This is what play looks like

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The types of play our kids engage in are as unique as they are.

I get annoyed at the mainstream insistence that certain types of play are "red flags" for ASD and are somehow "bad". I think lining up toys and organizing toys have many pre-academic and understanding-the-world-around-you benefits.

Share some pictures of your kids' play.

Here are some of my NT daughters lining up and organizational play:
(NT kids can do it too!)





My AS son doesn't play with toys hardly ever. He does like to attach strings to things and swing them around. Or spin... I'll catch a photo when I can.

I can see it all now. A Christian (or Jewish) child decides to reenact his favorite part of Genesis. So he makes a paper boat to represent Noah's Ark, and lines up small plastic animals in front of it, in pairs, like the Bible/Torah says. Suddenly, "experts" (notice the quotes) start screaming: "Autistic! Autistic!" The parents panic, and forcefully rearrange the animals, causing the child to be ashamed of showing his religion. <sarcasm>Ahh, but at least we know how to detect ASD.</sarcasm>

What the "experts" don't realize is that a child on the spectrum would have used a shoebox, painted in the same shade of brown as wood. Because the Ark was actually shaped like a big box, and looked nothing like a modern-day boat. The shipbuilding technology in Noah's lifetime wasn't that advanced yet.

I did not consider the way my AS kid played with toys to be a red flag for anything until he was diagnosed and the doc told me it was. He did use to line up his cars a lot, but we live above a busy street where that would be the way he saw cars going by. He also used to lie down and roll his trains in a back and forth motion for long periods of time and focused intently while doing so, and I was told that this was a red flag. He did use to flip ride on toys over and spin the wheels a lot, but so did my son who is not AS. He does not really line things up now, but likes to put his favorite things in labeled shoe boxes. One thing that bothers me when people talk about AS kids not playing in a typical fashion, is when they are described as having no imagination. My son has a wild imagination and makes up really funny jokes all the time. Plus, so many AS kids have a lot of anxiety, and (in my opinion) a lot of anxiety is fueled by imagination.

When he first started doing this, I was so excited because it looks imaginative to me and like a glimpse into his mind. But his therapists think it is just stimming, meaningless, non-imaginative. . I guess we will agree to disagree...



( I didn't manage to get a better picture. Maybe I'll get a better one later, but I wanted to post because I like this thread idea).

I love that picture! You can definitely tell something interesting is going on in his brain there. I love the circle.

Found another from NT daughter:



My AS son hasn't played with any toys all day today, but he has lugged around a really heavy bucket of books all.day.long. Even up stairs!

Because one must never be more than a foot away from one's top 12 favorite books!

Welcome to Holland- For sure there is imagination going on there!! No way could the way they are positioned to be just by chance.