Imaginative play-well that was useless

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Asked my dad about it. His reply:

Then again perhaps parents can't tell you play such games. If that is true though how do parents of a young child with possible/ suspected ASD respond to such a question about their child from a professional?

I guess parents see their children interacting with other kids, and see what kinds of games they play. And it can be pretty obvious. I've been working with children for a long time, and you can tell that the neurotypical kids like playing make-believe (such as dress-up, dolls, anything where you pretend to be someone/something else), and the neurodivergent ones are usually more into the non-imaginative plays (like building, puzzles, or if they're sociable, catch or hide-and-seek.)
But then again, it's very individual.
I know my parents probably couldn't answer that question properly, because I seemed to be doing a lot of imaginative play. But I can remember that I wasn't very focused on the actual play, but rather on "pretending to pretend". I joined in with the other kids when they were playing with dolls, for example, but while everyone else seemed to really identify with those dolls, giving them personalities and acting through them, I was mostly thinking of how to look as if I was doing the same. It was pretty confusing to me, and I was always afraid someone would know that I didn't have an imagination.

Like a lot of boys from the 60s I had a GI Joe and Action man. I never did get how to invent scenarios with them. It was hard to get past the fact they were plastic and inanimate.

I don't remember much of : Pretend Play

http://www.scottishautism.org/services- ... urces/play

At first, I wasn't into imaginative play, but gradually overtime I got really invested in making up my own World, and involved other children in it.

From reception up till about year 2, I went through a stage where I was selectively mute, and often went off and did my own thing. This was mainly due to a stammer, which led to me feel overly-conscious about my voice, so I withdrew from others as a result. I would refuse to even communicate through written words, and this only started to improve when my teachers referred me to speech therapy.

After the therapy, I began communicating with others and even partaking in imaginative play. We would make up our own Worlds, and introduce one another to them. This involved all sorts of stuff; making leaflets for fake events, visiting fake houses, method acting as different characters and having phone conversations as those characters... ect.

Interestingly, looking back on photos of me it seems that it wasn't just my verbal communication that improved at that time. The way I'm posed in pictures before the therapy looks quite strange, especially my hands as I seemed to have a habit of curling them back or holding one hand with the other as if it were heavy.

Whereas in comparison, after the therapy the photos look a lot more natural.

I'm posed more photogenically, surrounded by friends, and seem to be having a good time in the photos. This suggests to me, that I developed a lot of important social skills at that time especially.

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 28 Dec 2017, 11:45 am, edited 6 times in total.

Often parents have ASD traits themselves. Your dad might have thought that lacking imaginative play was normal, because he was the same way as a kid.

I used to pretend to eat bears alive and that I was going to fly to a place with fairies. Of course, my friends came up with these games and I simply followed along. Would you describe yourself as having a vivid imagination? Whether it be now or when you were a juvenile.

Funny enough... I used to think that engaging in imaginative play was part of ASD and not the other way around. Now I know I was wrong... >_<

Its part of childhood in general.

But I had the impression that excessive imaginative play was a symptom of my aspergers or ASD.
Apparently two opposite things seem to be taken as evidence of the same condition.

Well, if you are correct in that impression, it would bring up the question of what counts as excessive imaginative play and how it differs from regular imaginative play. At what point is imaginative play excessive? Hmm...

I wouldn't describe myself as having a vivid imagination either now or then. I can't recall ever being able to visualise things in my mind's eye.

I would take imaginative play into autistic directions. Tended to play with slightly younger kids. Went beyond playing cowboys, or house,or war, and would get kids to pretend that they were entire nation states. Draw maps of imaginary continents. Carve them up into countries. Would design armies navies and airforces, and would wage global war. Usually we were all allies against a common imaginary enemy. Imagine a cross between the Middle Earth, and the real World War Two. That was my "pretend play". Whats more fun than foreign policy, population statistics, macro economics, and all out war?

Looking back now it seems odd even to me that I would play that way. I guess when most kids gradually transition out of pretend play, and went another direction and took pretend play to over developed heights.

Personally, I was quite obsessive about my imaginary World as well. I designed maps for different made up countries on a made up planet, and rooms right down to how they would fit in the house.

I made up characters that lived in that World, and often dreamt up interactions with these characters.

My underground hideout, underneath my imaginary room, in my imaginary house, was my favourite, I gave it a code which you had to enter to open this metallic looking trap door. There was a ladder that you could go down, and this hideout was my safe space in my imaginary World.

I used to pretend that robots were hunting down humans, and they would have surprise inspections of houses (a bunch of robots granted me refuge and I was hiding there illegally, so during these inspections I would go hide in the hideout). The trap door was under my bed and my imaginary room was disguised to look like a control panel for all sorts of technological wonders, since it had fake buttons on the outside of the room.

OK, admittedly I may still write stories about my imaginary World, and my friend and I still pretended to visit our Worlds even during Secondary...and yeah, even to this day I keep a folder full of ideas I have for stuff that I could add to this planet.

Yes, I realise this might come across as pathetic, but I developed it so much... that it would seem like a waste to let it go.

Nothing wrong with revisiting that world.

Or with trying to combine elements of it with current interests.

I remember most of my pretend play came from what my mother showed me so I copied her. I also remember playing with toys and it was the same thing over and over again like I was have my little people sit in each toy like toilet or see saw or merry go round and push them through doors in my Little People school. There really was no imagination behind it and spinning the merry go round and watching the Little People fly off or putting them on the bus and pushing it and watching them go up and down. I am sure my parents saw this as pretend play.

When playing with Barbies, I did role playing with them from real life scenes and I made them sit in chairs or the couch and then I would leave them there for a few minutes and then I would make them sit at the table. Then I would bring them up to the second floor and make one of them sit at the desk and the other sit at the beauty desk. This was how I played. Is this normal or spontaneous? My husband said it wasn't because I was just scripting and doing reenactments.

Most of my pretend play was concrete.

There are always contradictions about ASD. I read that females with autism tend to be more imaginative so that would explain my pretend play and why doctors didn't see autism in me. All they saw was language and it was shown I was just very concrete and I am just visual. My pretend play and imagination would rule out ASD and my other strange things I did didn't make a difference. One doctor wrote about me I could stop it if I put an effort into it. He noted I was smelling things in his office and he told me that isn't something we do here and I apologize and stopped. I was eight.

I never did pretend play like cowboys or pirates and stuff like that. That was all boring. I never pretended to be an animal and be someone's pet. There was only one time when we played war and we all shoot at each other and that was that one time I played it with neighborhood kids in my backyard. I remember playing dress up but all I did was wear the clothes. I remember playing house and I would play the mother and I used a doll.

I suppose that's true.

^ Personally, I used to pretend to be someone's pet a lot, and one time I imagined being stuck in a zoo that aliens went to in order to watch humans, and I spent time creating an escape plan.

As for playing house, I was usually either the dad or the family dog.

I liked dressing up, because whenever I did I would pretend to be someone else for a bit.

Most of what my son does is technically reenactment. I think the same was true for me. I loved to play a role, but it was always one I'd seen somewhere before.