do asd children know whats real and whats not

[choclily]

Hi, just wondered if this is the norm, my 5 year old ds with asd does not understand what is real and what is not, ie asked when we could go to noisy land (had read a mr men book to him) when i said no its not real, he said 'yes it is, it was in the story you read' he is always saying 'is that in our world' and even when you say no he still thinks it is, anything from whats on the news to cartoons, he is always asking to go somewhere that hes seen on the tv thats not real. just wondered if anyone else had this.

Mine couldn't sort it out for years, everything was real.
He slowly came to understand about pretending and acting and imagination, but it wasn't really sorted until he was around 8 years old.

it got really confusing the other day when someone mentioned diggerland which is real !!!!!

My DS took ages to work this out. He got that cartoons weren't real first but it took him ages to work out that live action TV like Doctor Who was also fiction. Because the actors were real people, not cartoons, he thought the whole thing was real. He's got it now he's 11, and knows that the news is real, even though it's on the telly! That was a tricky one to explain.

i often wonder what it must be like in his little world,

hi to you all my son as had this problem hes 8 asd , he slowly understanding, he finds it hard to watch cartoons so we dont anymore, i too often wonder what and how he see's the world x i just try to explane what is and what is,nt real , so get ready to do alot of talking x

My DS was like that and now he is six and plays guns but says they are not real when the teacher tells him not to point. However he slips into his imaginary world of superheros to blank out the real world bits that he doesnt like and so shuts down. He also can start off telling you what has happened during the day but then the story will stray off into imaginary things that didnt happen. He has a fine line between reality and imagination and crosses over iyswim

It helped mine to spot the same actors in different roles and see that they were pretending to be someone different each time.

my ds shuts down, we say he's gone into his world because you can not get any response from him, other times he just switches off and fiddles with a label or clothes and sucks his fingers, this is a little easier to get him out of. I do try and explain what is real and what is not but he also has problems with processing information, so i am often talking to myself but i still do it as some of the information may go in and get understood.

It took my ds a long time to get his head around this. For years he was adamant that everything he saw on the tv was real - leading to some humdinging arguments with the other children at school and a very real phobia of feature films.

We also went through the stage of him finally getting that cartoons weren't real, but refusing to accept that programmes with actors in weren't - because they were real people.

He also used to ask me regularly "Mummy, is this a dream - or am I awake?".

He is 9 now and I don't know exactly when the shift happened or whether he just learned over time, but for the most part he understands what's real and what isn't, although there can be still occasions when he gets confused.

I think its part and parcel of being very literal. If its written down in a book or on the television, then it just 'is', it wouldn't enter their heads to think otherwise.

On the positive side - he still believes in Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy and faries/elves/pixies and magic etc. Which is lovely. He's very disappointed that his peers don't believe anymore, but just says that he is right and they are wrong and that he doesn't talk about these things with them anymore because they refuse to listen.

my ds used to be same (hes 11 now) he kind of grew out of it at about the same time he realised no santa as there are so many dcs queue to see more than 1 and someone in middle school told him thats because he doesnt exist.then i explained I was the tooth fairy which he thought hillarious as im quite large lady. we also point out actors on tv (he loves Adam Sandler) hes in so many funny films its all to do with taking everything literally hes still working through this with SALT