How did you "play" as a child? Did you play like t

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I'm looking back at my interactions as a child and I know most of the time I preferred my own company. I spent a lot of time outside in the woods and playing in the grass. I lived on a farm and I spent hours singing to the animals. They were my friends. When I was sad or upset, I sat with them.

"Playing" for me was a whole lot of setting up and not much playing. I would take all my stuffies and dolls and I'd play hospital. First I'd rearrange my entire room so it looked like a hospital. If I needed something, I'd construct it somehow with wood and nails, or something else. I'd spend hours making the perfect "hospital." Then I'd make patient charts, complete with all the information on it. I'd do this for all 100 or so dolls. I'd have to find real things to use too. No pretend phones. I needed a real phone. No pretend typewriter, I needed a real one. So I'd dig these things out, or ask my grandmother so I could use something she had.

There wasn't much talking during all this except to myself. I didn't ever get around to actually "playing" anything. Needless to say when neighborhood kids did dare to try to play with me, which wasn't often.. they were frustrated with me. And I remember being annoyed at them. "Not yet." I would say all the time. I wasn't yet ready to start playing. The set up wasn't complete. Literally hours later, sometimes as many as 8 hours and up.. people would finally start to "play" the way it was meant to be.. and I'd lose interest. I would make some excuse to why I didn't want to play anymore. I'd leave up the "hospital" and my room would stay in perpetual hospital mode for days, sometimes weeks. I'd do more preparing in the days afterwards, with more writing, more charts, more organizing, more making it look really REAL.. but I'd never really play.

I did this with everything. It varied what I played with, and what I set up. Sometimes it was an orphanage, sometimes it was a vetrinary hospital. Sometimes I did use My Little Ponies or Barbies, but only to make elaborate homes from wood and other materials... again.. the set up. I loved to take my ponies outside and construct homes in the grass and dirt. More realistic outside I reasoned. Since they were animals.

I have clearer memories of when I was 15 or so and I was helping my cousins build a road for their cars. I took big huge pieces of white cardboard and taped them together to span the length of the room.. I named it L.A, and we drew roads and houses and colored it. It took days to complete... then they wanted to play with it. "No! Not yet!" And I added on "Pasadena" and it stretched to another room. They started to get annoyed with me. *I added on Alahambra* and it finally went from one end of the house to another. I added an airport off to the side that stretched into the bathroom. I was out of room. Finally I gave in and they "played." I tried to play, for a few minutes anyway. Then I slinked off leaving them to play with each other. They were (and are) still annoyed at me to this day. "Remember that time you made that town for us and you wouldn't PLAY??? OMG that was so aggravating!!"

I had always thought when I had kids I'd be an awesome parent because I loved to play! Until I realized that my "playing" wasn't what other people thought of as play. Kids would say, "Now you pretend that you're ___ and you say ____" and it grated on my every nerve. NO! If YOU want to pretend that YOU pretend that!

I didn't play with others much. I preferred to make my lists and walk in the woods. LOL

Anyone else have this play style? Does it ring any bells or am I just perpetually off in left field? LOL And yes... I am a bit rambly and long winded today. I apologize.

Yeah I played like that too. Mostly, I found others just irritating, I didn't really need them. I was dominant and I wanted it to go my way. I found their way boring.

I played on my own and preferred it that way. My mother hated the fact that I was a "loner" and forced me to play with the other neighbors kids... gosh how I hated that! If at the school playground, I was the oddball playing on the swing tire alone while all of the other kids were playing with each other.

Up until I hit fourth grade I lived in a neighborhood with no other kids, so I mostly played by myself. I liked to play with my construction toys and I would dig elaborate freeway and road patterns in the back yard. I also liked to take things apart, like old radios and electronic items, to try to figure out how they worked. I had a large collection of electronic parts, most that I could not even use but I collected them anyway. As I got older the construction fascination faded (though as an adult it's back full force) and I played with the electronics more, eventually settling into computer programming as a hobby and eventual career.

Dragonfly Dreams, your explanation of your play is really helpful for me to understand the "lack of play" in my sons. I've always wondered what was going on in their heads when they didn't play much.

