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jayjay

imagination

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I wonder if anyone can help me our son who has a diagnosis of PDD-NOS all of a sudden seems to have imagination, he has never shown signs or understood things that he cant seebut in the last few weeks this has changed. There is a show on telly called Upside Down show and on this show you have to press a pretend remote control (these are the instructions from the presenters) and the presenters pretend to pull a rope and pretend to fall over nothing that can be seen, the whole show is based on pretending and it has our son in fits of laughter over there antics :wub: which is lovely but got me thinking, as i have heard so many times that kids on the spectrum dont have imagination. Just wondered if anyone had any views on this.

Thanks :):)

Jayne xx

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My son has an imagination, but it is a little different from other childrens, quite rigid, and he blurs fantasy into reality a lot. He also had an imaginary shark, which he carried around school for over a year, he only visits occasionally now which I am pleased about. He did get an ASD diagnosis and the CP was aware of this. A lot of children on the spectrum have an imagination.

Edited by lil_me

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Our dd also has an imagination, but if you watch her play long enough you will realise she tends to repeat what she's playing over and over. I remember during one of her appointments, she was being observed by the EP, SALT, Pead and a teacher. She had them all acting out Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, whilst she did all the voices for Goldilocks and each of the bears. The SALT remarked how wonderful it was, and then the EP pointed out that our dd was repeating the same story/dialogue/actions over and over and did not want to be diverted from it.

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hello dd6 dx aspergers has 2 cats and 6 kittens she takes evey were she gets up set if we dont feed them we got to becare full that we dont sit on them we got to ask were they are or she will cry all night all the best jill

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My understanding is that autistic children can have imagination but that their imagination is different to that of NT children

 

Adam is developing imagination but it is not that of a typical four year old. He tends to re-enact episodes from TV programmes word for word, currently Come Outside so I hear 'Pippin, time to fly' a fair deal :wacko: He can get quite lost in this play and although he will let me join in I have to follow the 'script'! We play doctrs together with his doctors kit which is fun but he uses the same phrases every time we play it and he's lifted them from an episode of Razzledazzle where a little girl is playing doctors with his mum. His does let me change the play in small ways though so today we examined his dolly. TV may rot brains but it's certainly helped my son's imagination and given him a framework which to hang imaginary play on :clap:

 

He will play with his car and planes now pushing them around talking to himself though often it is still Pippin related play :rolleyes: He'll join in imaginary games too with his cousin which she directs even if he doesn't quite understand what exactly is going on!

 

He likes slapstick humour which I think again is typical of children on the spectrum and maybe in part that is why your son enjoyed that particular programme

 

Lx

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Char has a very rigid and copy like imagination.He does imagin things but they do tend to be what my dd has been playing or doing.If he has a new teddy he always calls it little Char.

 

like others have said I think most AS ASD children have less of an imagination or a different imagination to peers there age

 

 

Lisa

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I think this is that old 'chestnut' from the original definition of the Triad of Impairments, citing 'imagination' as one of them.

 

The more up-to-date terms increasingly being used instead of 'imagination' are either problems with 'flexible thinking' or problems with 'theory of mind', which IMO explains things better.

 

I like the 'flexible thinking' term best, as I think that gives a much better understanding of what is meant by these difficulties.

 

Bid :bat:

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when my son was a pre-schooler we had a period of months when he lived out a fireman sam fantasy.He no longer referred to any of his family , but called them characters from fireman sam, he also insisted on wearing a fire man sam outfit.I was known as fireman sam and his dad elvis cridlington :lol: .........he appeared to be using his imagination and he was.......but not how you would have expected.

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I think this is that old 'chestnut' from the original definition of the Triad of Impairments, citing 'imagination' as one of them.

 

The more up-to-date terms increasingly being used instead of 'imagination' are either problems with 'flexible thinking' or problems with 'theory of mind', which IMO explains things better.

 

I like the 'flexible thinking' term best, as I think that gives a much better understanding of what is meant by these difficulties.

 

Bid :bat:

the triad of impairments thing threw me for a long time, i thought well, he can play with lego and make up wonderful spaceships and cars, flexible thinking is a much better way of describing it.

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Bah! They now say we don't have 'flexible thinking' because of that nerd factor we have where we appreciate continuity while others discard it when inconvenient.

 

In X-Men, Nightcrawler is a mutant who has the power to teleport but like most mutants he has a restriction on his power: he has to see where he's going to re-appear otherwise he might end up appearing inside a wall which will instantly kill him.

 

In one issue of the X-Men comics, Nightcrawler has to teleport somewhere he can't see and another mutant reminds him that there is a risk that he might appear inside a wall. He replies "Oh I don't have that problem anymore."

 

!!!??!!?!!!!!

 

To me and I think many others who crave continuity, this is absolutely absurd that such an important feature can be just side-stepped when its inconvenient. Some would say that as the story is fictional, there isn't any reason why a writer can't decide to change something but I find continuity-abuse to be horrible and make a story not worth being interested in anymore. This would be interpreted as me lacking flexible thinking.

 

Other things that have really irritated me that supposedly mean I'm an inflexible thinker:

 

In the Spider-Man films he now shoots the web from glands on his fore-arms whilst in the comic he invented the web himself and made bracers that sprayed it and they cost him a lot of money to keep making which is why he's so poor all the time. This was changed for convenience.

 

Blade(yet another Marvel character) was never a vampire in the comic.

