pretend play in asd

[hungryhippo21]

i am hoping someone can enlighten me, ds is 2.6 and had a busy week last week. Amongst various appts he was given teddy and some food, teddy was fed by the adult (he has seen this before) so ds1 was expected to fedd teddy which he then did. What I cant understand is - yes if the food and teddy is placed in front of him he will fed the teddy because that is expected of him he know it makes the grown ups happy. When he is not being watched he will put food in cups take it out, the food becomes just more objects to fiddle with. If he does feed the teddy it is when he knows i am watching and he will smile at me expecting a big well done which he gets, the difference with his other toys is he then smiles to himself when he completes a puzzle etc.
what I am trying to get at is when he goes for appts and the say pretend play is emerging is it? or is he just doing what is expected to please adults.
Sorry loads of waffle just dont know what to make of it.

kinda know where you are coming from with this. Our inclusion lady was doing a bit of work with DS5 (2.9y ASD traits)and showing him how to 'feed the teddy', which he duly copied, and she gave whoops of delight.

However, I know that he only did that because she wanted him to copy, and she did it several times before he did copy. I am convinced he doesnt have a clue what the process is about, only that she smiled and clapped when he did it.

The SALT was saying about another child: "you could see X had been shown how to pretend eat, and feed the teddy, as he did the same each time. BUT there was no furthering the game, he didnt go on to offer a drink, or include others in the game..."

errrm, cant remember where i was going with that but just to agree, they do seem to see what they want to see sometimes.

I am totally with you. The consultant we see said "DD (3.2, Global Development Delay, Epilepsy) is showing more social interaction than before". She gave the dolly a drink.

Yes, she did. But she gave the dolly actual water from a tap in a cup. It went everywhere, because she didn't realise that the dolly wouldn't drink it.

When the paed said "This (the rattle) is a biscuit. Can you give the biscuit to the dolly?", DD took the rattle, and put it beside the dolly, and walked off. She understood "give" and "dolly", but obviously didn't have a clue that she was meant to pretend that the rattle was a biscuit.

I have ASD queries over her, but the paed says that because she smiles and wants to engage with him, he is leaning away from it. Does that mean that children who like attention can't have ASD? Not what I have read here.

Put DD in preschool, or any group setting, and she just CAN'T follow the crowd, pretend, etc. without detailed instruction and continual prompts.

My DS does pretend play with other things (putting the dolly to sleep, making the dollies play ring-a-ring-of-roses) but I could never get him to do the feeding thing. Now he has appt in a couple of months, and I could put a bet on him not feeding dolly/bear. Why is the feeding thing so important? Seriously, is there a reason why they always test with that?

forgot to add it was the first time he did it despite being shown b4. so sc13 he probably will do it

I don't know, sc13, I wonder if it is because it is a regular everyday activity that EVERYONE does, so a concept the child should 'get' regardless of their cultural or social situation?

Hmmmm,

If paediatricians made all their visits at nurseries or at home, would it cost the NHS any more in the long term?
Factor in the completely artificial surroundings of the doctor's office. The child either learns the rules out of a desire to please or resists. So much inaccurate data is gathered. Parents' reports are downplayed because they are not "objective" (or "proper" as someone said on this board much to my amazement).

Junior developmental paediatricians could spend their time doing observations on site and the quality of the data would surely be much higher.

I would love the paed to see DD at preschool, lingle. They told me last week that they need to try and secure extra funding for her, because the SEN funding the council gives won't cover full 1:1, so they tried to only give what it covers, and it hasn't worked. So they are back to full 1:1 but can't afford it. What can they do? Without it she is socially lost and having accidents, which means I have to go in and spend the rest of the session with her. But the preschool won't even break even, and they can't afford the £124 per month shortfall in funding that results from DD getting full 1:1.

But the consultant sees her in that room, with 4 adults, and thinks she is doing ok.

"This (the rattle) is a biscuit. Can you give the biscuit to the dolly?", DD took the rattle, and put it beside the dolly, and walked off. She understood "give" and "dolly", but obviously didn't have a clue that she was meant to pretend that the rattle was a biscuit.

Most likely, to be honest, she was thinking "someone call for the men in white coats - this person thinks that rattle is a biscuit!"

We're very logical. It's not always a lack of imagination, it's more an inability to see why on earth we should waste our time pretending rattles are biscuits

My ds3 was asked to pretend a wooden block was an aeroplane, and after that a car, he wasn't the slightest bit interested!
He did eventually learn the feeding the teddybear routine, but would always finish with poking the teddy's eyes out and banging it on the table, or throwing it on the floor, and then bursting into laughter, I am sure he was making fun of their little tests!

deeja ds1 does that as well now, they didnt really comment on him trying to remove dollys eyes or pulling down her knickers to have a look. Amber I totally agree with you ds1 knows what certain things are for and dont try to do any different.dr was saying oh he doesnt colour match blocks - why would he want to? A block is a block if its the same size it doesnt do anything different if its red or blue.

There was a brilliant article in the paper the other day about some child who had answered a question for a test, and got zero marks for it. They gave the answer to a University Professor who awarded it the equivalent of a First Degree. The child had been way, way ahead of where they should be, and had given a proper 'adult' answer to a question that required them to be age 9, not age 19. Because they hadn't given the 'age 9' required answer, no marks.

Sometimes I think ASD testing works on the same principle. They test for NT responses, then when they don't find NT answers, mark us down as being very low IQ/unable to work out simple puzzles. Not always, of course.

