Is this imagination? Social imagination? Need the advise of the wise ones!

[youarewinning]

Many of you have got to know me over the past year. DS(9) on waiting list for ASD assessment. I find myself questioning sometimes (and probably overanalysing) some of his quarks to prove or disprove a probable dx.

Anyway - he has this saying he uses at the start of most sentences. It seems to lead to the fact he has an imagination but I think it's more that he just can't accept that things are the way they are, also it's not conversational and I would question if it's social imagination?

The saying is " imagine if......." It can be that we are drinking along a country road and I'll say look how high that river is. DS will reply " imagine if a boat went down the river and caused big waves" it's like his reply doesn't fit what I've said?

It's so hard to explain but he seems stuck in this way of making conversation. He does it about new houses built, imagine they were built differently, about roads we are driving down - imagine they were built differently. He then does give lots of detail about how they could be made and why. The thing is when he does this about houses and infrastructure he seems to genuinely think the design is rubbish!
It seems he views the whole world as built incorrectly and he could do it better!

Any insight or experience in this?

The 'imagine' is always said with such emphasis and sense of importance, which makes me laugh so much, because it is normally a signal for 'You're not going to need to imagine anything, because I'm going to describe this in such (unecessary) detail that you could go on Mastermind with this as your specialist subject....'

I said 'I would imagine so' to ds today, in acknowledgment of what he was saying. He has to go for an x-ray, where they x-ray your jaw and was saying that he thought you would have to keep very still, while the machine moved around your head.

He then questioned why I said that, why I had used those words and whether what I had said made sense and what it meant!

Reminded me of this thread!

Lol claw

My ds told me today if what he was trying to do worked he "would literally be over the moon" he then repeated it "I mean literally over the moon" " like literally"

5 minutes later he came back "you do understand that it's a saying because I don't have a rocket don't you?!"

ha ha!

Ds thought it very strange that I would say that. Even after I explained I said 'I would imagine so' as I had never had that x-ray, however I thought he was probably right. He said 'no, imagine, is when you try to think of things'!

I haven't read all the responses but your original post resonates with me. He often will go off on huge tangents with a What If......as a response to.
My ds' language idiosyncrasies are at times very, very difficult to explain. His most obvious is a total disregard for the actual statement or question being put to him, he sometimes has inflexibility of response but more it is that he is stuck on his agenda (which is currently minecraft) but attempting to bend it to fit the conversation at hand. This morning: Me: put your shoes on please. DS: In my world there are lots of hidden chests because I've got some rare stuff now and I can hide them really well, do you want to see the chests I've hidden. Me: When you have your shoes on then you can show me your world. DS: I can craft a shoe rack actually, look, come, come, come now I can craft a shoe rack, let me show you my shoe rack I can craft. Me: Real shoes then minecraft shoes please Ds.

Erm, yes that's very familiar yawning