How did you play with toys growing up?

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I had a weird assortment of toys. Dinosaurs, barbies, animals, cars, etc. I would usually spend time grooming my barbies, I didn't really play with them like other kids did, I had most fun just brushing their hair and putting them in their different outfits. With my other toys I remember most of the time I would just rub them, feeling the texture and inspecting every inch of them. I would memorize all the details and if it had any words on it or errors. I really loved inspecting my toys more than playing with them.

I did have some imagination games but was only with garbage though. There was this spot in my room where I could pull up the carpet, and I guess it was really old and falling apart cause there was tons of weird carpet powder under it. I'd collect it in glass jars and pretend it was fairy dust. Come to think of it most of the game was just collecting the dust and inspecting it lolol

There were lots of different types of playing that I did. I often had imaginary friends that I would project through my toys. After one of my cousins was born, I had a bean bag doll that I named after her and carried it around...though that game disintigrated into my experimenting on her with different bathroom products like ben gay and talcum powder until the doll eventually dissapeared...(in retrospect I was trying to use thse products to get the pen marks off of her....)...I was really upset when I lost my bean bag doll, and would not accept a replacement. They had changed the way they made them and the new Fisher Price beanbag dolls had a "diaper hatch"....I wanted my old one...

I did play with barbies with the girls on my street...but we didn't just use barbies, we had

When I got older I played alot of games that did not involve toys though I have always liked dolls, and still do....and make and collect them (as I did when I was younger)

I had alot of collections of things...dolls....rocks...stamps...coins...hats...etc...

I didn't have the clearest understanding of personal property..so I often gave my toys away, and in turn, if I wanted something that belonged to someone else, I would always ask for it...bad manners...

I forget my 'homemade' science projects.......

And I disassembled mechanical stuff often - still do. Sometimes I have parts left over though.

I was the organising type - my stuffed toys had to be lined up on the end of my bed in a certain way. My favorites were a stuffed owl (which I still have 30 years on) and a rubber fish which disintegrated very early.

I played with My little ponies and playmobile in the normal way I think, but kept on playing with them until I was 12 or 13. A lot of the scenarios I invented for them involved some sort of disaster or maltreatment though.

I was obsessed with horses in my early teens and had a list of horses, each one a different colour and name, in order of colour preference. Then I would methodically play with each 'horse' in order (although in reality I would start from the beginning each new playtime and rarely got that far down the list).

As a child I loved to listen to music whilst walking round and round in circles. I got my sisters and even some younger friends doing this, to the worry of their parents!

I was obsessed with Tonka Toys, Hot Wheels cars, Lincoln Logs and any constrution-type toys, had a fascination with Crystar action figures back in 1980. Had a stretchy Hulk toy very much like those Stretch Armstrong toys of years past.

I always had some small toy in my posket that I kept fumbling with. Had to keep busy doing something all the time.

I used to line cars up when i was young,the other thing i used to do was press the buttons on toys over and over.
When i was about 10 i would set up habitats for my zoo animals using rocks and plastic trees,then i would talk through the animals behaviour and move them places for food and shelter.

I was mostly obsessed with dressing my barbies and then lining them up on the bed. I also played some weird game with Fisher Price people on the house stairwell. You know it was like 4 steps with a little door underneath that you used in the FP house?

I don't think I was typical. I read alot and organised my books into libraries. I even used a kind of Dewey Decimal system. Very odd now that I think about it.

My son always took everything apart and then put it back together. Usually wrong. He also collected batteries. He would take yarn or string and tie it around every handle in his bedroom until he had a gigantic spider web and then he would lie underneath and pluck a string at a time. He's always been obsessed with scotch tape as well.

Apparently as a toddler I just looked at my toys but did not play with them. I remember getting a Barbie doll as a gift at around the age of 5. I did not take that doll out of its package for an entire year but I did occassionally take it out of the drawer to look at it.

I do remember in daycare I loved playing with the wooden blocks. I would get mad if someone came and joined me cause I didn't like the other kids, and they would often take the blocks from me and not let me play with them. I do have a stuffed Fluppy Dog that I've had since Christmas when I was six years old. I still have her (named Fluffy), and I still can't go to sleep without it. I even make my husband just deal with it. I tried giving her up for a couple days to my one year old, and I couldn't make the sacrifice cause I wasn't able to sleep well. I was obsessed with barbie dolls. I hated it when other kids would break them, especially if my ADHD cousin would pop off their heads cause you never got them back on right. My favorite part about Barbies was trying to create the house my barbie would live in. I always wanted the Barbie Mansion, but never got it (thought Fluffy was going to be one actually since my parents wrapped her in a big box big enough to be a Barbie Mansion). So, I would create houses with the walk in closet, bunk beds and blankets, pillows, etc. But, I don't remember anything really strange. I did watch a lot of Television, and I hated anything that wasn't a cartoon like Sesame Street.

