Telling reality from fiction during childhood

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I still think Santa Claus is a real person

Please don't say this thread is about NT kids can realise how films work, and Aspie kids never do until a certain age!
And please don't say that NT kids don't believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy, and Aspie kids do!

Please! It's too exasperating! Every single kid I've ever known believes in Father Christmas. When my NT brother was 4, he was once being a bit naughty and demanding in the shops, and was crying, and a ladie on the till in one of the shops said, ''if you don't be a good little boy, Father Christmas won't be coming to you. He only goes to good little boys.'' And my brother stopped crying and demanding straight away, and looked up with an excited but curious face.

Small NT children don't have an adult mind. They believe anything you say, they mimic different behaviours, and all the while they are learning. Just like I was.

I think this thread is more about the AS tendancy to take things at face value. I know, as a kid, I never assumed people were lying to me - either maliciously or in fun - and I ended up finding out the hard way. I think many kids learn about 'THE SECRET' of Santa from their siblings and peers, and still others just pick up on the 'wink,wink,nudge,nudge' vibe from their parents. I think maybe AS kids might have the tendancy to miss those silent signals that NT kids may (or may not) pick up on as well.

This thread is about none of these things and I am honestly confused how you came to this conclusion.

This thread was specifically started with information about my experiences and my tendency to take fiction literally and at face value until a much later age than is typical for most children (in kfisherx's thread I linked in the first post I said it went on until high school, which is true), and I asked if anyone else could relate - and several people did, so they too talked about particular things, and one or two said they were the opposite.

I found this interesting because of the paragraph in that paper that kfisherx linked about a possible set of classifications for autistic people, which put precisely the trait I was talking about at a level called "challenged social communicator," which makes it clear that having difficulty telling fiction from reality at a later age is a developmental delay, and thus not typical to neurotypical children, who go through that phase faster, and sometimes earlier.

I also found it interesting because of the study that linked schizotypal traits to autistic children and adolescents. Schizotypal traits, incidentally, include:



Does this make more sense now?



Yes, a lot of this. Thank you.

I was nine when my friend told me Santa wasn't real and I felt relieved because it explained everything. Why my friend got The Littler Mermaid Aquarium, why my brother's friend got Sonic the hedgehog doll when we were the ones who asked for them. It also explained why I didn't get everything I wanted for Christmas and why Santa sometimes used our wrapping paper for our presents. I also figured out the Easter bunny couldn't be real either nor the tooth fairy if Santa wasn't real. Of course mom told me to not tell my brothers or they be very upset and I'd get into trouble. She also told me to not ever tell other kids or they would get very upset.

Was this the NT way I did it or the aspie way since it had to be spelled out to me about Santa and I just figured out the rest?

I think I was starting to suspect when I was told, but I didn't have sufficient evidence. It did make sense at that point.

I think all kids learn the same way. I stopped believing in Father Christmas around the age of 9, and so did most other children I knew. I honestly cannot remember how I found out he wasn't real. I think I just found out gradually, until one Christmas nobody mentioned him anymore, so I just sort of assumed he wasn't real and ''outgrew'' the fantasy.

All small kids believe in Father Christmas. My ex-boyfriend has 2 kids, and when I slept round his about 2 Christmases ago, his kids were only 4 and 6, and they were SO excited, and just wouldn't stop talking about Father Christmas. I had to help my boyfriend get them into bed early, and they fell asleep pretty quick because we told them that they must be asleep before Father Christmas comes. Then after a few romantic moments with my boyfriend, we crept out and pulled all the kid's presents from under the bed and placed them under the Christmas tree in the lounge. Then we crept back to bed, and the kids woke up at about half 6 in the morning, jumping on our bed and excitedly yelling, ''Father Christmas has been! Father Christmas has been!''

Parents should cherish these moments, because all kids believe in him. Christmas is magical for all children.

Hmm, did any of you need to be explicitly told? Did you realize it or did someone have to say, "Oh, by the way, he's not real?" before you accepted that conclusion?



Well, all small children raised in households that celebrate Christmas in such a way as to position Santa Claus or Father Christmas or any other incarnation (of which there are many) as the gift provider on Christmas morning. Indeed, not all households that celebrate Christmas teach their children that these mythical entities are real and really provide presents. Not all households even celebrate Christmas and have their own holidays to observe (such as Hanukkah) So, "all small kids" is clearly not the case. Yes, I am being pedantic. I can't seem to give it up.

Anyway, just because a neurotypical child and an autistic child do the same thing, it does not mean they do it in the same way at the same age. That's what "developmental disability" means - that autistic children are delayed in some things, and the delays are not consistent from one autistic person to the next.

I don't know how anyone, even a small kid (until we are talking about someone REALLY young, not older than like 3), could have any problems with telling reality from fiction - I never did. I could always draw a line between reality and which was not real but a mere figment of someone's imagination.

Because I took it literally. It really was that simple.

It wasn't like delusions. If someone explained or demonstrated how it wasn't real, then I could accept that. And eventually the weight of explanation made it clear that fiction was fiction and I didn't do it anymore.

I was in on the Santa secret by the age of 7. I was one of those problem/puzzle solving kids - I just see connections and make logical jumps in interrelatedness. I put together the wrapping paper from mom's closet, the quick trips upstairs after a shopping trip and the Santa list to be submitted before Black Friday. I never told my parents though. They persisted until I was 10. I think my dad asked me if I 'knew' about Santa. I said 'It's okay Dad. I know." I didn't want to hurt their feelings by letting them know I figured it out.

