As a child, how did you play?

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I use to walk a lot too. I went on fairy hunts and looking for unicorns. I'm still convinced that I glimpsed one when I was 12. I have a lifelong obsession with unicorns. And my pawpaw had 8 acres bordering national Forest land, so I had room to hunt. And if I couldn't go out I'd walk in circles in my bedroom. I'd walk in circles for hours.

Don't really remember much anymore.

I do remember not having the slightest interest in dolls, princesses or the colour pink, despite being a female child. The closest I got to having a doll were my two Snoopys, one large and one small. I was obsessed with the Peanuts cartoon strip at the time (I identified with Charlie Brown, the perennial loser). Had a large range of costumes for both Snoopys and I did enjoy dressing them up.

Also, I did have a few Playmobil figures. Quite liked those.

Was never good at imaginative play. I loved to read stories (the Famous Five and Just William were particular favourites) and base my imaginary life around the books I read. No good at thinking anything from scratch though.

Other than that I enjoyed exploring the local neighbourhood and woods; usually on my own. There was a wonderful wilderness at the back of our garden, which I loved. But then gypsies came along and literally turned it into a garbage site; the council had to raze it down to the ground when they finally left.

Can't remember what I did with other kids. Played their games, I suppose. I do remember marbles in the school playground though; it would take off in a big way when summer came along. I liked playing marbles. Probably still would.

By myself. Legos and coloring mostly when not watching TV.

I never played with toys when I was a kid. I like to take electronic and mechanical things apart and see how they worked.

I've seen pictures of myself as a little kid with this pretend kitchenette set. I used to make messes of it and my parents thought it was so funny. I did play a lot more as I got older. I spent time 'playing' with barbies, but I spent most of my time just dressing them than actually playing with them. XD I also played with legos as well and had a talent of building cool things with them. THat was back when they had the big tubs of them. I also loved to pretend I was a nascar racer for some reason. We had this medium sized field next to hour house, and I would race around there on my bike. I also played with matchbox cars and would build roads and buildings for them in the driveway with chalk. :3

Then... when my dad came home from work, he would run them over because I didn't pick them up. Oops. XD

I don't think my imaginative play came until I was about seven or eight... maybe nine. I was very delayed when it came to stuff like this. :x

I liked to build all kinds of houses - thats for sure.

I still remember the wigwam my grandma made for me when I was 4. I liked setting it up and then hiding inside. I didn't play I'm Indian or anything(at least not for long - I could walk covering my mouth and making the Indian sound but I was easily bored by it), I just liked to enter the small area surrounded by cloth.
I was also often hiding under or inside of my bedding, just sitting there.
And I was building houses/tents using beds, sofas, chairs, blankets, pillows etc.
I was doing it also outside. I liked to gather sticks, grass and junks and make huts of them.
My favorite playing area was the empty room under my house balcony, I gathered carpets and some broken furniture there and made it my base.

I was also making houses for my toys. There was a huge drawer under my bed - I divided it using carton pieces covered with clothes and papers so there was a lot of rooms for my toys, all with different floor and wallpaper. I used to spend more time decorating it than actually playing.
I was also making houses of my Legos. I don't recall myself playing with the lego dolls untill I was 13 and started the pretend play of Hogwart with my friends - but I still liked building the Hogwart more than actually playing.

It doesn't mean I didn't play with dolls at all.
As a very little kid (3 years old?) I had a doll as high as me. I remember walking her around, holding her hand and moving her legs so she looked as if she was really walking next to me.
And as 12 year old or so I have had sort of a Barbie doll (not real Barbie though, she looked like a teenager my age, no huge bust or make up). I liked making clothes for her and changing her look (I even cut her hair and painted the hair red since I couldn't stand her being blond) but I was also imagining I am her and giving her adventures. I remember taking her to garden and making her climb the plants as it they were trees, swimming in the ponds, looking into spaces between stones pretending they are caves etc.

I also liked collecting stuffs and beings.
No snail, grasshopper, tadpole, lizard, firefly or butterfly stood a chance against me. I was catching them all, putting them into glass or boxes to take care of them.
I also liked to look for 4 leaf clovers, different kinds of stones and stuffs like that. I remember spending sport classes looking for fossils in school grounds (I found quite a lot of stone snails there) while my classmates were playing ball.

And I was making some really unusual plays for myself.
For example I liked to tangle my whole room using wool, creating a huge, complicated spiderweb that my parents were surprised of because it was really the shape as real spiderweb.
I also liked walking the house with a mirror, pretending I am walking on the ceiling.
And I was often jumping off my balcony (1,2m). Then climbing back and jumping again.
I also loved to run in circles in my living room, there was a round carpet with a border, it was my track. Sometimes I was taking my bike to do so. Biking in circles on the carpet was really fun too.