Now my nephew as an infant and toddler liked to line things up. All the VHS tapes had to be lined up perfectly in the same way and stacked. He also when watching a tape would rewatch his favorite parts over and over again, and sometimes he'd watch the whole tape in rewind or fast forward and keep watching that way. We went through a VCR once every other month it was so bad. He never really played with any of his toys, just the tv and vcr and dvd player. He loved the computer and at age 2 could install his games, get online, type the first couple letters of his favorite sites and scroll down and click onto it, print up pictures to color, play the games, etc. It was remarkable, but if we let him play alone, he'd somehow download stuff that hurt the computer. He would get mad if other kids played with his toys even though he had no interest in playing with them himself. Now that he's older, he likes to play video games obsessively and he's really into Pokemon.

Only things I lined up as a kid were my little people, my Polly Pocket people, my brother's match box cars and some other toys. I thought isn't it something that other children would do too until I saw the youtube videos on autistic kids and I saw the difference. They line up everything, all their stuff, not certain stuff like they might take all their toys in the room and line them all up vs a normal child lining certain things up like their cars. I don't think I ever lined up my toys the autistic way.


I also dressed my Barbie dolls and take them back off and put them in other outfits and take them off.

My mother told me I took stuff apart when I was a baby but I don't remember.

I never really played with my stuff animals, only had them on display. The closest I got to with my stuff animals was sleeping with them, throwing them, and jumping on them on the trampoline when I was 12 but I only did it to two of my bears. I also put my toys on display too. I can remember I have My Little Ponys on my dresser, same as two of my Barbie dolls, sometimes I have my Happy Meal toys on display.


I can remember getting upset whenever anyone touched my stuff while I was in school, I can even remember freaking out when I see my toys had disappeared in my bedroom when I get home from school and my mother had to tell me she packed them away for our trip and she show me my bag and show me the toys in there. I even hated it when my friends would move furniture around in my doll house.

I very rarely did "toys" per se.

The only actual toys I had were my model dinosaurs. These I would line up in order of species, and within species, according to size. Then they would have "conferences." This is where I sat and stared at the particular toy I wanted to have talking at the time, switching from toy to toy, and they would discuss dinosaur facts that I knew.
Oh, and Lego. I loved Lego, but the only things I would build were boxes, boxes with windows in their sides (houses) and boxes with wheels on their bottoms (cars). I hated the little people and never wanted anything to do with them.

Most of my childhood toys were either books (I read avidly) or outdoor things (I rode my bicycle all the time and picked blackberries, or I would go to the edge of the woods and stir up mud in puddles to watch the swirls - I could do this for hours). Once, my mother made me a "boat" from a cardboard box, but I didn't like this game because it was hard to scoot around the paving stones in it and if I couldn't make it move like a real boat would, then the game was stupid.

But I do remember one specifically autistic (in hindsight) thing I did constantly. I would spend hours lining up pennies (the only coins I had plenty of) in order of their dates, balancing each one precisely on its side, all exactly the same distance apart in a straight line. (This was quite difficult on carpet...)

I was never much of a "player", but more of a "collector".

I had a doll collection of about 50 barbies, but never played with them lol. I mainly just used to look at them.
I collected other things as well such as shoes [when I was 7 years old I had over 20 pairs and only wore three of them!] and school bags [I had about 10 of them when I was 8-10 years old and only used onw of them]. Although, I did play with lego. I had a large box full of it and used to build cities with VERY tall buildings [according to my perception of "tall" at the time]. Never the less, this was actually a collection as well haha, just one that I would play with.

Play? If by that you mean take apart and re attach different limbs and other kinds of mutilation, then yes.. Sid was my idol for a couple of years
Before that era, and through it I mostly just played video games.

My "toys" growing up were computers, books, art supplies, and my soccer ball. Sure, I had other toys, but let's just say there was a big dusty toy box with dusty toys in it somewhere in my house that was rarely if ever opened.

I would always line the toys up and just imagine some huge battle scene going on with them. I would never actually act it out through the toys. I was more than able to just imagine it once I had them set up how I liked it, and acting it out would be far too limiting for me. I never understood the point of smashing toys together.

But yeah, I always liked building fortresses and such, and even in games I like building huge bases that cover a huge portion of the map, or in some instances I just collect huge masses of stuff, and organize it in game.

It seems my imaginings have gotten far more complex over the years. I've thought through various things at different times. I've already got a layout in my head about how I would want to go about building a wooden remote operated fighter aircraft. There's quite some detail I've put down in thought on it.