Playing with toys

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So, I've been reflecting upon my childhood. I remember that I didn't know how to play with tinker toys and lincoln logs. I didn't "get it" - how I was supposed to play with them. I guess I was not understanding what was the "correct" way to play with them. It was not an isolated occurrence.

Playing with "real" baby dolls, I got one that was battery operated and could be fed. I was disappointed with its lack of realism. I ended up taking the doll apart to see how it was put together.

Anyone else have experiences with not playing with toys "correctly"? Not really wanting to pretend with them, I guess. Parents - do your kids play with toys in an odd way?

roz.

I don't recall "playing with" toys as much as "arranging " them. I would build cabins and forts of Lincoln logs, or space stations of Tinkertoys and then place all the Cowboy and Indian or Soldier and Spacemen figures around in scenic dioramas, but I have no clear recollection of assigning them character roles, or actually having them fight each other, though I may have, but it was setting the scene that was my primary focus.

I did enjoy using my monster models to attack my electric train set. I think I identified with the monsters more than the human figures.


Strangely, the toys I most "played with" were Hot Wheels cars, though when I became a teenager, it took forever for me to develop any interest in learning to drive.

My mom was an insanely girly girl so she bought me all these barbie dolls. I had like 30 of them. I would always play hospital with them, using play-doh to make casts and stuff...

I had no problems with playing pretend as a child. I had a vast collection of plush toys, and I gave them all quirky personalities and roles in an ongoing sitcom-style story. At one point I also had a couple of anime figures and pretended that they were the hosts of their own talk show.

I loved Lincoln logs and tinker toys! I liked to build things.

I loved to role-play with my many dolls and stuffed animals in the style of a cartoon or a story and did so even in my teens and early adult years. In the 90's I had a HUGE collection of troll dolls and I even crafted my very own "Troll Town", with houses I made out of milk cartons covered in felt and other stuff and paper-towel-roll trees, and would sit at my bedroom desk and pretend I was putting on a kiddie show while acting out a story with the dolls. I hardly ever role-play any more, but really wish I still did. I just recently crafted a hospital room for my Monster High dolls after seeing a YT video on how to make one using a white 3-ring binder and beds made from cardboard and duct-tape, but right now it's just a neat little display on my dining room, table...

When I was a kid I spent hours upon hours upon hours for years simulating how real world physics would affect my hot wheels cars imagining them to be full scale and I would simulate in slow motion how they would flip and roll if struck at different angles or fell of cliffs. I would simulate the crashes in slow motion for hours, then reverse the crash in slow motion the way that I had played it out and start over and do it again and again and again.

I also spent a great deal of time playing with my pencil eraser collection. I had hundreds of pencil erasers, never actually using them to erase anything. I would buy bags full of them, get a pen out and draw designs on the erasers to make them look like little space ships. I would get the large bulk erasers and rub them down to get different shapes so as to design a different spacecraft. I eventually made a small fleet of a few hundred of them.

I don't think the way i played with toys was atypical. I'm not sure. Mostly what I would do is make up stories and scenarios involving my dolls and action figures and tractors and matchbox cars and sort of make up stories as I went along. Always involving one or two imaginary characters that i had concocted. they had names. i don't remember what their names were. This wasn't like an imaginary friend sort of thing. More like.... more like if I was an author and had these characters that I had invented- i knew their personalities and motivations and how they should and would react in certain situations. They weren't 'real' in any way to me. Just my characters.

Damnit I wish I could remember their names. This is going to bother me all night.

I too simulated impact physics and elastic collisions with my hotweels cars. I also built parts of mechanical systems (ie rack and pinion steering, reversing gearboxes, linear-rotary movement converters, etc) with lego.

At about 6 years old I played with several /cases/ of matches that I bought with saved up allowance; the strange thing about that one was that my parents knew and allowed it, I asked them about it recently and apparently they decided that I was a very careful child so it would probably be ok.

Way back before computers really got in and i got my Atari 2600 or whatever it was called " Was console with pong".

I mostly spend my time with lego. Now the great thing about lego is, as i got more and more over the years the possiblities opened.

Todays kids are lucky. minecraft so much cheaper and you have infinite blocks.

Yeah I didn't play with toys until something triggered it in my late teens and I started appreciating plushies. I was just like, what?

Welcome to the club. I never outgrew my love of plushies. It's just that now instead of buying them, I prefer to make my own. There's something about making a plushie with your own two hands that is deeply satisfying, as opposed to just grabbing a mass-produced one off the shelf.

Before I could talk I would be playing with toys, but instead of roleplaying with them each toy had a guttural pattern assigned to it. My parents later told me that I would select a few toys and use them to create long strings of different patterns. After I grew out of the pattern phase I started a schedule phase. Play sessions occurred with me creating a vast world for my toys, I would get so fixated on details that I would often spend hours just creating a setting instead of playing with toys. After the world was created, I had to make schedules for all of my toys. They would go to school and work and I had to make sure everyone's schedules coordinated so that nothing would be conflicting. The schedule phase developed into a book keeping phase in which I recorded different categories of toys., their schedules, their relations, and their status. Even though I have now reached adult hood, I still play pretend with my toys. As soon as my roommate leaves our dorm, I get out my action figures and continue with my world, recording the events that happened in my ledger. Something about playing with the toys you've had since you were little seems weird considering that I should have grown out of them.

Last edited by ChristinaTheHobbit on 30 Jul 2013, 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't see why there has to be rules with how to play with a certain toy. My NT cousin only liked playing with constructive toys as a child, like Lego or those stick things you connect, or building those electric road things for toy cars to shoot around when you pushed a button. He never had any types of toys what you don't build with, while his younger NT brother had all sorts of different toys. All children are different.

But anyway everything I played with as a child I always pretended were a class of children and I chose one to be the ''Aspie'' (this was after I was diagnosed and knew about it). Like when I played with my Pokemon figures, I didn't play battle with them. I made pretend they were in a class, and I got Psyduck to be the Aspie because it looked like it has it's hands over it's ears. I got all the rest of the Pokemon characters to interact and made Psyduck the socially awkward one who struggled to make friends and was included on the odd occasion.

That's what I did with most of my toys. With the jungle animals I had I got the baby hippo to be the ''Aspie'' who always stuck with it's dad and didn't want to mix with the other animal cubs. It was great fun.

Before I got diagnosed I just played with my toys like normal, wasn't unsure of what to do or didn't line things up or stack things or anything like that.