My play was not NT. I never got pretend play & when I was with others I just kind of stood near them & watched the play instead of actually playing so I was sort of part of the group but not part of it because I wasn't engaging. I played with the same things alot & did the same things with my toys.

One of my earliest memories was of being very little and my mother trying to get me to play a game called "Mr. Mouth". I remember sitting on the floor and getting very frustrated with it as I just could not throw the balls or whatever the items were into the stupid mouth, and I would start crying with frustration. My mother would try to console me, or demonstrate how to do it. I recently came across this game by accident on eBay, and those awful memories came back. I can't believe that game is still around!

When I was a bit older I had a black plastic horse with movable legs and shiny braidable mane & tail - I was so in love with that horse. Of course I used to pretend he was "The Black Stallion" from the movie. I had one or two Barbies but they were just accoutrements for the horse; I didn't care that they didn't have many clothes, but I'd find bits of material (my mother sewed) and make colourful 'blankets' and 'saddle cloths' for that horse! I'd braid his mane & tail with colourful ribbons like a show horse.

I played with that horse for years, and was heartbroken the day one of his legs cracked off at the joint. It wasn't repairable. After that I tried to wrap his leg with cloth as though he was a real horse with a broken leg, but it wasn't the same and he lost his appeal soon after. I guess I could have superglued the leg on, but then it wouldn't have been a movable & flexible leg like the other 3.

At one point I had a friend named Fiona. We played with our collective Barbies but as someone mentioned, it felt like I was just going along with her way of playing. She was more into how many clothes her Barbies had and changing their fashions; I paid attention to my horse!

In wintertime I remember my mother would put on my snow pants and I would go outside for hours and just play in the snow by myself - I don't remember building many snowmen (too much work for a solitary kid!) but I'd build little forts in the snow.

Nearby there was a park beside an overpass of a small road, and in winter we'd go to the park and I'd slide down that hill till I was exhausted from climbing the hill. I don't remember what the park was really called but my mother & I called it "Fossil Hill Park" because in the summer I'd climb up on the hill and I found so many small shell fossils in the dry soil. I'd sit there in the sun for hours looking for fossils. I had a major rock phase - any rock that was an unusual colour or had a hint of a fossil in it fascinated me! Thinking back my poor mother must have been so bored sitting there in that park watching me as I looked at rocks

When I played outside in summer I remember I would be so quiet playing by myself (if where we lived had a yard, we moved alot, not every place had a yard where the landlord didn't mind me playing in it) my mother would have to stick her head out the door every so often to make sure I was still there! She said I'd be so quiet she had to be sure I wasn't kidnapped! Odd how her concerns didn't freak me out - I just kept on sitting and playing in my own little world!

At one place I had the use of the whole big yard. I went through a phase where I pretended to be a horse! I was also into watching alot of showjumping on TV. I would find straight sticks in the yard, and build 'jumps' for myself. Smaller sticks stuck into the dirt, with horizontal bars as 'rails'. I would set up a 'course' in the yard. I would try to memorize a course I had set for myself, as though I was a rider in a competition, and sometimes they were complicated. I'd run myself into exhaustion jumping the courses!

I remember this one day where I had a flash of inspiration (sarcasm!) It dawned on me that I wasn't being realistic - every single 'round' I went clear! (if you don't know showjumping terminology, 'going clear' means not knocking down any fences in a round) I thought I had to be more realistic - I was going to do my 'course' but knock over the last fence. (imaginary crowd goes 'awwwwww'!) I jump the last fence and deliberately don't lift my foot high enough - thinking the stick would just pop off of it's moorings or one of the supporting sticks would come out of the ground. Well I guess I had built that jump more solidly than I thought, and I tripped and fell right down so hard I knocked the wind right out of me. Of course my mother chose that moment to check on me (luckily from her vantage point she couldn't see me) I was petrified that I couldn't answer her - I just laid there on my belly. A minute later I was able to stand up & answer her - I fudged & said I went to the front of the house for a moment. She never noticed anything amiss with me, and just said to stay in the yard. I gave up on knocking rails down after that & just stuck to jumping clean rounds

I didn't play with other kids a whole lot. I didn't care much about sports and had a hard time making friends. So I often played all by myself. If I did play with anyone regularly it was my brother. We had a big collection of Lincoln Logs, a wooden set of train tracks, and Legos (back when they were actual toys and not an entertainment franchise) and we built some cool stuff together. But often I retreated to my room and used my toys to act out my own daydreams. I had dozens of action figures from a bunch of different shows, and I would use them to act out huge battles, sometimes lasting hours. Each one had a different personality and voice. That was a lot of fun.

