Rulemaking in Play in Childhood

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One reason my mother suspected I had Asperger's syndrome was because, as a child, apparently I had a tendency to make a lot of rules in my play. A clear example of this is when I tried to turn my house into a constitutional republic. I was going to make each person governor of their own bedroom and also give them authority over another room in the house, and I was going to set myself as president of it all and write a constitution to govern the family. Of course, my father "vetoed" my "democratization" of the household.

Another example of my obsession with rulemaking that I only recently recalled was when I tried to start an online clan for the computer game Diablo. I had a list of rules members had to abide by: You couldn't PK a person more than five times in a two-week timespan; you couldn't use profanities; but you could use cheats. I now remember I was planning a multilayered hierarchy of membership with an "inner sanctum" of high judges and such. Heh, rules and order.

My third and final example of this rulemaking obsession is when my brother and I played frisbee and other outdoor games with neighborhood friends. I apparently developed new games with new rules for even a simple game of frisbee.

I see something similar in my son's behaviour whilst playing- he doesn't often want to play with others but when he does he has to decide what they are playing and plan out all the details or he gets very irrate.

I also still see this in Dunc- their are certain rules he will set for the kids and he really can't stand it if they don't follow them.

hee hee - NOW we'll find out the truth about dunc...

i am an inveterate rule-maker. enter my house at your peril, cos half of them don't make sense, even to me. did it as a kid, too, until i got bored with the others kids and buggered off to read or play the piano.

yeah but Dunc can always get his own back- I'm sure I have tons of eccentricities he'd love to share. I think I'm just as weird as him, if not weirder- but we LIKE weird.

huzzah for weird!

are we getting off topic here?

oops!

watch it - if neant objects to you hijacking his topic, I'll have to split this....

I always made strict rules when I played as a child. For instance, I added rules to board games to make the game more complexe and more regular. My brother liked that too because it also made the game funnier, he said.

I don't remember making any rules in my play as a child. In fact, I sort of have an aversion to rules. I played a lot by myself as a child, so there really wasn't any need for rules.

I have some rules for my apartment:

1. NOBODY except me is allowed anywhere near my DVD, CD, and LP collections, and 78 rpm records are handled ONLY by me (because 78s break very easily and are virtually irreplaceable in this day and age). I have a lot of very rare CDs, LPs, and DVDs, so I need rules when it comes to this.

2. Nobody except my family is allowed in my bedroom. Consequently, I allow it to get messy.

3. Anyone can sit anywhere they like in the living room. They don't need to ask.

4. The center chair with my dining room table is mine alone.

5. Enter the bathroom at your own risk. (It is not always at its best.) You also don't have to ask permission to enter it.

6. It is not permissible to touch my computer without my supervision. (If something happened to it, I would have no idea how to get it working again.)

rules... i like rules. in my house:

1. no shoes are allowed, except mine
2. no dogs are allowed, only cats.
3. no smoking of tailor-made fags, only roll-ups.
4. only 2 people are allowed to sit atthe other end of my settee: one of them rarely visits, and the other one isn't talking to me.
5. only certain people are allowed to use MY lavatory.
6. no-one is allowed in my temple, unless it's for a particular (and esoteric) reason, or for something else, which i can't post here.
7. the heating only goes on from november to april, and never during the day.
8. only one person other than me is allowed to play my best guitar, and he's not talking to me.
9. no-one is allowed to put cups on furniture.

there are probably about a million more, but that's enough for now.

Hmm.. I'm sure I made rules when I played as a child, but I don't really remember much of it.

I would play alot by myself at home with my toy cats and stuffed animals.. I'm sure I made up rules for those to follow.

Here are some of my rules:

1. I thought I had a tacit agreement with my roommate for him not to touch my computer. I discovered (I have ways!) that either he or his friend who was in the dorm room with him at the time was snooping around on my computer. This is a big no-no. I was pissed off, so I pulled either the keyboard or mouse plug out of the back of his computer and later put a no-snooping thing on my computer that he might have stumbled upon if he tried that again. My roommate this year and I haven't gotten along very well.

2. In my bedroom at home, guests may enter only on even-numbered days on the Gregorian calendar unless the guest is female and over the age of 18.

3. All guests to my bedroom must contribute their signature and a simple sketch to The Mural.

4. On April Fools' Day, anyone who wishes to enter either my bedroom at home or my dorm room at college must wear socks on their hands and praise the icon of Crazy Fish.

5. Pizza is forbidden on Tuesday nights (technically, Wednesday mornings) after midnight. Why? It might ruin one's appetite for breakfast.

6. On Leap Day, guests are expected to leap into my room, not merely walk or saunter in.

7. Guests and family members alike are expected not to put stuff in my room because I don't like junk building up in my room.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I made up Rules 2-6 for humorous effect. Rule 7 is exaggerated. Rule 1 is real.

Hah. I used to invent games that all of the kids on the street would play. I don't remember them all, but they were usually interesting enough to get 5 to 10 other kids involved. Somehow, it was a bunch that was pretty accepting of me creating the games and rules myself.

The most intricate rules for games were the solo ones, and I am sure they would have only been entertaining to me with the detail I went to. Somehow it was fun playing them for hours by myself, though.

As I got older, I developed some rules about my room. Generally though, everything was fine as long as you did not remove anything from it. That was an intolerable offense and caused quite a lot of problems with my sister.