 

The laws of time that have been established already in the current two Doctor Who series have been contradicted at least three times now.

 

In the Grimm brothers original version of Goldilocks and the three bears, the bears kill her. The one I was taught in school said she ran all the way home. Now it got changed again and kids are told that little bear asked for her to stay and they all ate porridge together.

 

In the first Star Wars film, Luke Skywalker is given his father's lightsabre. This lightsabre is the only white lightsabre ever seen. Later we see Obi-Wan has a blue lightsabre and Darth Vader a red. In the Empire Strikes Back, Luke's lightsabre has miraculously turned into a blue one.

 

In the Empire Strikes Back, Obi-Wan informs us he was taught by Yoda and in Return of the Jedi says that part of the reason why Darth Vader turned evil was because Obi-Wan thought he could teach him aswell as Yoda, implying that Yoda was originally meant to be Anakin Skywalker's teacher. In the new trilogy we see that Obi-Wan is not taught by Yoda and Yoda apparently teaches five year olds in groups. These five year olds happen to be brandishing very dangerous lightsabres which they could not have possibly made themselves.

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Lucas, they're not saying people on the spectrum can't do 'flexible thinking', but that there are difficulties with it.

 

I know that I do have problems with 'flexible thinking'.

 

It doesn't mean that I can't think 'flexibly', but I have huge problems doing so quickly or spontaneously...I have to have time to work things out, otherwise my head seizes up completely and then I start panicking :ph34r:

 

Bid :bat:

Edited by bid

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Maybe Yoda had taught Obi-Wan when he was very young and then Qui-Gon Jinn continued the training. After all, how many teachers have you had? :)

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Talking about continuity and flexible thinking. I have a great memory for detail and when I'm reading something like a novel I spot all the mistakes, not just in typos but in errors in the details of characters and their backgrounds etc. I'm assuming that the author has got carried away with his/her writing to get the book finished and forgot some of the details that they mentioned in earlier chapters. Then whoever has proof read the manuscript hasn't noticed them either and this irritates the hell out of me. For me when I'm reading when I spot these stupid errors I can't enjoy the book anymore, the life has gone out of the story.

 

Lauren

 

Going back to the original topic of this post with my boys they have a mixture; William has a fab imagination but shows difficulties with flexible thinking and theory of mind; Luke is very flexible with his thinking and has some theory of mind but absolute no imagination.

Edited by Lauren

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It simply broke continuity too many times Bullet. Yoda first tells Qui-Gon in The Phantom Menace that as he already has an apprentice, he can't take on another until Obi-Wan's training is finished with him. When all the old fans complained on the web that Obi-Wan said he was taught by Yoda and there was no mention of Qui-Gon in the old trilogy, George Lucas tried some damage control by showing Yoda teaching lots of new recruits despite having said in the film before that Jedi are taught from master to apprentice.

 

According to the books this is done to prevent Jedi from competing with each other in classes because that is how the Sith got created. When the Sith stopped fighting each other the most powerful Darth Bane decided that from then on there would only ever be two Sith in existence at a time- master and apprentice. The Jedi had changed their methods accordingly after defeating the Sith for the first time round to minimise the chance of them returning. George Lucas forgets what he himself writes.

 

Bid, it doesn't matter wether anyone is saying can't or 'has difficulties', it's simply an unsupported assumption. This is an area that is under-investigated and over-simplified so they can't draw any conclusions like that from it.

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Ds1 has got no, or very little imagination. I say very little because sometimes he'll put a hat on our heads in exactly the same manner each time which might be him pretending and a couple of times he's put a toy phone to his ear said "hello, byebye" very quickly and then put it down, but he definitely doesn't go in for imaginative play. He prefers cause and effect toys and peg puzzles and putting his blocks into rectangles on the floor.

My imagination is very good, but I can't imagine myself as a different person or think how that person might feel. It probably explains why I like computer games and books that are plot driven.

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Another note on imagination: it is a cognitive thing and seeing as no one is a mind-reader it is impossible to know what someone else is imagining unless they give signs of it.

 

If I was having a day-dream about the big giant boot with teeth chasing people, who would know?

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That's a good point Lucas. I can remember being about 8 and I had this toy hippo and I used to sit for ages examining the tail which was split into three sections. At least, to the outsider that's what it looked like. I was actually pretending the three tail sections were Cinderella and her stepsisters :D.

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[

 

 

It doesn't mean that I can't think 'flexibly', but I have huge problems doing so quickly or spontaneously...I have to have time to work things out, otherwise my head seizes up completely and then I start panicking

 

I am exactly like this and know what you mean when you say your head seizes up. It is a dreadful disadvantage in the work situation or when quick-wittedness is required. Given time and space to think I am pretty good. Regarding imagination, I don't have one and can relate to people describing their childrens' play as being based on situations and stories they know. I have always been like that.

 

Yoyo

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That's a good point Lucas. I can remember being about 8 and I had this toy hippo and I used to sit for ages examining the tail which was split into three sections. At least, to the outsider that's what it looked like. I was actually pretending the three tail sections were Cinderella and her stepsisters .

 

That is how my imagination works too. People may think it quite odd but there is that thing parents do with their kids toes "This little piggy went to market.." where of course toes don't resemble pigs at all.

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thank you to everyone who replied it makes alot more sense when its explained to you. Lucas a very good point about people not knowing what other people are thinking or daydreaming about, i never thought about it like that. :wub:

jayne xx

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