My stuffed toys were a big thing too. There was Buster Bear, Max the dog, Mr. Fur (another teddy bear), and about six others. Buster was my favorite for a while, but one night I pulled some of his stuffing out and my parents refused to fix him and threw him out instead. I was devastated. The next day, all of the other toys held a funeral in the basement for Buster. Another bear named Brian became my new favorite, and he is still with me to this day. I miss the others, though...

I was obsessed with my dog, and animals, with bike riding, and also making things like crafts, art, and baking.

I didn't get many opportunities to play with other kids, outside of school. I usually played by myself.

My favorites toys were matchbox cars and legos, or anything else you could build things with. I had a weird way of playing with legos because I didn't really like to build typical things with them. I would just stick them on to the flat bottom pieces in single layers to make a layout like the architectural plan to a building. And then I would use the tiniest legos as people and make them walk around inside the building layouts.

I didn't like things that were girly. I hated playing with dolls. The one exception I remember was when I had 2 of those really small baby dolls that were popular for awhile in the 80s. I pretended they were twins and rode them around in my Barbie jeep. It was the idea that they were twins that appealed to me, because I had always wanted to have a twin. But I didn't like to play with a doll like I was taking care of a baby, or to dress one up. I resented feeling like I was having any female gender roles imposed on me by my toys. I had some Barbies but I had a real disdain for them, just left them jumbled up in a pile without any clothes on.

I had a My Little Pony once, which I thought was cute but I never really knew what to do with it. LOL

I liked having big collections of things. I had a lot of stuffed animals. When I played with them, I didn't just play with one or two. I would move the whole collection around with me. But when I was really little I had one that I carried with me everywhere I went, until it was ratty looking. My parents tried to replace it with an identical new one, but I wasn't having it. The old one had to be sewn up and I paced frantically while it was having "surgery" hoping it would be okay.

I had a marble collection, and a collection of pencil erasers in all kinds of shapes.

I liked rambling around in the woods, and playing in springs and creeks and rivers. I would pick up rocks everywhere I went, piling them into my shirt tail if I didn't have a bucket.

I rolled down the grassy slopes in the yard over and over again. I would do that in the evening until it was almost dark outside. I gave names to different parts of the yard.

I liked climbing trees and there was one tree that I would walk my hands out along a low branch and jump off at the end. One time I had a friend over and we were doing that until my dad said we had to stop because it was hurting the tree.

I bounced a ball against the side of the house over the back porch and tried to do it so it would hit every porch step as it bounced on the way down.

I pretended I was a secret agent going on different missions, and I had a box that I pretended was a communication device. It allowed me to contact my fellow agents from anywhere in the world.

Another pretend game I played outside in the yard was that our house was a castle or palace, and I had been banished and had to duck around and hide from the royal guards.

At school I pretended that the playground was Six Flags, and one of my friends played that with me. I drew a map that labeled each thing on the playground as a ride from Six Flags.

Most of the time at recess I wanted to do something really active and imaginative. But by the 3rd or 4th grade, the other girls just wanted to walk around and talk and act snooty.

In gifted class I would make things out of paper and tape all the time. I had a set of all different kinds of tape and scissors I would bring with me to class. I loved origami.

I liked to take things apart with a screwdriver and put them back together.

I liked board games but hardly ever had anyone to play them with me. I would beg my parents to play and sometimes my mom would reluctantly play one with me. I don't know why they kept giving me board games. LOL

When I went to another kid's house I was always surprised that their board games and other toys were missing lots of pieces or scuffed up. I kept all my stuff in perfect condition and rarely lost anything.

I played cards with my grandmother. We played Old Maid a lot. And I would pretend that the front porch swing was a train. I would write up a bunch of tickets to different places, and she would sit at the window and sell them to me. She let me climb on the furniture and turn it upside down. I used to take all the clothes out of the hamper and sit inside it.

At my other grandparents' house, they had cable TV. We didn't have it at home so that was about all I wanted to do there, watch the cable channels. But when my cousins came to visit, we roughhoused, chased each other around, climbed trees.

When I wasn't playing, I read books. I read just about any book I could get my hands on. I checked out tons of books from the county library and the school library. I read the encyclopedia and World Book yearbooks.

Mostly me scrambling around Legos or video games with my brother.

