5 yr old aspie and confusion of reality vs make believe

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my 5 yr old seems to not get that mickey mouse/tweety are not real. He also seems to think that he has a secret method that will make his favorite tv characters come to life. he seems to have been influenced by a tv show which had a live actor Alec Baldwin, used some gold dust to bridge the gap between Island of Sodor and the real world and he now believes that it can be done.

What I want to know is if anyone here had diffculties differentiating reality from tv cartoons? If so, what helped you figure it out

I showed him that Alec Baldwin has acted in other movies and also showed him clips of how animation movies are made and when shown, he seems to get it but then he reverts back to his fantasies. It is like he doesn't want to let go and he desparately hopes that the cartoon characters are real and can play with him.

Any insights/help would be appreciated...

Sounds like a healthy imagination to me! I still believed my teddies came to life when I was ten. I also genuinely believed I could see ghosty things and I could play a game where sheets were clouds and it seemed completely real in my head. It was magical but you grow up and the magic goes.
I wouldn't be trying to take the imagination away from such a tiny child.

I agree. Sounds pretty normal for his age.

I think people treat aspies different.

Okay, what if he was otherwise normal? He'd have an active imagination.

It doesn't sound like there is really a problem with his fantasies unless you left any out.

That seems normal to me as well.

It might just be a healthy imagination, but I've struggled all my life to not confuse fiction with reality.

It's part of why I don't watch much TV. Rationally, I know that it's just actor on film with some pretty good special effects, but there's a part of my brain that I keep catching trying to see things I know are fictional as real.

I'm not sure if this is AS-related or not. It's probably a problem with taking things literally. We trust our senses to tell us about the world around us, but television and movies exploit this to create illusions to carry us into a story (in ways you just can't do on a stage in a theater). If your brain interprets all input as real, your rational mind has to deconstruct what you see to realize it's not "real."

Don't most 5 year olds believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy? When I went to Disney lots of kids ran up to the characters. I'm sure many of them didn't realize that it was a person in a costume.

I'm not sure this is related to Asperger's.

I remember a time when I though cat woman was real. I was in Warner Bros studios and someone was dressed up as her and was giving a very accurate performance. Scawry. Also I thought the Western show was real.
I was eight years old.

Now I have it mild. Meaning that I know when things aren't real but it frustrates me. I need to calm myself down when I get so caught up in science fiction then realise it's not real. Other times I need to remind myself that things like time travel aren't real...not yet at least.

Anyway, I think you should give him a few more years. I don't know how it happened for me but the second time I saw that Western show I knew it wasn't real. I may have been thirteen though.