Obsessed With Pretend Play

[FayetheAspie]

Most sources say that autistic children do not engage in pretend play. While I did do more common autistic activities such as infodumping about science and other special interests as well as examining wheels on toys trucks and such, I also was obsessed with pretend play. I did not typically want to play the same things as most of my peers but I was almost always pretending.

When I was little I loved airplanes so my swing was an airplane my bicycle was an airplane ect. Later (in my early teens) it was mostly pretending to be MacGyver (original version) and I would carry around duct tape, string, paperclips,and whatever else. I would even make things and repair things MacGyver style. I still had a swing that I would pretend was an airplane too. By that point I had learned to apply aerodynamic principles banking and yawing my "plane."

Later when I was wanting a horse, I would sit over the back of the couch or the porch railing and pretend that it was a horse. I was around 20 yrs. old at that time. Sometimes throughout my time at my retail job, I would pretend that the carts of freight were airplanes. I was watching the original A-Team series along then. I liked the fact that one of the characters was an adult who was obsessed with pretend play like myself and liked airplanes too. I have also always been a bit of a maladaptive daydreamer I guess. Especially during my tweens, teens, and early twenties.

Does anyone else relate to any of this. It is an issue that has occasionally caused me to doubt my ASD because sources stress a lack of pretend play as one of the early signs and in this I have quite the opposite problem. In fact as I got older this probably hindered me forming friendships more than my infodumping about science did. When other girls wanted to discuss shopping and dating, not only would I prefer to discuss science but I also wanted to keep playing like we did when we were much younger.

 

[Misty Avich]

I engaged in pretend play right up until age 14 or 15. It's why I don't get how I got diagnosed so young. I remember a lot of my toys I had and I also have a lot of memories of playing with them. I could play with other children or by myself. I seemed to play imaginative games with other children more but I still shared my toys with them too.
My earliest memory I think was playing with these huge bricks I had, they were like Lego but the size of a real brick, designed for babies and toddlers. I remember building a house with them with my brother and my grandmother.

I also know I had Legos (the typical small Lego) when I was older. I still had difficulty building structures out of Lego, so my mum would build me a Lego house or a Lego school, then when she was finished I would play with the little Lego men in her brilliant structure.

 

[Judge]

I indulged in "pretend play" with others on occasion until around the age of 11 when it abruptly stopped. Though up to that point I also enjoyed amusing myself being entirely alone, which always seemed to disturb my parents. With me never really understanding them in this regard.

In hindsight I also have come to the conclusion that my autistic traits and behaviors came out gradually, until the threshold of the age of 11. Which might explain in part why doctors were never able to properly diagnose me in full. Apart from simply being born too early to take advantage of neurological advances in medicine coming later into my adulthood.

 

[FayetheAspie]

Throughout my later childhood I was often viewed as both intellectually advanced (college level in 10th grade.) and yet way behind emotionally and in interest (still enjoying playing with baby toys at 10 or 11 and still liking pretend play in 20s and still exhibiting childlike responses in conversations and about reactions to holidays and birthdays, ect.) I also still find topics about day to day things like finances to be as boring as I did during childhood. Ironically I was actually very good at saving my money even as a small child and my grandparents would be surprised when I would save up my birthday and Christmas money to buy myself a coat or pair of shoes.

 

[Tom]

Massive Pretend Player here. All my life. My main thing was toy soldiers. On breaks in the military I would stand outside looking at the dirt imaging how I would dig trench networks and strongpoints, where to place the infantry (green army men) and tanks, etc.

 

[jsilver256]

Both my kids engage in pretend play, but the depth and frequency is much more pronounced in the NT kid vs ASD2 kid, as well as amount of cooperativeness. Like, for instance, my NT kid was constantly using cars for their intended purpose, like, always driving it around, enacting scenes, etc. It was his "norm" of playing. Whereas with my youngest, it was more of a "I guess I'll play with this car for 30 seconds before going back to my normal routine" thing.

 

[AprilR]

I was obsessed with pretend play as a Child. Me and my childhood friend used to pretend being witches, fairies, etc. all the time. I found physical games like Ball games both scary and boring.

 

[Judge]

Seems to me this is just another myth of autism that shouldn't be focused on too much. Much like those of us who can look people in the eyes without problems. Some can, some can't.

That's always worried me about medical professionals who may focus on such things first, only to make snap judgments in a diagnostic process.

 

[FayetheAspie]

Thanks to everyone on this thread for verifying that some autistic people do engage in pretend play. The ASD diagnosis fit in so many ways but this part confused me when I would read it online or in the paperwork I was given that was supposed to describe my condition. I had actually wondered if I was autistic off and on since I was about 10 or 11 but then I would hear things like that which convinced me that I couldn't be. At that time, most things I had access to also caused me to think that I couldn't be because I could speak when I was little and felt empathy for others.

 

[Judge]

Massive Pretend Player here. All my life. My main thing was toy soldiers. On breaks in the military I would stand outside looking at the dirt imaging how I would dig trench networks and strongpoints, where to place the infantry (green army men) and tanks, etc.

