imaginative play - can someone explain exactly what it is

[asdevil]

I'm trying to get as much info as I can before DS's paed appointment next week.

DS (5.7) sometimes plays with action figures, he babbles a lot and sometimes says something like, 'I'm going to shoot you.

DP thinks this is imaginative play, but I think he may just be repeating stuff from Ben 10

He sometimes plays schools with DD, although she always tells him what to do.

DD (who I'm convinced has mild aspergers) doesn't seem to do much imaginative play either, she'll play schools - but she seems to be repeating what she's heard during the day.

Can anyone explain what is normal for a five and almost seven year old?

Hi there, I find it hard to differentiate too. My ASD son never really did any imaginative play ... he would play with cars and figures but was more intersted in the way the cars moved and flew the figures through the air. Our other son (3) who I am sure is NT does copy others when playing and also copies programmes - I guess they have to learn to imagine from somewhere ? A hard one to answer but the fact that your child is interacting and playing at all is a ggod sign !

When ds (who will be 10 in April and was dx with Aspergers a year ago when he was still 8) had the ADOS, they were checked his ability to take one object, pretend its something else and use it in a game eg, using a cardboard tube as a telescope or sword.

During the assessment, they gave him a little spiky ball, a tongue depresser, and a couple of other bits, then demonstrated a little story they'd made up where the ball was a man and the tongue depresser was a surf board. Then they asked ds to make up his own story and he couldn't do it, he put together all the bits they gave him as a lever system to launch the spiky ball and when they asked him what everything was, he said something like, "its a system to launch balls" with an 'are you stupid?' look on his face!

He has never played with action figures. He used to ask for them, because the other boys have them, but they never came out of the basket they were kept in. They also gave him some of these to play with during the ADOS and his response was "Sorry, I don't play with those sorts of toys".

In his case, he has recently (he'll be 10 in April) started to get involved in some role-play type games in the playground, but only if they are Star Wars or video game related, so I think he's more acting out what he's read/seen/played on his DSi rather than actually making it up as he goes along. When he plays, he always has to act the part of a particular character and do or say what they have in the book/programme/game and he can get quite stressed if the other children don't stay 'in-character' and behave how he thinks that character should. I should also say, he doesn't play at all unless his best friend is there to help him. On the two playtimes a week that his friend does extra curricular stuff ds tends to sit in the quiet area (or curl up in the play equipment tunnel) with a book to read.

At school he does a half-hearted impression of pretending he has a light-saber, but says he doesn't like it, whereas at home, he'll only play Star Wars with ds2 if they actually use light-saber toys and the games tend to end pretty quickly because ds2 is very creative and imaginative and won't stick to the storyline.

He has also very recently, led by his younger brother, started building lego models of his own designs instead of just sticking to kits. He doesn't play games with them though, other than 'Lego Smash!' which is a game the boys made to break up their models to free up bricks. Basically they throw chunks of bricks at each other's designs and see which whose break first. Lots of Lego modelling seems to be about fortification against smashing in our house these days.

When he was 5, he didn't really get the imaginative, role-play games and tended to be isolated in the playground. He would play tig/tag and other games with rules, but if his peers started playing say, Ben10 or Power Rangers he just couldn't understand what he was supposed to do. We had lots of tears back then, as he desperately wanted friends and to play with the others, but spent almost every playtime sitting on a bench by himself talking to the ants.

Not sure if any of that is of any help to you?

Just had a thought after reading Lisani's post. Might it help more if I describe what my nt dcs do?

Based on dd (3.2 and NT) her imaginative play is things like, 'going to the shops' and pretending to put things in her bag, then coming home and cooking dinner playing with nothing but thin air and a few play plates.

When I was ill last week, she kept 'going to the chemist' (the bench in the bay window ) and buying me medicine which she then came back and pretended to give me on a spoon. When that medicine didn't work she went back and bought a different kind. Each one was a different colour and flavour. She wasn't actually using any props/toys at all for this, other than her little shopping bag to carry the medicine in.

She also likes to set up whole picnics for her teddies, setting out cups and plates for them all, 'filling' the cups from an empty teapot and pretending to feed everyone.

Another of her favourites is her dolls house. All sorts of different mini toys go in there and they all get bathed and sit on the toilet, talk to each other and have long discussions about what they're doing and where they've been etc.

I have also noticed that she will hop around saying "I'm a kangaroo" or "I'm a frog" etc.

