretend play was scripted, like a play with an exact script that I would rehearse and repeat over and over making slight changes. I got pissed if someone came and interrupted it.

Last edited by marshall on 15 Apr 2013, 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

I did lot of pretend play growing up.

Not true, I didn't play with toys that much and neither did my son or my daughter. We have such good imaginations that we didn't need toys to pretend play. Maybe they've gotten pretend play confused with the functional use of toys ?

I got crap from my parents for being too much into pretend games.

So obviously that "asperger children cant play pretend" is crap.

But similiar threads have come up in which respondants have said "i couldnt grasp pretend games as a child" so you get both extremes and everything in between I suppose.

I played pretend.

I was fully honest with the shrink about this.

I got DXed anyway.

I had dolls, but their only purpose was to occupy their designated locations and orientations at all times.

Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm pretending.

I played pretend a lot as a kid. I mostly pretended to be a dragon, since dragons were my special interest then.

I hated social pretend play. It was boring and I didn't get it.

Somehow, despite this, I ended up with roleplaying games as a hobby.

This for me.

I had toys but left to my own devices I would just categorise them, and line them up in sections. And then change the criteria for more fun! Other children tried to play with me, but they didn't play right, so I didn't like to play with them. Except, I did enjoy watching other kids play video games.

I wouldn't believe it for a second (OP), I have AS and that's all I ever did as a kid was cook up a new fantasy for play, and today, I actually work on my own games (not professionally, it's more of a hobby) to give new fantasies and worlds for others to enjoy.

This is the way I understand the statement, not that there is no pretend life at all. After all, one of the hallmarks of autism is that children are in their own worlds.

That being said, I was always terrible at pretending -- still am. I have never found a way to access my imagination -- assuming I have one. I remember as a child my little friends wanted to place house or school or whatever and they'd all want to change their names and make up careers and stories and so forth. I felt stupid doing all that and would just be myself. I mostly spent my time alone with my books and music. I loved my stuffed animals, but I don't recall any imaginary play with them -- they were for cuddling. As an adult, I have no interest in writing or reading fiction or poetry, although I love writing non-fiction -- film reviews, journal entries, letters to the editor, etc. Any art piece -- drawing or painting -- is usually a copy of something else. The only place I can say that I "pretend" is that I have imaginary conversations with people in my head -- friends who live out of town, men I'd like to date. But those conversations are basically scripts for when/if I'm in for real in the situation with that person that I imagined.

I think that "lack of pretend play" can also mean, playing with toys out of context, so a doll becomes a fire engine, or, just lining them up which I think is a classic autism symptom.

It also relates, I think, to lack of ToM, whereby in an acting or playing-out scenario, the autistic person can't really comprehend that someone is meant to be someone other than they are in real life.

Depends what you mean by "pretend play"

For example, I was always in my own world. I collected things and organised things, such as cars, bouncy balls, and organised them. But they would have personalities and all be talking in my mind, and I was constantly pretend playing with myself while just looking at them organised all over my floor.

However, I never did with other kids. I didn't actually understand that they were roleplaying, and didn't need correction when they were pretending that trees were wolves, or that they had been on an adventure of hundreds of miles around the school, and so the only time I did talk was to point out they must be wrong. And that's why nobody liked me

But I was perfectly able to pretend by myself, and enjoyed it, so I'm not sure what happened when I was around other kids. I guess they weren't pretending in the right way for me