@Verdandi - belief in psychic phenomena and magical thinking exist well outside of mental disorders. It is actually laughable when they use it in this context. Religious experiences fall in the realm of psychic phenomena. Magical thinking is otherwise known as creativity, or, depending on who you talk to, could also represent prayer. Asking the imaginary man in the sky to grant your wishes... most of the world is religious in some manner with NO hard facts to support their beliefs yet no one questions the mental health of the majority of the world. I believe in psychic phenomena - man does NOT understand the brain half as well as he thinks he does. I think there is much more at work in the natural world than we are currently capable of understanding. Magical thinking is simply a belief in something that has no proven basis in fact. Thank god for that - otherwise science wouldn't exist... the magical belief that there is an invisible force that pulls apples off of trees and keeps everything in the world from floating off into the sky... In other words - they used a really POOR example.

@league_girl - honestly, I don't beleive that there is a huge difference in AS vs. NT vs. ASD thinking in the Santa effect. There are huge variables in all kids and much of it depends on their family atmosphere. Your version sounds just as 'normal' as any other to me.

@joe90 - I actually have pagan friends who refuse to 'lie' to their kids. they will not make up a mythical fat man in a red suit, an anthropomorphic human sized rabbit or an enamel obssessed fairy. Personally, I feel this just sucks the fun right out of a childhood. I don't think a good story or fairytale is lying to kids as long as it is, in someway, presented as the analogies they are meant as. It is tradition and I feel it is important to maintain a connection to that which has come before. Storytelling is innate to our species and, perhaps with a bit of bias, I think AS affords some of those within its ranks with a heightened connection to this aspect of human nature. Somehow suggesting that that trait is a 'fault' feels completely off base.

I'm sorry? The literature on schizotypal personality disorder goes into greater detail on this. I do not know anyone diagnosed with schizotypal, but I know someone who was bipolar and one of the signs of his pyschosis during his manic phases was his belief in telepathy and the ability to control other people's minds. Another I knew had some fairly deeply religious experiences during his manic phases, and the way he described them was distinct from what most people describe when they discuss their own religious experiences.

Anyway, my point was that it reflects belief in particular kinds of things that are not true, and perhaps in a way that the people around them do not. That is, it is talking about a symptom that is severe enough to be impairing, which does not typically apply to your examples.

I am not sure what you're trying to argue here.

Also, to add, to be diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, one needs three or four of the following traits, and just being religious or believing in psychic powers is not sufficient to meet the full criteria:

The examples I can find are people who to some extent arrange their lives entirely around their beliefs in a way that affects them pervasively, and impacts their functioning. Further, they have at least 2-3 of the other traits listed and probably more.

The magical thinking symptom specifies "inconsistent with subcultural norms," which is to say that someone with schizotypal may be religious, but the way they approach and believe in that religion is probably fairly literal, idiosyncratic, and affects them in numerous ways. It is also very likely to be unlike how most other adherents of that religion approach it, because they do not have the same experience of it as the schizotypal.

Not arguing - just commenting. That sort of delusional thinking or hallucination is a much different animal than 'magical thinking' or 'belief in the paranormal'. I think the differentiation needs to be clearer.

Okay, thank you.

Whenever I read a symptom, whatever it's called, I interpret it as "intense enough to cause frequent problems with daily functioning," so I did not interpret it as typical magical thinking such as "pray for so-and-so, who is in the hospital with appendicitis," but more like "Angels come down from Heaven to talk to me, and have given me a secret name. They also warned me that my neighbors are demons and plotting against me." Okay, that's sort of two symptoms, but still.

I think that taking fiction as literally true could be mistaken for this kind of thinking, but the difference is that with experience it goes away because it is not inherent to one's neurology or personality, but a side-effect of how one interprets information.

Also, I should say that sometimes when I say "argue" as I did in response to your post, I mean "what is the point you're making?" not "why are you trying to argue with me?" It's probably not a good word because of the other meaning and I try not to use it that way, but hard to break habits.

I think the key in the schizotypal description of the magical beliefs is "not consistent with subcultural norms". While it is a subcultural norm to believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, it is not a subcultural norm for an individual to believe they are Jesus. However, I would venture to guess that schizotypal propensity is part of the reason people have "religious type experiences".

And schizotypal behavior may result from brain differences among people, as those correlations are found among schizophrenics, but I'm not sure if they have done studies specific to people that show schizotypal behavior and beliefs.

And finally, like studies on oversensitive mirror neurons, some of the schizotypal behavior could be associated with brain structure differences such as that, and these people may be more tuned into actual physical phenomenon that others might consider, supernatural, or as they say "woo woo"; because others might not have the structural differences in the brain to enable them to experience the phenomenon.

I can't remember the specific post; maybe someone else can. But there was a personality test that measured schizotypal traits among other traits, that people took here. The majority of them scored high on schizotypal traits. I wasn't expecting to see that, because we always hear autistic people are so logical and in touch with reality; but maybe they just don't share everything they perceive, learn to block it out, or perhaps it just fades away in some.

It is no wonder that so many Autistic people in the past were misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, if these studies are correct.