Ds1 never did any of the above things. Even his beloved bunny has never 'talked' and he would look at me gone out if I said something like 'your bunny is upset and needs a hug or shall we give bunny a biscuit' when he was tiny.

Ds2 is 7 (8 in April) and its slightly clouded by his big brother's influence over his games. When ds1 isn't involved he likes to get out his collection of Gogos Crazy Bones and set up a whole world where there are different regions etc, then there's usually a battle and/or a rescue and they all talk to each other the whole time. Not taken from any programme or game - completely from his imagination.

He also likes to play with dd and they pretend to be various Pokemon or Star Wars characters and make up their own stories involving sailing to a magic island and finding some treasure - definitely not plot lines he's already seen/read/played.

He LOVES Lego and spends hours making fantastical creations, which he then uses in complicated games set on different planets or magic kingdoms etc. He sometimes uses Star Wars etc for inspiration, but he doesn't copy the plotlines. Ds1 gets very cross with him for dismantling Star Wars minifigures to create his own 'new' characters and monsters etc.

He loves to draw and will spend ages doing really complicated pictures that have a whole backstory/plot. These are always really imaginative and detailed with made up creatures etc.

Another huge post - there I go again!

My nt daughter would use a banana as a pretend telephone, put it to her ear and talk but my ASD son would never consider this. A banana is a banana and a phone is a phone - end of!!!!

thanks for that moose it gives me great encouragement that DS (3) is NT too !

lol... i don't really get it either
When ds did his ados test just before he got his dx. They gave him a piece of string and a paperclip and a ball and something else and they first made up their own story (the paperclip was a farmer and the string was a fence and the ball was a sheep) about the sheep getting lost and the farmer getting it back in the field.
Then they asked ds to make up his story.

His story was about a paperclip that zip - glided down the string (he demonstated this tying one end to something) and then did something with the ball.(which also involved making something or manipulation of some kind)
They highlighted the fact that he kept each item as it was and that this was in line with someone lacking imaginative play...but actually i thought his story was quite imaginative....and i could also tell the paperclip was definitely a character in ds's head...whereas they couldn't see it

What Moosemama said, and mine played for hours with things from the dressing up box - not shop bought costumes, but we had an old curtain in there, which was constantly being put to use either as a robe (for royalty or Lords and Ladies type story) or as a super hero cloak or as a cloak to make you invisible, or it doubled up as a cover for a den, etc.,etc. They would either retell or make up stories and act them out.

Thanks, this is really helpful. I think they are both engaging in some very limited, imaginative play, or DD is at least.

She will make a tent from a sheet, but that's where it ends. So it's like the sheet's on the chair, let's sit in the tent, but nothing more, and the game ends.

Over the years, they have had many toys, which have just not been played with. Happy land figures, houses, farm animals, dolls, lego etc. just sit festering in a box.

DS will never instigate any form of creative play with his sister. He'll play by himself with action figures, but only those he associates with cartoons.

both like real-life activities (gardening, drawing, baking etc.) or computer games

This is a great thread asdevil, i have enjoyed reading it.

I did wonder though if you might have posted it in the wrong place.

Maybe the folk on the NT boards might have more experince than us.

Dd3 loves playmobile, she replays the events of her days but as for a banana being a telephone..... No chance

The only imaginative play DS will do is cooking and he basically cooks what we have cooked with our own utensils he cannot utilise his own toys but uses tissue paper or his lego not any of the play food we bought him when he was younger.

He has boxes of cars but pulls them out spreads them round the room and spins the wheels then moves on. He has soldiers which he gets out places around and again leaves them.

However he is currently into lego ninjago but builds it and then places it on a shelf he wont play with it or use it. Sadly he has to see a programme with it in so he can role play what he has seen.

The rest of his play is TV programmes or video clips he has seen and he will repeat what he has heard and is unmovable in changing the style of play. According to DS games have levels and he must play out the level till it is finished. At the moment its his star wars lego game and for the last few days I have had the battle of rescuing my metal hoover bit from being swung around as a light saber (or saver as ds calls it!)

Coff33, there is a Ninjago website where you can watch Ninjago 'episodes' and other animations.

Ds1 also loves Ninjago, but mainly for collecting the characters and weapons. He would like to play, but never gets the opportunity, because ds2 won't play by the ridiculously complicated rules, using the cards and he won't play without using the rules. This is a common basis for inter-sibling fights in the Moose household.

Lots of nodding along to this thread.

My DS can sometimes appear to be playing imaginatively, but he will be reciting lines from a film/book/cartoon. He has a HUGE (and rather impressive) memory bank of dialogue and to most people appears quite imaginative whereas he is actually just very resourceful in terms of using his memory!

