Autism and Imaginary Friends

Post Reply New Topic

I do not remember having an imaginary friend as a child. I remember a few kids who had imaginary friends, but I didn't really understand it. What's the point of playing with someone who doesn't exist?

I voted yes. I gave objects such as action figures-- well, treated them like people.
I also had another "personality" that I made to come and go. I forget about it now. I don't think I would have had it if my sister wasn't playing with an imaginary friend/personality.

No imaginery (nor real) friends. But still, even now, I have a dilemma with 'real' vs 'imaginery.' By this I mean - fairly recent typifying incident: One I know, a nice acquaintance, just casually mentioned whilst we were walking through the lobby at University building "That plant isn't real."

Although her comment was offhand and of no real consequence, I was just shocked......The plant is made from plastic so it's not alive BUT it is REAL!! ! If it exists and I can see it, touch it, then it's real! It's not imaginary!! !

I do struggle with this concept......even well-after I remembered and was disturbed by the distinction, that it's "not real." I have stuffed animals, for example, but they're real, not imaginary. I could offer proof by saying 'If I were to disect a stuffed animal toy then animal would be filled with cotton batting, furry upholstery-like fabric, plastic eyes, etc. But if I take apart a live plant then it's cellulose with conducitve plant vesicles, etc.

So? That doesn't make my stuffed animal less 'real' than a live thing. Imaginary means it does not truly exist.

But that is a very good question, Ahaseurus2000. I understand those with ASD do not engage in that is termed 'imagariny play.' I loved blocks and to cut & paste with magazine images, glue/scissor. That sort of thing. But I never really had friends, real or imagined. I never played House or liked to pretend I was a grown-up. I didn't even like dolls. I had a favorite blanket and a plastic orange hippopotamus named Ted. But Ted wasn't imaginary.

Ahaseurus2000: I really understand your point! Why play with an imaginery someone?

I had one this year when I was under a whole lot of stress. He's gone now because I don't think I need him.
As a child I didn't really have one. I talked to my pets, God (my mum took us kids to church) and made up my own characters, but never talked to them.

No, that's a misconception. It is not true of all Aspies. I am most definitely an Aspie and I played all sorts of imaginary games, both alone and with my brother and the neighbours' kids.

I had imaginary frogs when I was very little, and imaginary friends when I was much older, around 12 I think -- the main reason was that I was lonely at that age; I would rather have had real friends.

We also made up our own superhero characters and played games relating to them. I loved designing floor-plans of houses, and I designed something spectacular for my superhero character, with secret passages and some kind of launchpad for a flying craft.

I played games with Barbie dolls with my brother (we usually pretended they were circus acrobats), or separately with other girls. These games with female friends usually explored sexual issues, and as we got towards puberty, we particularly played out the dilemma between sexual desire and morality.

I never believed in Father Christmas (or Santa Claus as he is called in some countries), because my mother was good at distinguishing between things which one might pretend to believe in for the sake of a game (Father Christmas, fairies, etc.) and things which were invisible but which she expected us to accept as real (Jesus, God, angels, the devil).

Oh, I have had them as an adult too, but they eventually became so controlling that I shot the lot of them one night with a machine gun. I then felt guilty about it, and there was no-one to replace them, and so in my mind I went back in time, but some of them who had travelled forward in time knew what I had done, and in the end nearly all of them resented me. I eventually decided to tell a (real) friend about them because they were so determined at being a secret and I felt that they were demanding too much.

I did that too and put no. I knew my stuffed animals weren't real, but I projected what I wanted from my family on an emotional level (mainly my mom) onto this one stuffed animal.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you, Alphabetania! I have observed (in self and plenty others with ASD) creativity and imagination that surpasses most. I ought to have clarified: By convention, diagnosticians & certain researchers regard Autists as 'unimaginative.' However, this may be their own bias since 'we' may not play as a 'normal' Neurotypical child might.

I liked what you wrote about Father Christmas (Santa Claus) too; I'm like you on these matters. And I engaged my creativity, as always, for certain, but maybe in other ways - like my 'cutting & pasting.' Lab Pet is a scientist and my novel unconventional ways are a real asset to me.

None of the choices fit me. I had imaginary friends up until two years ago; I do not have an ASD diagnosis but, you know, I'm here.

They stopped visiting. It makes me a little sad.

When I no longer felt I needed him I felt bad. Oh, maybe he could visit, but no, his presence isn't as strong as it once was.
It was a very strange experience for me. At first I was fearful of this shadow I was seeing, then it formed into a familiar anime-like character with the softest voice I'd ever heard. I even wrote about him. Oscar Liam he was called.

I can't vote because I don't if I have autism or not. If one could be autistic agnostic (i.e. can't know if one has autism), that would be me.

My mother told me that I did have an imaginary friend growing up, though my memories of him are vague. I think I needed to him so that I could share the imaginary worlds I had created, mostly through extremely detailed road maps. I think that was likely my extraverted side coming through.

My naive side overrode any notion that Santa Claus didn't exist until relatively late in life. I was... 11, maybe?

I had a similar mother who preferred me to believe in God and Jesus over Santa and the Tooth Fairy. I got into trouble at school for telling all the kids Santa didn't exist, at like 3rd grade or something. My cousin would probably still argue with me on the subject.

Yeah, I think the thing on "Lack of imagination" is bull. I think psychologists didn't understand severely autistic people (like before Aspergers era) and assumed they had no imagination. Then when Aspergers came about, it stuck with it because of the spectrum. Now, instead of saying, oops that was wrong of us, they are now, as I have been told, to mean it to be social imagination. I don't think that really exists, but whatever helps them sleep at night.

It depends on what you mean by imaginary friend.

I had a doll and a couple of stuffed animals who each had a personality. I always figured most girls had dolls, so that was normal, but I don't remember other kids actually caring about theirs. Mine was a friend.

Now that I'm older, I have someone who is a constant presence, like a spirit. He's kind of like an imaginary friend, I suppose, but I'm not setting a place for him at the table and insisting that people say hello to him. I've never had anything like that.

I voted for the first option.
When I was 5 I had an imaginary friend although I never pretended to play with him. I used to tell people that we went parachuting together, which I think was because I actually did want to go skydiving. That's all I used to talk about in regards to my 'friend'..."Sumpa and I went parachuting yesterday".

I never had an imaginary friend.

Maybe the "lack of imagination" thing came about because of clinical observations. You know, put the autistic kid in a room with a dollhouse and some toy cars and animals, and see what he does. If I was a kid in a psychologist's office, with someone else's dirty toys, I probably would have arranged things a bit, but not done any obvious "imaginary play". Other people's toys had no life or meaning for me.