Pretend play not possible for kids with asperger?

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I spent my childhood in an elaborate imaginary world. No pretend play my ass.

Depends.
When I was a child I loved pretending to be an animal, and I made a lot of animal sounds while running around pretending to be a wolf, or an horse, or another animal.
I lived in my imaginary world as a child.
That counts as pretend play as well.
But I hated those games like "mom and daughter", when someone pretended to be the mother and someone else pretended to be the daughter.

Well, many of you say you had troubles with playing "normal" role-playing pretend plays with other kids. I didn´t have problems with it. Although I was shy, I played role-playing pretend plays with my sister, cousin and some other kids. I liked to play at school (I was a teacher, lol) etc. Does this mean I´m actually not an aspie?

I don't think so. Asperger's doesn't affect everyone the same way. I would play pretend with other kids, too.

Well, it was possible for me. I remember one time I was young and I build a man out of Legos and pretended it was real. When the teacher wanted to put it away, I didn't and treated the Lego doll I had built like it was my only friend at this after-school program that I went. I had friends, really, but none of them at the program.

I could not pretend play. My sister would try to play "baker" with me as a kid. I would copy what she did but I had no idea what she was really doing. I had no idea what to do unless she told me what to do. When I was in Kindergarten the girls were all playing "house". I couldn't figure out what the rules were, and I think I asked what they were. Anyway, they didn't like playing with me and I think I got into arguments with them for violating their own rules. I hated recess and wandered around trying to figure out something to do so I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. I didn't understand how other kids knew how to play with each other or why they liked each other and didn't like me.

I stuck to myself and didn't play with others very well.

At home, I got absorbed into the details of my toys.

its a load of rubbish. I am AS, and did pretend play as a child.

I think there's another difference. I believe that NT children are more likely to improvise during pretend play. I had two oddball friends in elementary school and we were always playing pretend games based on movies, TV shows, and video games. It was more like a scripted re-enactment. There was no need to think about what a character would do in a given situation and therefore no need for theory of mind because everything had a script.

I believe that having theory of mind would make NT children more likely to improvise during pretend play.

Me and my friends were engaging in pretend play together but it was still different from the kind of play used by NT children.

I only did pretend play with other kids if things were going my way. When we would pretend play together, I was doing my own thing. I can remember drawing a town in the street with chalk with other kids and I was drawing my own home and road and buildings while they were drawing theirs and we would ride our bikes pretending they were cars. We would always use up the chalk when we would draw the town. Then my mother would have to buy more because we had little left. We had a bucket of thick chalk and we used it up. I did it when I was eight and nine. I also did script reenactment and it was things I saw on TV or in real life. My husband told me that was not spontaneous pretend play. I thought it was playing with toys using your imagination. I would say I did some of it then but it was always alone. I also played school and my best friend told me I was doing it the way our teacher did it. But I was able to change that fortunately. I also would act out real life scenes with my Barbie dolls and one time I witnessed my best friend being hit by her father and the way he did it scared me because I had never been hit that way so when we got home, I was having my Barbies hitting each other that way and Mom told it was hard for all of us because she had to teach me hard that is not the way it works when you are mad. My parents never let me back at this girl's house again because of the father and they didn't want me learning more bad examples because I always copied people and once I would learn something, it was very hard to unteach me. So I always role played with my dolls and that was what I always did first before doing the behavior. So my mother always had to spy on me when I would play with my toys because I didn't tell her lot of stuff so the only way she knew what was going on in my life was to listen to me play because I expressed it through playing.

I would always create imaginary worlds based on my toys: Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, the original My Little Pony (dating myself here ), and a dollhouse I had...and they all co-habitated. I would create a circle/barrier of old books (those little-kid cardboard books that I had long outgrown) and have all of the playsets and figures inside of it, including the "villains." In my world, everyone got along and no one was left out. This was always by myself, at home. I would do this for hours, and leave the set-up erected for days, sometimes weeks.

So yes--I definitely did "pretend play." I created a utopia of sorts. To me, it just made sense that everyone SHOULD get along and be happy.

I did the "pretend to be an animal" thing too, along with making "ears" on a headband out of construction paper.

At school: I liked the "playhouse" area in kindergarten, but more observed/went along with whatever the others happened to be doing, without really understanding "why." I thought "okay, this is what they're pretending, I'll just play along for a while." Later on, when the bullying started, I was usually alone at recess kicking a soccer ball around, or in the library if at all possible. I remember once, when I was in third or fourth grade, playing with some younger kids around one of the trees on the playground, pretending to be squirrels (or something) storing berries (these little ones that started out looking like tiny green pears, then growing bigger and redder as they ripened). Somehow, we ended up pulling a branch off and got in trouble for it. I think that was the first and last time we ever did that.

Still daydream vividly. Want to start writing fiction again...or at least journaling my odd thoughts....

It is possible for Aspies if they have the will to do it, many don't want to because they think it's pointless. I never had that desire. I think the best way to live is in the real world and not in a made up one.

I didn't play well I would tell my mother that it didnt make any sense to play with dolls because they werent real

That's not accurate.

A substantial proportion of AS kids have difficulty in or complete lack of pretend play, but it is not required for diagnosis. There are plenty of AS kids who play pretend.

As a kid, I had a very rich imaginary world that I created, but much of my pretend play was grounded in reality. I didn't create a mythical land, for example; instead, I created an imaginary modern-day metropolis as the setting for most of my pretend play. When something happened in real life, it affected my pretend play. There were a few things that were outside this pretend metropolis, though. I had a thing for space exploration for a while, and would incorporate elements from science fiction (Star Trek, etc...), but most of it was within my pretend city.

I played pretend with other kids as well, but what's interesting is that, more often than not, I integrated that pretend play into my personal pretend play. In third grade, myself and a couple other kids pretended we were police officers in a city that was comprised of the schoolyard; in my mind, though, it was merely an extension of the imaginary world I had already concocted.

There tends to be a lot of confusion over the imagination thing - many aspies have very rich and complex fantasy worlds, so imagination is not the right wording to use. It should really be worded as unable to or has difficulty with 'Role Play' either with objects or with other children. For example an Autistic child will take a toy robot and have it fly through the air and fire lasers etc. But they will have difficulty in making the robot have a conversation, they will stumble on what to say next. I still have this problem trying to role play with my kids, which is worse with my Autistic son because he too has no idea how a pretend conversation should go!

It also applies to the inability that many on the spectrum have with repurposing objects to be something completely different, unless it already looks significantly similar. So for example a stick could be a machine gun if the shape is reasonably similar (and even then many autistics would be cynical about it) but tell then a bean bag is a castle and you might have some difficulty convincing them!

I've had exactly this problem. When my girls (both on the spectrum) asked me to play dolls with them I really struggled. I felt really awkward and didn't know what dialogue to do, I stick to board games with them! My girls just end up arguing every time they have played dolls together (which is rarely anyway) because the dolls "personalities" mirror their own issues with lack of empathy so they end up being really mean and upsetting one another!