He will set up castles and knights/ farms and animals/character figure playsets/ lego models made to the letter from the instructions but then that is it. He won't make voices, move them around, make up a story line of his own, or even allow anyone else to move them! Lego especially can be built and be sat for months with no one allowed to touch it.

He can't handle the give and take of imaginery play that other children do. He wants to stick to his rigid remembered storyline or dialogue and gets very upset when things naturally don't go his way.

A ball is just a ball and would never be seen to be anything else.

Bored, that is just like ds1. He has an incredible ability to recall passages from books or dialogue and plot from tv programmes. He fooled his teacher early this year by producing what she thought was an incredible piece of creative writing. Unfortunately, it was word for word the episode of Pokemon he'd watched the evening before! Still, at least it showed he can be resourceful, if not original.

When he was about 3 he had a thing about diggers. Knew all about them, what each type was called etc. So it would never be 'look there's a digger' when we were out and about - it was 'look a XXX Backhoe Loader'. He got quite a few double takes from builders during that phase. He also had a building site playmat. He would spend literally hours setting up all his diggers, model pipes and cement etc in just the right place on the mat and then never play with it or have a total meltdown if ds2 tried to. He also refused to let us put it away for days on end and not only did it take up the whole of the living room floor, but if we actually knocked something trying to climb over it and it didn't go back in exactly the right place he would get really stressed.

His Lego kits are not for touching - he has a shelf high up above his bed to make sure neither his brother or sister ever touches any of them - its a nightmare to dust! I never thought I'd see the day that he'd make his own models out of random pieces of Lego, but he seems to have taken the lead from ds2 on that. I suppose we are probably at the point where ds2 is starting to overtake him developmentally, so we might start to see leadership roles reversed a bit more often.

Thanks for the link moose! :) Taking a look now for a pre birthday scout! while to go yet but no harm in looking!

This extract is from a short guide I wrote for school about Asperger's Syndrome and some of the possibilities to consider;

'Difficulties with social imagination, imaginative play and flexible thinking.
This one causes some confusion as people say 'Well, he plays with his lego and makes up stories and has imagination, so...?'
It's the social aspect of imaginative play that can cause difficulties. If the child is in total control of their 'world' and setting the agenda, then they are being imaginative. AS children find it difficult to play when other individuals are involved that have different ideas or who don't perform as expected, unlike a lego or toy figure.
Abstract thinking is another area of difficulty, although the child may learn facts and figures easily, dealing with abstract concepts, without clear outcomes may be a challenge. Subjects like literature, religion and philosophy.'

FWIW, my DS has developed a much greater understanding of imagination and creativity as he matured, but it was a very slow and complicated process for a few years with numerous meltdowns along the way as his brain overloaded.

Dust, that's really interesting. Sounds just like ds1.

He has recently started to to develop in lots of seemingly new ways, including imagination and creativity - but as you said, its a hard slow process and one that he's not finding easy.

Brain overload is a good way of describing how he gets when he just can't work it out, but is almost there - like when something is on the tip of your tongue. Its unbelievably frustrating for him.

Sometimes I think its almost like he knows he has the concept in there somewhere but can't make the right neural link to fully process it - if that makes any sense at all. So on some level he knows he knows, but can't quite join the dots, iyswim.

I can really relate to this feeling since I've had neurological issues of my own around speech and memory. Not being able to access things I know are in there or understand concepts that should be simple and everyone else just gets automatically is beyond frustrating and I can actually feel it holding me back sometimes. It has helped me to be more patient and understanding of the way ds must feel though.

That was all probably very hippy and unscientific I know. Sorry, I seem to be in a bit of a reflective mood this week.

I agree, zzzzz, anything I write is always stuffed with conditionals as all children are unique. It was partly in response to the insistence by some staff that x couldn't be on the spectrum because they played with lego and showed a level of creativity that they were sure a child on the spectrum wouldn't display.
So I wrote stuff linked to what I'd observed in other children and my DS. Anecdotal and opinionated.

Oh yes, several were caught out by the fact that all the children with AS they'd met used to flap and cringe and panic when stressed. My Aspie was the BOOM! Krakatoa sort and very, very strong when in meltdown.

The rest of the piece went like this.

