How did you play as a child?

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I'm curious about how other people with ASD played as children?

I personally liked lining up and stacking things, and just generally organizing things. I did play with toys "properly" sometimes, though I often preferred inspecting parts of them instead of playing with them, and if I did do it "properly" I did the same things over and over. I also played pretend to a degree, but I didn't make up any characters or make up stories well, so I just pretended to be video game characters I liked, again in the same scenarios over and over. I also liked just running around and going on the swings a lot. I did like playing "with" other children, but I didn't like doing anything actually collaborative and mainly liked just doing the same activity in proximity to them, like drawing, swinging, stacking blocks, etc.

Actually I played with toys the "normal" way, which is another reason why I don't know how I got a diagnosis so young.

I remember myself playing with toys like how most children would play with toys; with imagination and very little stacking/lining things up. My mum says the same.

I had a set of safari animals that I made socially interact rather than fighting.

While playing with my dolls house I'd make up scenarios and make the dolls socially interact.

I'd play imaginative games too, that involved talking loudly to thin air. I didn't have much of a problem playing imaginative games with other children either.

I enjoyed sharing my toys with other children too.

I had a really huge imagination as a child. For example, I could turn one small tree into loads of different things just by using my imagination.

I rode around on my bike quite a bit. I always liked cartoons and funny shows. I did some swimming and diving both into and under water. I drew pictures, and made models, stock, custom, and scratch built. I started on a model railway but was too ambitious. My first large purchase was a slot-car racing set to replace it. I built a large two-pendulum harmonograph. I built a lot of Meccano gadgets, but I rejected Lego bricks and stuck with plain wooden ones, as they would fall down like masonry if done wrong. I played cards and board games, but avoided ball sports.

Age 3-4 (earliest memories, first home)

- Being alone and climbing in an abandoned junkyard and workshop where my grandfather once kept broken car parts, tools, appliances, and household materials. My first memory is finding a glass shower door, the type that would slide back and forth on the side of a bathtub instead of a shower curtain. It was discarded in the meadow and I tried to take it home because it had cartoon fish engraved in the glass. The windows in the workshop were broken glass and I remember the sunlight / dust streaming through. I liked to climb up onto the roof of the workshop. Sometimes my brother and cousin joined me but I was mostly alone. I always preferred being alone.

- Catching minnows with my brother in a stream, using bacon tied onto string. Then we gathered the minnows in a net and put them in a plastic washbin. We named them all after Flintstone characters. I believe we had 13 at one point.

- I spent a lot of time on boats, and I loved to feed ducks.


Age 5-8 Second home

- I liked to put things in order, especially coins. I'd arrange them by size, year, denomination, world currency, etc.

- Being a young girl I got a lot of dolls for gifts. I didn't really know how to take care of them or how to act like a mother. I wrapped them in receiving blankets and put them in their individual cots to sleep rather than play with them. I've always been faceblind and couldn't tell them apart so I named all of them Amy. It was easier to remember their names if they all had the same name lol.

- One of my favourite things was washing doll clothes in the sink, because I liked the smell of the bubbles. I collected lots of plastic hangers for doll clothes and I loved the smell of the little dresses or sleepers when they were fresh washed. I actually loved the smell of my dolls and their hair, too. I spent a lot of time sniffing my dolls. (Potential references to Joe Biden are unintentional).

- Listening to music on my little record player. I collected vinyl albums.

- Writing books and reading. I used to put pretend library cards in the back of my books (little envelopes where people could sign my books out from the library). I would put pretend names on the slips to make my books seem real.

- I collected puppets and wanted to be a puppet-script-writer. I was pretty much mute but I could talk via puppets. In particular I wanted to grow up and be a scriptwriter for Grover on Sesame Street. I spent a lot of time making up dialogue for Grover.

- Catching moths, caterpillars, and insects for my Bug Keeper. I loved seeing caterpillars build cocoons.

- My mother told me if you put salt on a bird's tail it can't fly. I crept around outside with salt shakers looking for birds.

