Lack of imagination and creative play?! !!

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Well I can say that my experience is that I've always had a rich imagination but that I completely lack spontaneity. At best I have a heavily delayed spontaneity which is probably why I'm most comfortable with online communication. If necessary I can have a few hours to think of something to say.

I have known many AS AS-type people who had rich imaginations... maybe not in the way everyone thinks of a "rich imagination," but very unique thinking, definitely.

I never played well with other children and can't really play with my kids other than word games.

that's me too. spontaneous and me never collide--just doesn't happen. and i have always struggled playing or having fun around people.

i remember when i was really little (preschool age), i was at church and they had the kids playing musical chairs. no matter how much they tried they couldn't get me to play. i just couldn't force myself to do it. they just thought i was super shy, especially since i didn't go to church much, but now i know different.

that memory really sticks out for me, along with one from college. i was in music methods class and they had everyone form two lines while the music was going, then one by one you had to walk through the two lines and act silly. all i could do was walk straight through and i hated every second of it!! !! !!
april

I just thought of another way I'm defective: I cannot role play. Like at work or school where they ask you to role play, I used to try, and I'd sit there and nothing would come out of my mouth, I just couldn't pretend to be someone else. Now I know I can't do it, and I beg off when I'm in that situation. I'd like a letter from my doctor that says "Do not ask her to role play as she has a disability that prevents her from being able to do it", so as to avoid embarassment.

i hate role-playing too. i've been asked to do it before in counseling and college, and most of the time i just can't do it.

thing is, i'm good at acting and i enjoy that, but i think the difference is that when you are acting, every single line, gesture, and expression is scripted out and rehearsed over and over again. you always know exactly what you need to do. and even if things get screwed up on stage, everybody is working to get things right back to the scripted part of it.

role-playing isn't like that. you are supposed to come up with all these thoughts and feelings and gestures and expressions without any help. i just can't do that and then i feel like a total idgit. i have had so many anxiety attacks over stuff like that.

april

That is SUCH garbage! How many of us write or compose or draw?

"All g eneralizatins are false including this one.

While I was in training class at a call center, they had us each take turns roleplaying a senario between a customer and the agent. I was okay as the agent since they had a script to follow but I couldn't get into being the irate customer. If they allowed me to write down what I was going to say, I could've written a good script but improvization is like pulling teeth with me. Plus I hated being put on the spot, anyway.

I've always been imaginative...I do think this is a common misconception about AS.

I have always had a severely disturbed imagination. Creativity is a second language to me.

It's a stereotype, and a lame one, at that.

My creativity and imagination are wild

More wild than the majority of people i've ever met, and as God as my witness, I've met alot of people.

I clicked on the link to the site that brought on this whole discussion, and here's the entire text of what they have to say on the subject:
"Lack of imagination:
While they often excel at learning facts and figures, people with Asperger syndrome find it hard to think in abstract ways. This can cause problems for children in school where they may have difficulty with certain subjects such as literature or religious studies."

While it certainly is not overly informative, I don't think it's incorrect. I've read this in other books also.

I can relate to this in that sometimes I have such abstract thinking it's astonishing, while in other areas I feel autistic (to me, computer programming is abstract).

There has to be some degree of generalization when it comes to describing how AS affects people otherwise the diagnosis becomes meaningless.

That's not to say anything about this particular criterion. But I don't think it's entirely untrue either.
And I, too, am useless at role-playing.
I'm also almost entirely incapable of being socially spontaneous. This is one of the first things that alerted me to the idea that I might be different from other people. Other people could create conversation out of nothing. I used to think to myself, "do I have no imagination?"

I can be quite happy to spend hours alone. But I don't think introspection is the same as imagination. Sometimes I can dwell on the same words and phrases for several minutes at a time.
Given time, though, I can probably express myself in a "creative" way.
But I wonder how much of this is just - as DrizzleMan says - rearranging my experiences in new ways.

And if DrizzleMan, a neurotypical, can wonder about such things, it makes me wonder what exactly "imagination" is in the first place. Which brings me back to square one, I guess.

Aylissa-I think I lacked imagination and creative play as a child - I never "played", really. After I taught myself to read at 4 that's all I did.

To this day I'm surprised when anything creative emerges from inside.


I can really relate to what you've posted, Aylissa. I did not have an ounce of creativity when I was small, hence the hours spent wandering the farm and "sensing" things and disecting dead birds. My sister taught me to read at age 4 and soon I was reading everything I could get my hands on, How-to manuals, encyclopedias, books on theology. I can't say I began to have an active imagination until I started to go through puberty and my aunt gave me her set of The Chronicles of Narnia books. This may explain why I hated most all cartoons and clowns and other related things. Most childhood stuff I considered "stupid". (my favorite adjective) I enjoy some creative outlets (music) but I'm very picky and limited about music, art, stories, movies, etc.

It is also hard for me to relate to my highly creative, childish kids because I'm so not like them. This doesn't cause any problems though. I relate best to my two older teens and my AS son.

I have tried to write songs and make up tunes but it always turns out to be something that I've reworded or copied in some manner. I can draw, but not without a model.

I don't know what the big deal is about not playing creatively with other children. Is this so absolutely necessary for proper development? I guess it is; only if you put the kid in an environment where this is a prerequisite for social survival; namely, institutional school.

This seems to describe me pretty well. I"ve never felt like I had much of an imagination; I'm not good at visualizing things and when I'm thinking I tend to think in text rather than pictures or sounds. I can't role play or pretend at all either, which is one big reason I go through great lengths to avoid dealing with children. And spontaneous is simply flat out impossible for me. I had a friend who would try to get me out of the house, she's say "let's go somewhere" and all I could say is "ok but where?". Hell even when I've gotten angry and decided to drive around for a while I plan my route ahead of time.

I do remember playing as a child, but I primarily liked to build stuff or take stuff apart. I learned to use a soldering iron rather young...though not very well.

I want to reply with a rant about a certain play therapy game that was inflicted on me as a kid (by a therapist- it wasn't painful/inappropriate but simply monumentally stupid, don't worry) but I want to make a thread about it. My hate of this game cannot be contained properly unless it becomes a thread of its own.

I can do it, but it feels stupid most of the time.



OK, then, I severely lacked that as a child. I was playing imaginative stuff all the time, but it was very rarely with other children.

i can relate to that. at my writer's group, they always talk about how different pieces painted a picture while i didn't see anything at all--in fact all the excess words lost me. when i read i hate it when they spend paragraphs describing something that could be summed up in a word or two. i normally skim those parts.

april

I was always drawn to an element of authenticity in my play-other kids just wanted to make something up, I wanted to get it right-is that lack of imagination? pr imagination enhanced with learning?