Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi
I just wanted to share this with you all as it tickled me.
My autistic son who’s 9 keeps asking if we can buy a manikin. He says it will be like having a friend at our house all the time. Just to mention he does have a small group of friends so I don’t really think it’s because he doesn’t have any. He does laugh about it when we discuss it. Has anyone else ever heard of this or had any experiences?
I'm a very visual person. I like to buy representations of things I can't have in real life. I'm 53 years old. I'm not sure if this is normal ?
We can get very attached to objects.
Here's a thread I made earlier:
https://community.autism.org.uk/f/adults-on-the-autistic-spectrum/32655/emotional-psychological-attachment-to-objects-belongings/303586#303586
With regard to a 9 year old, I think that's kind of natural.
I was very attached to my bear and my knitted elephant (until I ate him) and saw them as sentient beings.
As long as the manikin is not inflatable !
Nice story.
Thank you for sharing. I’m more than happy for him to have a manikin, bless him I just thought they are not that cuddly are they?
I don’t really have a attachment to an object accept a shoe lace which I use for a belt (I hate belts for some reason) I’ve had this shoe lace for probably 10 years and would be devastated if I lost it.
Developing an emotional rapport with an object is not unusual actually for autistic people. My childhood panda bear was perhaps more conventional than a manikin, but he was my best friend and I did ascribe human feeling to him. Every time my mother washed him and pegged him on the line by his ears, I stood stock still under it fretting the pegs were hurting his ears until he was dry and back in my arms.
He still sleeps in my bed even though I'm 58.