I genrally played on my own thinking I was a sword weilding hero, or an evil meglomaniac who defeated everyone in the world and ruled it. Because i was interested into video games most of my play incorporated characters that I knew from video games and i used to pretend i was in some sort of game. This is why I felt comfortable with my first ever best friend who was exactly the same as me(a bit more hypereactive then me though) and so together we used to play in one of our favourite video games. So my play was very imaginative, which i guess i know why I like creativity in myself now.

well i don't remember but my mum told me i preffered to be on my own while playing because i was happy to play on my own rather than playing with other people, i was always quiet wen i was little.

I used to constantaly pretend I was an animal. I remember pretending to be dogs with a group of girls in kindergarden or first grade. They wanted to pretend to be dogs that eventualy magicaly turned into people. I quit playing with them as soon as I heard the people part. I wanted to be a dog and a dog only. No surprize I am involed with the furry subculture as an adult. I also used to draw pictures all the time.

I didn't play with other kids.

I prefered playing alone with my own scenarios or reading my comic books. I found other kid's scenarios and games utterly boring.

If I was forced to play in a social setting, I would deliberately screw things up so that I'd be excluded and left alone. I wouldn't even make an effort to fit in. Otherwise I'd spend my time studying the kids playing.

Nobody ever went to my house to ask me to play with them and I was satisfied with that.

I never missed not having any friend.

I haven't changed much as an adult. I still prefer the "pre" to the actual thing. I can't sit down to read a book unless everything in my criteria for "relaxing book reading" is met. A drink, time alone, quiet, house clean, food, no obligations, no interruptions, the right lighting, a comfy place, the best book I've been drooling over, etc.. consequently I haven't read a book in a LONG time. (I have 4 kids.. no quiet here LOL)

Arranging things still makes me happy inside. I no longer "play" like I used to.. but my list making, and organizing play style is now what I do with real issues in adulthood. I have 4 calendars, the computer, my cellphone, and lists and organizing is relaxing to me.

I was like my daughter as a child. Happy to play alone because things always went wrong with others. The more kids the worse it was. But I had this little yearning I guess to play with the neighborhood kids. A tiny bit of longing to be with them. Just like today, I have a yearning to have a "best friend." The kind you see on Hallmark commercials, talking about boys and giggling, and having pillow fights. Alas, I'm almost 30 and I'm guessing that image of "best friend" is a bit outdated. Still, I've never had, so I wonder what its like sometimes.

I see so much of me in my daughter... (she is 5 and diagnosed AS btw)

I sang to the cows. They are the only audience I ever had who came to me when I began singing rather than running away with their hands over their ears

We had the Fisher Price Play Family Village, and we'd open it up and put it on a blackboard and draw in the street lines. Then we'd decide where everyone would live and lay out the furniture (if you could do that - I can't remember) and add in some wooden blocks we had. Then I'd get bored. I don't remember what the others did after that.

Also, we had a bunch of trolls, and at the cottage we found some troll-sized "caves" in some rock and set up a troll village. I can't remember if anyone did some social play with them after that or not. Mostly we enjoyed giving them a place to live. Kind of like our parents building cottages and cabins and new docks etc. My mother builds doll houses complete with electricity now as a hobby. (I think you can get kits.)

With my Barbies I sewed them clothes rather than did social play with them.

I liked everything pertaining to playing house: the broom, mop, dust pan, refrigerator, stove, dishes, apron... The only thing I ever got though was a refrigerator that my brother sat on and destroyed and an easy bake oven that really didn't, in my book, qualify. My father got me those things before abandoning me to my mother. She hated me for my differences, but he favored me.

I never played with others, the only kids in my neighborhood close to my age was my cousin Casey and my cousin Kelly but they were both boring. Casey is still boring but that's besides the point. I learned to play pretend by myself, but I always stopped if someone was watching or I thought someone could hear me, oh and I never played pretend anywhere but my trampoline.

In school I never played with the other kids sometimes I wanted to but I didn't know how it was rough but truth be told most the time I preferred to be left to my thoughts, and theories about the world.

By the way from the age of tree up to now my best friends have always been my pets, they were always there for me listened to me cuddled with me except my male cockatiel that thing tried to eat me alive any chance it had.

Didn't do play.

Went straight to science.