Good point...lol. I forgot about them. Yeah, I had a lot of fun with those Airfix HO scale plastic military figures. Spent hours positioning them as you describe. Even more so when I discovered Roco Minitanks.

 

[Neri]

I was obsessed with pretend play as a Child. Me and my childhood friend used to pretend being witches, fairies, etc. all the time. I found physical games like Ball games both scary and boring.

I was, pretty obsessed with fairies and witches. I never got to play fairies or witches with anyone though. I did make a witch paper maiche head with witch hat and wear it, though.
I'm still interested in fairies and witches. I still want to dress up as them too and I feel kinda Fae and Witchey.
One of my (probably autistic) musical mates calls me "Neri the Scary Fairy" , affectionately.

 

[AprilR]

I was, pretty obsessed with fairies and witches. I never got to play fairies or witches with anyone though. I did make a witch paper maiche head with witch hat and wear it, though.
I'm still interested in fairies and witches. I still want to dress up as them too and I feel kinda Fae and Witchey.
One of my (probably autistic) musical mates calls me "Neri the Scary Fairy", affectionately.

I used to read and watch a lot of fantasy fiction in the past, i still do in fact! It probably helped with my imagination to create fantastic worlds. I still have some stories and characters in my mind.

The mythology and stories surrounding magic and witches is very interesting!

 

[Kavigant]

When I was a wee lad, I had every sort of anthropomorphic toy (action figures, Mego dolls, toy soldiers, etc.) I would spend hours constructing environments and vehicles for them, staging massive, elaborate dioramas, and playing out dramatic scenarios.
I was obsessed with worlds of fantasy and escapism. In retrospect, I think it might have been in part due to my needing to intensely study human interactions in order to survive in an extremely hostile environment.

 

[Jumpinbare]

As a kid, if I was not actively engaged in reading or schoolwork, I was nearly always creating or reworking story segments in my mind. I was always fascinated with aircraft, but my family was too poor to actually travel by air. When I was in a car or bus, I imagined we were either flying or traveling through outer space. Being the little scientist, I had to imagine accurately, so I pictured the vehicle turn signals (which I couldn't avoid hearing) were the thruster on that side of the vehicle pulsing on/off while the other side stayed thrusting continuously, resulting in a turn toward the pulsing side.
I'm 66 now, and I still imagine flying while I drive, or picturing the process of ignition in each cylinder followed by the pistons pushing the crankshaft, and the transmission and drivetrain delivering rotation to the wheels to linearly push against the road surface. At times, it feels like the whole vehicle is an extension of my body.

 

[FoxLovinPat]

Oh I definitely engaged in pretend play a lot when I was little, in fact I had a rather active imagination. However I never really heard of kids with Autism not really doing pretend play very well until I started doing research into autism a couple of years ago, and hearing that and a few other "autistic traits" that didn't really fit me made me question my diagnosis too, OP, but I eventually just chalked it up as one of those differences between people on the spectrum, as it is a spectrum afterall so ofc not all of us would have the same exact traits.

In fact I was led to believe that my active imagination was another one of my "Aspie gifts" by my father and was a sign that I was "brilliant, but I have learned in recent years that he has been operating off of outdated ideas of Autism this whole time which certainly explains a lot.

But yeah, I'd say that pretend/imaginative play was one of my primary ways of playing when I was younger.. though I also chalked that up to necessity due to me really only having one friend growing up and that one friend inevitably betrayed me and caused me trauma by something he did to me in the interim between middle school and high school.
I then ofc didn't really have any friends from that point on up until my 20s when I started making friends online, so I of course did pretend play more often, at least when I wasn't engaging in my other interests and at least until my father started telling me not to play that way anymore because "You're too old to be young that sorta thing!".
But I did a whole host of different things with my imagination, from playing with my toys and imagining scenarios they're engaging in, to playing with just my imagination and no toys and simply imagining things happening around me. Like after my father built new a playground it would sometimes be a pirate ship, or a castle, or a military base, and the swings would be an appropriate vehicle, or animal, depending on what the playground was in my pretend play, same with the other elements of it like the slide or the zipline, yes my playground had a Zipline. I'd ofc pretend these same things with my childhood friend too, just I'd also pretend these things solo as well when he wasn't around or after we stopped being friends because of what he did.
I also used to have an imaginary friend named Charlie, but he wasn't anything too crazy like Bing-Bong from Inside Out as iirc he was just a regular guy, albeit one with whatever abilities I wanted him to have such as super speed, flight or invisibility, etc. I'd often pretend he was following along right beside us whenever we'd go on long car trips, either by running so fast he could keep up with the car, flying through the sky above or next to us, or swinging throughout the trees and doing parkour along the rooftops.
The cute thing is my little brother decided to adopt Charlie as one of his imaginary friends since he actually had multiple, and after I told him about Charlie he was like "I'll have him be my imaginary friend now!".