Meant to say...how intelligent is your family cat? I'm often reminded of cats when I encounter people with an ASD, or think about how I interact with those around me. Ever tried getting a cat to go fetch something, or do tricks, or do a puzzle on command? Think the cat is stupid? Nope. Just can't be bothered. So it is with some of us.

Lou, Amber: LOL, and amen to what Amber says about Lou's daughter. I think perhaps after trying to make the doll drink and seeing it didn't work, the little girl thought, of course the doll's not going to eat the stupid rattle 'biscuit'. Which is called learning from experience, and should get extra points!!
Lou, you're right about the everyday thing, but then I think, everyday is not necessarily interesting, is it? Shouldn't they get extra points for imaginative play, like doing something unusual rather than everyday? DS imitates me more when I do crazy stuff like pretending that his train has hit and killed a toy sheep (don't ask) - he even says 'sheep dead' - but I guess that wouldn't go down too well with the paed...

I've always found this a terribly grey area as to what is imaginative pretend play and what is copying other people - I decided I couldn't be bothered to analyse it too much, and just modelled pretend play and left it to DS to do as he would. As it happened as his language developed his pretend play developed anyway.

snort at the poor dead sheep.

I had the reverse with SALT last year - SALT says - DS lines up dinosaurs a lot, instead of making them go "roar" - I say - oh he's doing a bit of a Noah's Ark scenario
, he'll be lining them up 2 by 2 to go into the Ark, - in report that went down as "parent agreed DS has no pretend play"

My understanding (fwiw) is that typically developing children will spontaneously display at least some signs of "social" imaginative play e.g. pretending to put teddy to bed, pretending to bathe dolly - whereas our ASD kids, whilst they might do "imaginative" play, don't spontaneously demonstrate "social" imaginative play.

The point that without a dx (and, sometimes, even with one), our DC don't get the help they need, remains firm.
The sensory issues I tend to see as more 'concrete'. BUT if one wanted to just go and deconstruct some of the diagnostic criteria, we'd have a real field day. If you asked the experts, so exactly what studies, with what control groups, and done when and why and on how many children, demonstrate that dinosaurs have to go 'roar' instead of going into the ark 2 by 2 (perfectly 'social' if you ask me!!), I'd be curious to hear their answer.

As a child, I vividly remember the endless hours that other children would spent dressing a doll and pushing it round in a pram, then dressing it in a whole new outfit, etc. And every single time I'd think "raving mad, the lot of them. It's a doll. It's not real, y'know!"

Now cars...those I understood. Different sorts of model car, tested for speed and endurance, compared with the other cars. Different tracks to test-drive them most effectively. All properly lined up and correctly accounted for. That was worthwhile and informative. It lent itself to scientific evaluation and definite results. I've since applied the knowledge to many other things in life. Admittedly, to other people it probably looked exactly like me obsessively pushing cars down a ramp for absolutely no reason at all for hour after hour, day after day. Shows what they knew, eh?

So someone tell me what the pretend play with a plastic doll actually does, by comparison, and why it's considered better.

I think by the point SALT went in to observe DS was doing the "social" sort of imaginative play too btw - I have a lovely memory from last year of DS having various small INTG dolls get up and go to bed.

I'm with Amber on this. When little girls come to play and want to "pretend", I lose the will to live.

DS1 (6, resolved receptive language delay)'s pretend play is still limited. He may never be an actor and memorably responded to a book about wanting to be a bee by saying "Why would you want to be something that isn't you?". His social and academic horizons are however unlimited.

I understand a very basic point that the word "pen" isn't actually a pen so there is a similarity between learning to use words and learning to pretend. Beyond that I'm lost. Oh, and bored of pretending to be the brave dolphin's zookeeper.

perhaps it's a good thing I had two language-delayed boys.

this reminds me a bit of the kids' party I went to on Saturday - another mother was talking about how she played a game with her daughter so that her daughter would eat some raisins on a plate without using her hands, just by putting her head down to the plate iyswim - at that point I wondered if I was missing some sort of parenting gene by failing to see the point or fun in this sort of game......

we did the dolly thing to he will copy when he wants but will not take the game any further and bores of it in 2 ecs flat now cars or give him anything with Thomas then hes away

DS1 did the 'Teddy Test' and duly fed it but this was said to be 'learned play' - which I think is true but I still think the test is just a box ticking exercise so that the SALT can write 'Child has no spontaneous imaginative play' or 'Child could not feed teddy'

There is a quantative and qualitative difference in the play of NT children and ASD children. DS2 (NT) plays a game with buses in which he controls the routes and makes up rules for the passengers. "All the girls off now' 'All the men off at the next stop' He enjoys making up rules whereas DS1 can only follow rules. DS1 will make Harold the Helicopter fly (spontaneously) and say 'Harold in the sky' but I don't think it is pretend for him. The plastic helicopter is in the sky.

I'd argue society needs slightly less emphasis on pretend play skills. We've had all the banks 'pretending' they had some money. Having some people in society to say "er, actually, there isn't any" would have been a lot handier.

I do think pretend play is very important and a lack of it is a good indication that a child is not developing neurotypically. Most NT children develop by learning from and copying adults and pretend play is part of this. Taking it further, NT children are usually even more keen to do the real thing than the pretend play if it is offered to them. Try saying "I wonder who can help me with this job" in a room full of NT children and watch the queue form. If you say that in the hearing of an autistic child they will most probably ignore you.

Proper pretend play also allows development of flexible thinking, allowing the child to test out different scenarios and maybe practise interacting with another child or adult. I totally agree that teaching a child to feed teddy is a waste of time, and that the OP's Ds doing it to please an adult is not a good indication that imaginative play is developing. But I don't think that pretend play can be dismissed as unimportant.