Imaginative play

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One thing on the DSM is "Lack of Imaginative play" However, a lot of aspies seem to enjoy RPG's and other things like that.

A lack of imaginative play is one thing that I never had. I played with my siblings, had "imaginary little deer" and things like that. In fact, my brother, who shows almost all the classic signs of aspergers/HFA, and I were always roleplaying outside. I was Cindy and he was Roger and we were archeologist, haha.

The only thing I can imagine it being is that I never came up with elaborate stories for my dolls and other things to act out. Like I never played with my toys like the people on Toy Story did with theirs. My sister did and I went along with them, but I would much rather braid my doll's hair or make her a dress then make up a story that she got captured by an evil teddy bear and the faithful stuffed dog Yellow had to come rescue her or whatever. Any doll was always what it was. Like my stuffed dog was a dog, and my baby doll was a baby. But if the doll had long hair it couldn't be a baby.

Anyways, what are your thoughts on imaginative play? Did you do it or did you think it was ridiculous? If you didn't do it, what did you do with your time?

I had some forms of imaginative play...I would make traffic jams with my brothers toy cars and clear them then make the traffic jams again. I would play pretend tea parties as long as I had real tea in my tea set and I used to play horses on my bike by imagining it was a horse whilst I was riding it. I used to pretend I was show jumping and do a wheelly down the curb..although I knocked my front tooth out doing that so I wouldn't recommend it lol. It also took me ages to learn to ride a bike in the first place as I kept falling off of it.

Other than that I seemed to have a liking for bank forms and carried a yellow pac-man game everywhere with me.

My parents did buy me dolls but I didn't really like them so they just sat in a corner getting dusty until one day I decided I wanted to be a hair dresser and practised on them. All I can say is my parents were not too pleased with the half bald collection of dolls that it resulted in. I always wanted a model railway set anyway. Im 35 and I still want a model railway. If I had room I would get one with the whole kit and make the scenery for it myself. I need more space though first.

I would take all 20 or so of my dolls, line them up, undress them, dress them, undress them, dress them... repeat until satisfied or distracted.

I've always had a very vivid imagination. Ever since I was 5 years old, I've had imaginary friends and an imaginary world where they reside. My imaginary friends change to reflect whatever special interest I have at a given time, though the old ones are never forgotten - they merely go on to live in a different part of my world, and I go visit them whenever I start to miss them.

When I was a child and wolves were my special interest, I used to pretend to be wolves with my classmates, although I always became frustrated and quit the game because the other kids didn't play the way I wanted them to. I also created an elaborate sitcom-style storyline with my hoard of stuffed animals, which I played with my younger brother.

I was constantly using my imagination as a child. All the friends I did have always came to me because I already had some elaborate pretend game ready and waiting. I even used to play a game with my cousin where we would pretend to leave the room and the toys would come alive and form a working community among themselves. Guess I should have learned about copyright when I was 6...could have been head of pixar right now

Chairs turned into cave entrances, I used a legend of Zelda map to "find treasure", nothing was off limits to my imagination. I would Macgyver up a story using what I had and it was always epic.

Being an adult now, I find it impossible to come up with original ideas. All I can do is build off someones elses. I guess it all levels out eventually.

I used to have interests involving different cultures, so I would pretend I was someone from that culture. For instance, as a child I was interested in American Indians, and every day, I would pretend to be Indians with my little brother. We had an elaborate imaginary world....actually, it was mostly my world of Indians, he would just follow along. When I was older, I liked ancient Egypt, so I used to pretend I was the pharaoh Ramses the 2nd. I had a friend who was just as obsessed as I was, and she was the pharaoh Thutmose the 3rd. We´d dress up in makeshift pharaoh outfits and talk about Egypt all day, like how the Nile was doing that year or how we just won the war with the Hittites or something....

When I was a young child, my brother and I used to put together little towns; we had all these really nice Swiss toys, blocks that you could make roads out of, train tracks, houses, boats....everything. We would spend days making whole cities in our basement. We invented an imaginary island, and I made up a whole culture and history of that place.

And that brings me to my next point: much of my imaginary play was "in my head". Oh, I would start out with toys and things, but you can only do so much with toys. They are kind of limiting. So whatever I started with toys, I would then go and think further, in my head.....so much of my "imaginative play" later became daydreams in my head.

For instance, I used to have a lot of dolls, and I used to like them, but I don´t remember playing with them as such, at least not so much. I used to be frustrated that dolls were limited, and couldn´t get into many positions. So I imagined my dolls as being like miniature people, and doing all the things they couldn´t really do. I had them lined up on my shelf as part of an imaginary neighborhood- each doll was put in order of where I decided she lived on the street. I decided which dolls were sisters, who was friends with whom, who was crippled, or whatever else took my fancy. Then, rather than really playing with them, I "thought about" them. I guess to any passing observer that would look like "lack of imaginative play".

Then sometimes, I had one favorite doll, which I took everywhere with me. But that meant the doll just basically experienced whatever I experienced. So I guess that bit wasn´t very imaginative.

I used to imagine myself in books, based on pictures or descriptions. I remember I'd try to visualize places in these books as if I were visiting them and having adventures there. I liked to imagine my toys coming to life and going into their worlds (although they'd remain toy size or be life-size or whatever, I can visualize vividly). This wasn't like Toy Story, just, like... my intense daydreaming.

I know I did other stuff with other children, but my preference was to be alone or tell myself stories.

Daina, my play was similar to yours. My toys were what they were and nothing more, and I never had imaginative scenarios for my toys like on Toy Story. I did have imagination though, and quite often made up stories in my head to escape the bad things that were happening to me. I used to believe that if I wished for something hard enough (an escape from abuse for example) I would get it. I was always disappointed and eventually gave up that idea.

I didn't have much of an imagination. I spent most of my time "playing" by categorzing toys and other items, stacking them, lining them up, and spinning them. If I was expected to pretend, I usually just let the other person take control, hoping I wouldn't have to say anything. When my niece and nephew first came to live with us, neither of whom have ASD, they wanted me to pretend. I'm afraid I wasn't too much fun in that area as I never could contribute to their little games, and always tried to get them to go play with eachother instead.

I've never had an imagination. My play consisted pretty much of the playground and video games. That's all I can remember.

I wasn't good at imagining games like "house." In some ways I lacked imaginative play. What I was good at was making up stories and going on and on about them, especially stories involving horses. I used to drive my cousins crazy doing that. I can remember going on and on once while I was in the truck with them, my uncle was driving and I realize now they probably wanted to yell at me to be quiet. At the time it was like a rapture or something. I was so happy talking about race horses. I felt inspired after reading a book about Ruffian from the library. They might have known how happy talking about it made me so they showed poise and restraint.

As a child, my idea of "playing" was building stuff with what I had. Since I was obsessed with NASCAR at the time, I would build these raceways for the cars to go around. I would take string to mark the inside and outside lines of the track. From there I would use wooden blocks to make the walls and Legos to make all the buildings and other facilities. I would often add in other things as I could just for fun, such as rocks and lights, and sometimes I'd even have a train going around. By the time I was ready to line up the little cars I generally got bored and started creating another track.

At the time, I had no idea that what I did was strange. I was incapable of comprehending the fact that not everybody has the attention span to make things like that, and whenever a friend was over they were always bored and just wanted to "play". For me, there was no such thing as imagination at all. If I wanted to imagine something, I would just make it out of whatever materials I had.

I've spent most of my life in my imaginary worlds............I'm quite happy there...............................