His own ideas/thoughts

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Just wondering about 'idea generating' (I think was the term that the speechie used). For father's day all the kids at kinder wrote up a little paragraph about their dads, and DS said that his father does bowling (umm, no he doesn't) and that they play star wars together (again, not true)...I am pretty sure that he heard other kids mention this, or saw it on TV or something. Am just wondering if this is common AS behaviour or if it could be a maturity issue which NT struggle with also..DS is 5 and a half

TIA

My AS daughter who is 4 lives through the tv and stories! Practically everything she says is a direct quote from a book, tv or some one else. It seems like this is how she learns conversation. Sometimes its in context but when shes shouting out the window at a woman walking past that she is a "Barbie girl" because she is wearing a short skirt, its a little inappropriate!

It can be AS related, but lots of NT kids do this sort of thing too, especially at such a young age. My daughter is, in many ways, the exact opposite. I helped out at her school's science week, when she was in P1, just 5yrs. The kids had to make an 'animal' out of a pebble and think of what it liked, etc. Then a few kids were invited up to talk in front of the class about their pebble. The first child said, 'This is John and he likes ice-cream'. The second child said, 'This is David and he likes ice-cream'. All other children said the exact same thing, only difference was the name and the flavour of ice-cream. They were all just copying one another. Then, my daughter got up and started using the pebble as a puppet. She gave it a voice and had much more original things to say about the pebble. All the other kids were entertained and laughing (not at her, just as they would do at a puppet show). However, she was recently diagnosed with Aspergers and has been assessed as having restricted social imagination. I find it pretty confusing actually.

I know its off topic to the OP's question, but I have to pipe in on the social imagination topic.
Just like many of the other symptoms on the autism spectrum, this too has many levels and differences.

Signs of differences in imaginative play:
- does not play pretend with objects, but instead sorts them by properties such as color, size etc. or lines them or or arranges them.
- plays pretend, but each object can only be what it represents with a car being only a car and a block being only a brick, but a brick is never a car and a car is never a boat... things like that. Dinosaurs do not talk, dolls do not have feelings because it is a doll not a baby ... things like that too.
- reenacts complex scenes out with or without toys in excessive detail, and does not like to change the scene from the original.
- plays the same way with a toy over and over and gets upset if someone tries to change it... i.e. you have the red men and I have the blue men, they line up like this, the airplanes fly over first always.

Signs of differences in social imaginative play or joint imaginative play (develops in stages from ages 3 to 8 ):
- does not observe the play of other children and people and try to fit in.
- or always follows what the other person says with no introductions of ideas of their own (they may also only play imaginatively if other people start it)
- their idea Must be used
- they have to win
- there is no or little turn taking in the play, no back and forth, instead it is side-by-side or one directing with the other following.

Signs of differences in team play (again develops in stages from simple games like tag, and simon says to complex games like baseball and board games, to made up games:
- has trouble waiting their turn
- has trouble with winning/losing/good sportsmanship
- does not like rule changes
- trouble with rough play (overreacting to bumps or getting too rough and not reading the other kids "stop" signals)

As with many other signs of ASD, this can vary greatly from child to child. I believe it is not really about imagination, instead it is about being interested in others, being able to read the nonverbal cues of others (facial expression, gestures, intonation) and being able to express ones own ideas using social rules (not being blunt, using facial expressions, using gestures, using intonation) and understanding how social rules change depending on the situation, the people, and the context.

As for the OP's question, I think this is very age appropriate. My children both made up things at that age about home life when they couldn't think of an answer on those types of papers/questions at school. Additionally, my NT daughter would make up things because they were more exciting or sounded better to her. Unfortunately, my son with AS is doing that now at age 11 and it is not age appropriate and most people (my DH and my daughter, and his teachers) do not understand that it is developmentally appropriate (more like a 5 to 7 y.o.)

I don't think it is something to be concerned about, but he may you can address the differences between make-believe (pretend, fiction, wants, desires, opinions) and reality (non-fiction, truth, fact, actuality). IMHO, this can be a long and arduous process for some children.

My son also has issues like this. He just had an appotintment and was asked questions, like, "tell me the name of your friends". That DAY we had spent over 3 hours with good friends of his, they played tag the whole time. He also has a friend that we see at least once a week, for regular playdates, and he talks to us about hiim all the time. He has a few other friends he sees fairly regularly. My son could only come up wth ONE name, and it was a person we hardly ever see, and usually when they are together they dont get along. He thought about it for a long time, he only said her name. He said he couldnt think of any other friends.

My son cannot answer open ended questions. Had the Dr asked him, "what is the name of the friends you played with today?" he would have rattled off thier names, but the question was too open ended. I think this goes along with writing a story about your dad. I bet if they said something more concrete, like what did you do with your dad over the weekend? He probably could answer that.

Another question was, "waht was the last fun thing you did with your family?" Now we had just went to a water park that he LOVED, we also had a family party we went to, and just went to a fun kids play place. My son's answer was, "we play games together." the Doc said waht type of games, my son said all different ones.

It amazes me how his mind works, it really does! The info is all in there, it just has issues coming out!

My son at that age would copy things a lot. For example, in Kinder, they were supposed to write down what they wanted to be when they grew up and my son wrote "teacher." I knew my son did not come up with that and copied his teacher's example on the board. So I explained to him what a job is, and that you would want to pick something you really like because you would be doing it 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week etc. Then I slow-walked him through some questions until he picked something in line with what he likes, so he would learn how to think about these kind of questions.

I do also agree that he might have picked something pretend intentionally because he wanted to do fiction instead of non fiction at that time. The best way to find out what he had in mind is to ask him questions like, "You said your dad bowls. Is that something you wish you could do with him?" Maybe something like, "Would you like to play Star Wars with Daddy?" Then see what he says. He may say something that is unhelpful like, "I don't know." You never know, though, he might say something that indicates his line of thought and I do not think it hurts to get them thinking about how to answer questions, even if they are not able to express their thoughts right away.

See I hada really hard time understanding how my daughters play style fit into ASD becuase she has never been the "line up and/or sort" kind of child. Which I should have realized was silly, because I wasn't either. However what she does do, which is exactly what I did when I was a kid, is put things in their proper place and then basically study the toy. Take for example a doll house. She will put everything in there, in exactly the right place, but then doesn't play act with the people. At all. She never plays with dolls and she even says it's because they are just dolls and therefore not real. She "busted" us on our elf on the shelf when she was 4. She took one look at it and said "Mommy that's just a doll. It's not an elf. It's not going to tell Santa anything. Does it have a camera in it?"


My daughter exactly.


Also my daughter. She even has issues with group lessons because she percieves that there is a winner and a loser or sorts. When this happens, she often refuses to participate.



My daughter also has a hard time answering typical questions. Every day when I pick her up I ask her the expected questions and it's a rare day that she bothers answering me at all and even a more rare day when she gives me an accurate answer. For example, every day I ask what she had for lunch. A good portion of the time I get no answer to this question. When she does answer, 90% of the time she claims they didn't give her lunch. The other 10% she starts talking about something else like a movie she likes or something. I have no idea what she says about us, but I have to guess that if she can't communicate to me what she had for lunch on a given day that it's equally difficult to wrestle an answer out of her on what fun things we do as a family. It's funny because if you bring up safety, she can spout off 100 safety facts.