- My dad taught me to knit. I got pretty obsessed with knitting and needlecraft around age 8.


Age 5-13 MAIN THING

- I built a playfort with four walls, by hanging bedsheets from the ceiling in our cellar. It was really big and well-made, and lasted eight years. I had all sorts of old things in there like a rotary telephone, an electric frypan, and a pillow bed with coloured lights. I pretty much lived in this fort full-time.

- While in the fort I lived in a dream world of my imagination. Age 5-10 or so, I was named Susie and I was married to Elton John. (I was the girl "Susie" from his Crocodile Rock lyrics). Around age 10 I divorced Elton and married Ozzy Osbourne. These games were all in my head and no one really knew what I was doing or thinking. I spent a lot of time dancing with a support beam (spinning around it in circles pretending to slow dance).

- In the summertime I liked to put a tent in the back garden and load it up with my puppets / books. I would sleep there as often as possible. We had a swimming pool and I loved to watch the water at night, illuminated by candles and coloured spotlights.


I didn't really play with other kids. Sometimes I'd get paired up with my brother's friend's sister, but she thought I was weird and too spacey. I was always teased for living in my head.

I played with toys in a normal fashion.

my favorite toy was a "farm set" with a barn and little animals. I spent hours right through high school making and landscaping pastures, fences, etc etc for the little critters and marching them (in rows!) to and from the pastures, pretending to do chores, etc etc. I loved all the little details and can still remember each animal in minute detail. I marveled at their detail and wondered how they were made, who sculpted them, what the various materials they were made of was... as time went on, I learned all of those things. That farm set was the joy of my life. The minute I graduated high school and went to trade school my mother packed all of my old toys including the farm set and gave them away. I still have not forgiven her. She couldn't wait for me to leave home and remove all traces of my existence from her life.

I built things, from bows and arrows and crossbows to a functional mini rope walk in lego. I also made Stockholm tar to impregnate the tiny ropes I made. I built many miniature boats and ships that could actually sail. I was much into model construction and tin soldiers.
I didn't as far as I remember line things up.
When I played with my friend, it was usually side by side. I'd build my crossbow/model ship while he built his.
I never did any "real" sports, but I swam a lot, and hiked the mountains and went cross country skating.

/Mats

I used to like playing cards with my brother but he would cheat and we'd end up fighting. I also used to enjoy doing card tricks as well. I also used to like building houses out of cards and then it evolved into little card villages.

I did used to enjoy sorting things out into order of colour as well. I can remember doing this with felt tip pens.

I could do imaginary games as well. I've always had a good imagination.

I also would enjoy doing puzzles and drawing geometric patterns. I could do that all day long and would be just so content doing it.

I was also good at playing out with other kids as well. I'd play out day and night. Football, cricket, tennis, hide and seek, tig. We used to play quite rough as I remember. We'd have warfare against the other street.

I used to really enjoy the dark nights when we could go garden hopping and knock a door running.

I think that my adhd was well predominant during a lot of my outdoor games and my aspergers was predominant when I spent time alone.

I did a little too well.

Not just the 'typical' stuff like imaginative play, luck based, knowledge based, reaction time based, physical based and group based games. Balls, boards, cards, ropes, boxes, dresses, etc.
No sports based because stereotypes AND not interested enough. Nonetheless, I almost always win in any parlor games as well.

Most kids want me in their team. I played a lot with them.
Not because I asked, but because I got dragged into it and just agreed to it.


But also the typical soloist AS stuff like organizing, puzzles, stacking stuff, "being in an imaginary world", stimming, interest based and basically putting things apart and putting it all back together... And everything a pencil and crayon could do.

It's what I do when I'm alone and not in a mood to deal with anyone.
And I don't actually have a lot of toys. Or at least, I don't get the toys I want -- my parents assumed I'd want dolls.
Instead I either outright ignored it's existence or mutilated it. I like my fingers better than any toys I received.

And beyond -- practical jokes, hiding and sneaking stuff just for laughs, experimenting items including fire, and sometimes food...
A lot of biking, skating, video gaming... Until we can't keep it and buy something new/still working/etc.