And speaking of my little brother.. once I got to a certain age the imaginative play I did was with him, as it was the only time my father wouldn't bat an eye at it since then it was just me being a good older sibling and playing with my little brother. The only time he did scold me for it was then I "Got too into it.", and he's have to be like "Okay tone it down you two, I can understand your little brother acting that way but you shouldn't be because you're too old for that!", I can't think of any examples of this though just remember it happening.
Also once my little brother got to a certain age my father would start scolding me for pretend playing with my little brother still because "He's getting too old for that, stop playing with him like that! You're going to stunt his growth!" (Not the exact phrasing, I think he worded it differently), which honestly confuses me because tbh I didn't know how I was supposed to play with him and spend time with him, though I eventually just resorted to playing video games with him and talking about the franchises we were both interested in such as Star Wars, or a mix of both by talking about video games, but apparently that could be problematic to my father too so I often didn't know what I was meant to do with my little brother as the older sibling at that point.

 

[FayetheAspie]

@FoxLovinPat I remember getting to play MacGyver (original series ) with a then 5 year old cousin (who also liked the series and was as obsessed with pretending to be MacGyver as I was) when I was 14 and most people would have considered me too old to play. It was kinda funny but a little flustrating too because one of my grandparents thanked me for being nice enough to be willing to play like that to keep my little cousin entertained or something like that. In reality I was thrilled to finally be around someone else that wanted to pretend. We had fun alternating who got to be MacGyver and the other one of us would be Pete Thornton or Jack Dalton.

 

[Judge]

@FoxLovinPat I remember getting to play MacGyver (original series ) with a then 5 year old cousin (who also liked the series and was as obsessed with pretending to be MacGyver as I was) when I was 14 and most people would have considered me too old to play. It was kinda funny but a little flustrating too because one of my grandparents thanked me for being nice enough to be willing to play like that to keep my little cousin entertained or something like that. In reality I was thrilled to finally be around someone else that wanted to pretend. We had fun alternating who got to be MacGyver and the other one of us would be Pete Thornton or Jack Dalton.

In my day all the kids on the block walked around with attache cases full of some interesting toys. Some serious pretending going on.

Bond. James Bond.

 

[FayetheAspie]

They actually made cases of toys like that?! Wow!

 

[Judge]

They actually made cases of toys like that?! Wow!

Yep. I get a kick out of thinking about my childhood relative to all the gimmicks toy manufacturers came out with. Where we all had to have them! And most of them didn't last that long in popularity. Then onto to the next toy to pester Mom for...lol.

Nothing funnier though than to see the class president in grade school in a suit and tie, only to lose his spy pistol that popped out onto the floor in class. Priceless.

 

[FoxLovinPat]

@FoxLovinPat I remember getting to play MacGyver (original series ) with a then 5 year old cousin (who also liked the series and was as obsessed with pretending to be MacGyver as I was) when I was 14 and most people would have considered me too old to play. It was kinda funny but a little flustrating too because one of my grandparents thanked me for being nice enough to be willing to play like that to keep my little cousin entertained or something like that. In reality I was thrilled to finally be around someone else that wanted to pretend. We had fun alternating who got to be MacGyver and the other one of us would be Pete Thornton or Jack Dalton.

Yeah same, minus the MacGyver thing as I actually never seen the series, I didn't even know it existed until Mythbusters tackled some of the stuff from it.. basically "Is this kinda jury rigging actually feasible or is it all just "TV show magic"?" and iirc the answer was mixed as some of it was possible while other things he did were not.
But in a way my little brother was just as much of a playmate for me as I was for him, and I remember getting into some of it more than he did heh.
I also taught him/passed on some of my ways of playing to him.. like something I didn't mention in my previous post was that I used to play with my hands and pretend they were different things, like I'd put my index finger and middle finger down to make a "hand person", or put my middle finger out, and my other fingers and my thumb down to make "hand animals", and I'd just lay my hand down flat to make various "hand vehicles", but for Tanks I'd put my other hand on top with just the middle finger sticking out to be the turret. Though I had to stop doing it that way because some kid on my bus tattled on me to the bus driver saying that I was flipping people off when I was either just doing the tank or the animal thing, but the bus driver didn't listen to me and I ended up getting in trouble for something I wasn't even doing. From then on for the tank I started doing 2 fingers to make the barrel instead of just the middle finger, but I didn't have a solution for the "hand animals" because it just wouldn't look right in other configurations.

Oh and I'd also make a fist and then use my thumb like a mouth, which I'd then move up and down to simulate talking as that configuration was someone's head and the thing and index finger was the face. Which I could either draw on my hand to make it more realistic by adding eyes and possibly lips, or even teeth, or just not do that and just imagine them.
When I showed my little brother this he ended up dubbing this, "a mooch".. I dunno where he got that from but from then on whenever we'd do that with our hands they were "mooches". Heck one of his Imaginary friends was a mooch, which I guess was just a giant version of what we'd make with our hands which moved by hoping around.