• Replies 4 replies
  • Subscribers 79 subscribers
  • Views 14514 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Pretend play and Asperger's

Hope

I often hear it said that children/people with Asperger's don't play 'pretend', like other children do. However, when I was a child I was always 'pretending', one way or the other. For example, I would get inside a plastic laundry tub and pretend that it was a barge-boat, and the undulations in the carpet were waves. My brother and I would take it in turns to push the 'barge-boat' round the sitting-room, and we would get out of the barge at various seats, which became landing posts.

I also played teddy-bear (and doll) tea-parties, again with my brother, or made my dolls talk about their day at school.

I am diagnosed with Aspergers, and have most of the traits, but I did 'pretend' play as a kid. It was just that I rarely played in the typical way with other children, and the children I did play with were usually younger than me. Also, I had to be in control of any game I played. I only had one friend at primary school, and we often fell out with one another, usually whenever she tried to include other children.

  • This whole erroneous way of thinking emerged because of the misinterpretation of the term "social imagination" being mistranslated.

    Yesterday, I received my eldest child's EP report and to my shock even she got it wrong, she put that my daughter's imagination was intact...no-o-o-o...really! (this was used in defence of the fact that her colleague ignored my concerns in 2009).

  • I would be interested to hear other people's experiences of their 'pretend' play experiences when children.

  • Well put, Longman.

    I struggled massively with group interactions, and still do, but I could play with one other child, so long as the play was on my terms. Most of the time, however, I played alone. I never went on sleep-overs because I was never invited, but rarely, this one girl in my class came over for tea. It helped that her mum was friends with my mum and that her younger  brother was in my brother's class. I did play 'pretend' with her, but could not have done so if other kids got involved.

  • This is one of those myths about autism that arises from using the diagnostic (triad of impairments) to define lifestyle (the diagnostic is there to distinguish autism from other conditions, but needs expansion and qualification to understand daily life).

    I suspect most people at the abler end, (and probably a fair bit up the spectrum) have imagination, and empathy etc., and are pefectly capable of pretend play. But the diagnostic flags up characteristics which suggest otherwise. Are these hard fast rules appropriate in understanding a condition which manifests very variably individually.

    If you have difficulty communicating socially, because you aren't receiving or transmitting body language properly, or have difficulty processing social information quickly enough - it is likely that you will not do well at pretend play involving group interaction.

    That doesn't mean you cannot do pretend play.

    What is the actual measured observed or statistically proven evidence that people with asperger's dont engage in pretend play? I suspect there is little if any.

    If anything its the psychologists and pschiatrists who suppose themselves judge and jury over people with autism, who lack imagination.