I used to walk a lot too and explore the forest behind my house. I could do that for hours. I liked to go on "adventures" and discover new things and places.
I didn't have any other kids around my house other than my sister. We used to play with barbies and trolls, or re enact movies or shows.
In Kindergarten I remember the "play" area which included a kitchenette set, but don't remember playing there much. I remembering painting a lot, which was an activity by myself.
When I got older, at recess I used to play with the same few friends pretending to be animals living in a home which was actually just the playground equipment. They eventually got "too old" for that and I no longer connected with them.
I think my imaginative play was good, but that I still found it fun even after other kids my age outgrew it.
However, I do remember I was never really a fan of children's tv shows or movies that much. I could watch adult shows/movies as a child and prefer them.

When I was young I played alone a lot. Mostly with my doll and pram.

My mum and dad and a big triple wardrobe and my favourite thing was to take that apart and put it back together. I would do it while they were out and there was a buzz of making sure I had completed it by the time they got back in.

I would take the dog for long long walks talking to myself and working stuff out (nothing special but stuff that distracted me form other people being near me)

I would look at the TV but not actually watch.

The majority of play I had as a child was imaginary, whether it was based on star trek, or based on a video game (the legend of zelda, first edition, nes, gold cartridge, I had two, off topic sorry), I was always playing the 'hero'.

But

I did so alone, because to every other kid, using my imagination to play was 'stupid'. Yes, there was only one person I knew at the time that even tried it, and he only did so once. But despite that fact, I still did play well.
My cousin [who I rarely saw back then] and I used to play star wars stuff all the time, it was mostly figurines and lightsabers (before fx lightsabers), or batman, or even 007 (James Bond) stuff.
As a child, I needed very little in terms of the human element, since I could dream up an entire world all to myself, one that had no rival in wonder, and one in which I was the only one who saw it's marvel. I was lucky in the long run too... I had an imagination, whereas everyone else was stuck in reality.

WOW, I'm AMAZED at how many people on here, liked to do the same things as ME. I guess I really SHOULDN'T be, though!! ! LOL

I join the ranks of people on here who had Barbies, but didn't really play with them. I was interested in fashion, and I just wanted to create "looks" for them. My aunt was always fussing at me because I always left them naked, and she'd dress them all!! I guess when I was done, I was done!! LOL

I also was fascinated with rocks and bugs, and collected both.

Mostly, I just wanted to play with things that would allow me to create or make things: I LOVED Lincoln Logs----that was my all-time favorite!! My babsitter's family had some (we couldn't afford them), and that's all I wanted to do when I was there.

As so many others, I was always taking things apart----transistor radios were my favorites----and putting them back together. Also, my grandfather was a carpenter (back-in-the-day when people actually BUILT houses, and not just assembled pre-fabricated pieces like they do now), and he was always teaching me how to use tools, and build things. I built a really cool airplane, once!! !

I mostly just wanted to do crafts. My mother tried to teach me how to crochet, but it took too long to get to a "thing"----like, you'd crochet for a WEEK, and only have a square, or something----NOW, crocheting is one of my many interests. I liked sewing because you could make an actual something much more quickly. One of my sisters and I used to dream of being fashion designers (I still DO). She could draw people, so we'd plan an outfit and she'd draw it, and I'd make it.

Like others, I didn't really have too many people to play with, when I wasn't in school, so I always played by myself, unless I could cajole my aunt into playing cards or board games with me.

The other thing that I liked to do the most, was ride my bike. I also had woods behind my house (well, my AUNT'S house), and I liked to explore. There was a "boy's farm" (I'm not sure what that was, really----I think it was for orphans, and / or deliquents, or something) in the woods behind my house; but for some reason, apparently, nobody was ever worried I'd be attacked, or something, by one of the "bad boys", and I never was----I never even saw one boy who lived there. It was a real farm, too. They had horses, and one time they broke-out of their paddock, or something, and came storming through our backyard, and I almost got trampled to death----really, I don't know how I didn't----I can still see those horses running past me, in my mind's eye!! !! It's interesting that even after that, I've never been afraid-of, and love, love, LOVE horses!! !

My other favorite toys were 2 cars: a VW "Bug", and a Chevy Nova. I LOVED those cars, and played with them for many, MANY years. I remember that I got the cars for Christmas, and at the same time I got a Chrissie doll (that was the doll that had hair that "grew"). I didn't know what to do with the doll----except swing her around by her hair----but, I knew what to do with those cars!! ! LOL To this DAY, I can't get enough of cars----ANY mode of transportation, really----trains, cars, motorcycles, boats, motorhomes, etc.! !!