'Some people have asked if their child has AS and then gone on to describe behaviour and sensitivities, so I wondered if this might help.
The following is not meant in any way to be professional advice, I'm just a parent with a teen Aspie, but it might help some individuals decide if they want to explore certain issues a little further or ask for guidance from professionals
It is by no means a complete or exhaustive list, and does not cover co-morbid symptoms that may be attached to AS.
And yes, for all the NTs reading, We know that most children do most of these things at some point.

Main characteristics
Difficulties with social relationships.
Not picking up signals and info that NTs take for granted such as facial expressions, intonation and inferred information.

Difficulties with communication.
May speak fluently but take little notice of reactions, may monologue, may not be aware of audience's feelings or reactions.
May be over-precise, formal or literal in speech. Jokes, metaphors, sayings, figurative language may cause total confusion, stress, meltdowns etc.

Difficulties with social imagination, imaginative play and flexible thinking.
This one causes some confusion as people say 'Well, he plays with his lego and makes up stories and has imagination, so...?'
It's the social aspect of imaginative play that can cause difficulties. If the child is in total control of their 'world' and setting the agenda, then they are being imaginative. AS children find it difficult to play when other individuals are involved that have different ideas or who don't perform as expected, unlike a lego or toy figure.
Abstract thinking is another area of difficulty, although the child may learn facts and figures easily, dealing with abstract concepts, without clear outcomes may be a challenge. Subjects like literature, religion and philosophy.

They may also be:
socially awkward and clumsy in social relationships with others
naive and gullible, a good rule of thumb is that many Aspies function at an emotional age 2/3 that of their chronological age.
unaware of how others feel
unable to carry on a 'give and take' conversation
upset by any change in routines and transitions, often undetectable to NTs
literal in speech and understanding
overly sensitive to lights, noise, odours, tastes and tactile sensations again often undetectable by NTs
have fixed interests or obsessions
physically awkward in sports, often those that require simultaneous application of different skills.
Not a team player in any sense.
Possibly

have an unusually accurate memory for details
sleeping or eating issues that cause problems
trouble understanding and processing things they have heard or read
Inappropriate facial expressions or body language
unusual speech patterns, repetative or irrelevant remarks
stilted, formal speech
overly loud, high or monotonous voice
stims that may involve rocking, fidgeting, joint cracking, humming, pacing...

But they are as unique individuals as anyone else, so be open-minded and observe without prejudice so you actually see what's there and not what you assume should be there.

That is a really informative write up Dust :)

The only one I strike off for DS is food issues as he eats for england!

My DS was capable of eating an entire bag of icing sugar without ill effects, followed by two tubs of glace cherries, a pack of butter and 1kg of marzipan.
Before 7am
So there are food issues and food issues!

Great thread. I have wondered as DS1 during ADOS was said to have shown signs of imagination however he did not animate toys i.e. holding figures and do pretend talk as DS2 would. He flew a toy aeroplane (for the first time in his life) as a means of getting it from one table to another. He found pretending to brush his teeth tricky and didn't know where to start. CP asked him to pretend to wash his face - again didn't know where to start (he'll barely get water on his face in real life so how would he know anyway?) Needed a cloth and some soap and then was able to wipe his face, she had to tell him to turn the taps on etc.

He tends to play only tig at School, friends (mainly one) come and go. He has to be buddied up particularly if no-one is playing tig. Some parents are great and inform me (for the purpose of me telling his CP) of what their DCs say. one being that he wants to play tig all the time, the other that he's hard to play with because he doesn't play back. He also has been observed by the other parents not taking part in the other DCs game on their terms. No give and take!

DS1 stuggles to play with toys really. He'll build lego according to the instructions, or he'll build a house which consists of four walls and nothing else.

Nursery teacher told me (when he was in reception) that he had an amazing imagination. I looked at her thinking what planet do you come from? Having said that, I think she was referring to his creativity for making things. He is Mister Maker in disguise, though he tends to get an idea, and then make the same thing over and over again. He does have inventive ways of getting things to work though that I wouldn't really be able to think of if I tried.

A term I came across last year during a private assessment by a Paediatric Physio was 'ideation'. She said it was poor. I'd never come across the term before and still not sure about it.

For some time ds was happy to pretend that a banana was a phone if someone else suggested it (would find that wildly amusing in fact) its only very recently that he's made the leap to pretending eg a twiggy branch is a giant spider.
He can manage semi imaginative and social play with one other friendly familiar child. I wonder whether its actually anxiety that restricts his creative play with others and the fear of getting it 'wrong' as well as the sensory overload.

He loves drama and acting out a story. Creative play with a script!

Oh yes ds was quite flumoxed by the face washing thing too.