I played a lot. And sometimes a little too well.
So it's a bit surprising how I easily able to drop my ego in later life, and that I'm don't ever cultivated perfectionism growing up.

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I used to love Lego and build windmills using electric motors taken out of things like fans. I once tied a rope to the back of my bike for someone else to chase and ended up knocking one of my front teeth out when the rope got caught under the wheel of a parked car.

I ran around alot, played on playgrounds, backgarden,streets, countryside, climbed tress, climbed things, jumped off things, knock door run, hide and seek, explored abandoned places, rode bikes, played football in street, in playground, collected footballs stickers, other fads, yo yo-s, pogs, tazos, tamigotchi, power rangers, laser tag, then pokemon hit, went crazy over pokemon. stole from shops. trespassed. vandalized. graffiti. was somewhat extroverted, hanged out with the 'bad' kids. just did what they did. ran wild in the streets getting into trouble constantly. I was what you would call naughty and misbehaved, and got a kick out of defying and violating the rules of the adult world. if an adult told me to do something, i would almost certainly disobey or try to cause them a problem.

When alone, was more subdued, draw pictures , read comics books. played with toys, played out hollywood movie scenarios with them, heroes & villains. pretended i was action movie star. played playstation for hours and hours. could be energetic, prone to throwing and breaking things. argumentative. lots of tantrums, fights, grounded a lot. told off , smacked around by kids and even adults. just an all round happy childhood.

Of course if i had been better behaved, more composed and followed more rules, i might not have even been singled out as "problem child" who always acted up in classroom, a classclown, a truant, a troublemaker and might have avoided my diagnosis possibly.

My earliest memory is of playing in a cupboard. There were a lot of cupboards in my childhood! I just liked getting into small, dark places and hanging out there.

I was a dismantler, which probably looked quite destructive from the outside. I would break things if they couldn't be dismantled. I just wanted to know what was going on inside, how things worked. I don't remember ever feeling sad when I broke my own toys this way, it just was what is was. I remember also enjoying scraping the paint off my toy cars with stones.

Dismantling was how I managed to electrocute myself when I was about 8. I was taking a lamp apart with wet hands while it was still plugged in.

I was always quite jealous of my sister's dolls and Sylvanian families and things like that. I wanted to create scenes from them. I also like the more mechanical parts - there was a lift in my sisters dolls house, a washing machine that had a battery and a water pipe and she had a doll's car which I badly wanted to take to bits but wasn't allowed to.

Frustration at not being allowed to take other kids toys to bits was a thing for me too. I remember I knew this kid, who wasn't really a friend, but I'd been invited to play at his house and he had the Millenium Falcon toy. I didn't know what it was having never seen star wars but it was big and it looked seriously complicated (it was probably just moulded plastic but it looked intricately constructed) and man did I want to take that thing to bits.

I read voraciously, taught myself to ride a bike and did most things on my own. Partly because we were generally geographically isolated, partly because I lacked any close friends.

As I got older I'd say my childhood was characterised by big ideas that I didn't have the skills to create. I wanted to build things like tree houses, go karts, toy aeroplanes, formal gardens and I had plans for a hovercraft powered by a lawnmower engine. My problem was that I had the capacity to imagine very ambitious projects to high levels of detail - but poor motor skills, no access to materials and little understanding of engineering. I tried to will these things into reality but failed frequently and spent a lot of time frustrated and dejected. My parents weren't equipped to deal with this, my mum having two other kids to look after. My dad was practical with wood but I don't think he liked spending time with me much and never really taught me any of the skills he had. In general he'd just get angry with me for messing with his tools.

And then came computers - I got my first 8-bit micro when I was 10 maybe and after that it was almost all computers for me.

I think my brother may have had adhd but he was actually diagnosed with conduct disorder and later aspd he used to love breaking things apart. I remember one time he broke an etch a sketch apart and there was iron filings everywhere. He just wanted to see how it worked.