imaginative play

[Sally44]

I've been reading a book recently, and the parent describes how if she gave a large cardboard box to her son that he would be unable to play with it due to a lack of imagination. She said he could not pretend it was a rocket, or a ship or a car etc.

 

Well that got me thinking because my son could and does do all of those things. I'm not saying his play is anything near what you would see of other NT children. But he can use things to represent other things.

 

That got me thinking further about whether the severity in imagination is linked to the level of routine or rigid thinking in each individual.

[KezT]

My son has pretty much no imaginative play ability. He certainly wouldn't play with a card board box About 6 months ago he finally started playing with toy cars/aeroplanes etc making them drive/fly round his room for several minutes. That was the first example I have ever seen of him imagining something is other than it actualy is - he is 10 years old.

 

He won't dress up, won't join in with his sisters when they play "mummy and daddy" and although he reads fiction, he can't tell me the plot, so I'm guesing he just reads the words! he can not follow film plots either....

 

but he is not the most routine obsessed ASD either. I can change plans and do things diferently with just a little explanation (unless he's already stressed out anyway), and he only shows a few `OCD signs.....

[Lynden]

L is 7, but also has additional learning difficulties. He will do 'led' imaginative play - ie if we all sit together with a tea set he will pretend to drink or feed a teddy, but he wont do it independently.

 

Lynne

[coolblue]

When my son was little, he and one of our cats used to fight over cardboard boxes. They both wanted to sit in them. No idea whether he was playing imaginatively or not, he wasn't very verbal at the time, but he and the cat used to get very annoyed with each other.

 

cb

[Boy]

I liked boxes when I was little, but just to climb inside. I would struggle to turn certain items into different items, and would get frustrated that an item wasn't a close enough match if trying to play pretend. I would often play with toy animals/dinosaurs, though, and as well as lining up toy cars I would make roads when I could (I'd use flat books to create the curbs) and make the cars go down the road and park up on the pavement (often with two wheels off as I was used to people parking like that a lot when I was little).

 

I also liked pretending to be a dog, and my mum would put down a bowl of lemonade for me to drink. Much of my pretend play was role play based on cartoons or films I liked.

 

The boy I work with (non-verbal, very severe) will pretend to make tea and things like that, or will cook one item and pretend it's another food (plastic chips became chocolate cake, for example). He has a new baby brother and will also use one of those rubbery sensory toys to pretend he is looking after a baby (holding it like you would a baby, putting it under the tap to wash it and using a tissue paper or teatowels to dry it, kissing it and putting it to bed. He also got me to hold up a skeleton arm so that he could rest the 'baby' in it. His imaginary play seems to involve a lot of mimicing.

[trekster]

i like this thread i would say yes the less ability to understand people the more strict they are with routines.

i happen to be unable to ask for "exceptions to social conventions" at the time they are taught to me. This causes

problems later on when i dont recognise an exception.

[Sally44]

I liked boxes when I was little, but just to climb inside. I would struggle to turn certain items into different items, and would get frustrated that an item wasn't a close enough match if trying to play pretend. I would often play with toy animals/dinosaurs, though, and as well as lining up toy cars I would make roads when I could (I'd use flat books to create the curbs) and make the cars go down the road and park up on the pavement (often with two wheels off as I was used to people parking like that a lot when I was little).

 

I also liked pretending to be a dog, and my mum would put down a bowl of lemonade for me to drink. Much of my pretend play was role play based on cartoons or films I liked.

 

The boy I work with (non-verbal, very severe) will pretend to make tea and things like that, or will cook one item and pretend it's another food (plastic chips became chocolate cake, for example). He has a new baby brother and will also use one of those rubbery sensory toys to pretend he is looking after a baby (holding it like you would a baby, putting it under the tap to wash it and using a tissue paper or teatowels to dry it, kissing it and putting it to bed. He also got me to hold up a skeleton arm so that he could rest the 'baby' in it. His imaginary play seems to involve a lot of mimicing.

 

I can see that alot of my sons play is taken from TV or films. But I can see that he does extend it now beyond just repeating verbatim what he has seen and heard. He is also quite passive. So he might not 'come up with the idea' for a game, but would go along with spontaneous imaginative play to a certain degree and to the extent that he could cope with it. But he may then become quite rigid and not be flexible.

 

He actually won a competition at cubs for the best 'new game' that the cubs could play! He has said he didn't get the idea from somewhere else, he made it up. And he is very honest about stuff like that. If he had seen it somewhere he would say so. It was really a quite complicated game involving cubs camping on one side of a river and a bear in a cave on the other side. The bear was stealing things from the cubs camp at night and taking them to his cave. The cubs had to try to get their stuff back from the bear without waking him up. This is all stuff he came up with on his own. Yet he struggles to hold a two way conversation or 'ask questions' to gain information.

[Sammysnake]

My daughter has incredible detail in imaginitive play - she's always coming up with games, stories and more recently jokes (she's 10 now). When she was very young the Health Visitor commented that she was remarkably advanced for her age in her use of imagination and from very small she could imagine an objedct to be something completely different, even if it wasn't related in any way to the thing she imagined it to be. She's always dressed up as different animals or characters, often making masks and costumes for herself and behaving in character. She does clearly know the difference between reality and imagination too though and also understands or at least trusts my judgement on when the play and costumes are appropriate and when they are not.

[justine1]

Sam is not very imaginative, they do lots of things to help this at his school and when they push he can be creative but it doesnt last long, its almost like it takes all his energy cause he eventually snaps and points out the reality.

 

Dan on the other hand, is the most imaginative of all my boys, when my mum visited last year she really was amazed at how imaginative he is. However he cannot invite people into that, well he is trying a bit more each day. The other problem is once he has accepted something in his imagination it becomes real to him. Its very hard to convince him otherwise.

 

I dont know but both my ASD boys over exaggerate things and make up stories/or lie, I dont if that counts as imagination.

[Sally44]

My son has always liked dressing up.

Up until a couple of years ago, when he dressed up, he wanted to renact something already seen and he would 'direct' anyone else joining in so that they said and did a replica of what he had seen. Again he has moved on from that and can invent story lines and join in with other children to some extent (but his story line is the one he tries to stick to, again I think that although it is spontaneous he still knows the outcome of his spontaneous play, whereas following another child is just too open ended for him.

His teacher has said that he is brilliant at role play and is a good actor.

 

He also has theory of mind - but I don't know to what extent. I think that if a child can lie, and how good they are at it, shows that there is some ToM. If it is a totally unconvincing lie, then maybe their ToM is quite poor.

 

My son also likes to tell jokes and likes to make people laugh. But he often does not really know what it is about the joke that makes it funny, or he might tell me something and say "that was a joke - was it funny?"