Another imaginary play thread

[Barmymummy]

Sorry, I know this has probably been done to death BUT....!

DS has very very limited imaginary play, none in fact if I'm honest that he can make up from scratch himself. But...when he plays with his toys he will either sing songs or copy what he has seen his sister do/play with him. So for example today he was in the sand pit up to his eyeballs in muck and bullets and pushing his toy truck along the edge of the sandpit reciting his Charlie & Lola book. When playing with his trains he says things like "come on Percy, off to bed then" which he has heard his sister say when she was playing with them.

Was just wondering if this is a step up from no imaginary play at all or whether this is just applied delayed echolalia iykwim!

Were told by hosp that his first SALT/Paed appt should be through for late May so getting there slowly!

Another example just happened!! DS has got a toy aeroplane that is reminding him of 'Come Outside' (TV prog) and he is flying the aeroplane around but humming/singing the theme tune to the programme!!

DS1 does this too - From what I have read, truly imaginary play is when the child imagines something is so whilst knowing that it is not - feeding a doll is functional play whereas pretending the doll is a princess who has thrown a party is imaginative play.

For once I don't agree with you Cyber -feeding a doll is imaginary play. Feeding a person is functional.
surely?

I keep getting excited when i see dd2 doing this too, only to be told by her nursery leader that she is just copying what she has seen others do , Dd will put a toy phone to her ear and babble (she can't talk), she makes animals walk along the floor and then makes them kiss each other and she puts clothes on the dog.

She will bath a dolly but she has seen others do this. She loves dressing up and dancing around like a fairy, does that count as imaginary play? .

Oh Clanger thats great, thank you! Gives me hope!

I am sure that the fact he still can't what I call have idle chit chat with us yet surely must hamper his ability to talk twaddle with his toys....do you see what I mean??

Sorry, will go away in a minute I promise lol, but just thought....

DS the other day picked up a banana out the fruit bowl and had a pretend conversation with 'grandma'. Can't be sure whether he has seen someone do this or not but am clinging onto that one!!!

barmy that sounds very imaginative and lovely

my ds is nearly 5 (eek) and his imaginary play has really improved with his speech, and it is so good to see! and most of that would be in the last year iirc.

today he posted a letter and was studying the post box, he spotted the crown down at the bottom, pushed his head just below it and squinted up at me and said "mummy I am a king" it was such a fab moment, hope you don't mind me sharing - it isn't really something a lot of people would get excited about, it really made me laugh, and my heart swelled too.

It was something i read in a a book rather than something i know to be a fact but i see what the author means in a way, the second example is a higher level of pretend play. There can be quite of a lot of hair splitting in these judgements i suppose. I think the Marnelet sounds imaginative so maybe the teacher did not know about all the examples?

Ahhhh Aefond that is lovely..... a very proud mummy moment and rightly so!! XXX

Hmm, I'd love to know if putting a pair of knickers (mine) on your head so that they hang down like a beard and saying that your "Father Christmas" counts as imaginary play
DD has been doing this since about 3....it's a bit special, no?
Actually, she's obsessed with Father Christmas. Draws him all the time and puts bubbles on her face at bath time and announces "DD with a beard!"
We have some imaginative play but it's not along expected lines, shall we say...

aww brioche your dd sounds like a star, do you wear white furry knickers ?

Ohhh thats hysterical!!! LOVE IT!!

I do wonder if any good clinical study exists of imaginary play in children with ASD as compared with NT children, with control groups where the observers do not know whether the child in question is NT or not. My impression is increasingly 1) that the experts' view of imaginary play is actually very narrow, and not very imaginative at all; 2) that we can't really tell what a child is imagining if they don't have the language to tell us - for what I know, when DS drives his train around, in his head he's imagining the sequel to 'Lord of the Rings'; 3) a lot of things that would be considered imaginary play in NT children are seen as imitation or 'not really imaginary play' in children with ASD, just because they are known, or suspected to have, ASD. Any little girl bathing her doll is doing imaginary play - of course they imitate someone, because otherwise how would they know?? But just because the little girl in question happens to be on the spectrum, then it is 'just' imitation. This to me is flawed reasoning.

I hate it when anything DS1 does is dismissed as 'copied' or 'learned' but I do think there is difference between functional play (putting the train on the track instead of spinning the wheels) and imagining that a train crash has happened etc. . Functional play is a good sign in itself, all NT children have functional play before imaginative play. So feeding the doll should be celebrated in itself not seen as a bad thing.

Couldn't agree more SC13. I have truly got to the point where I no longer cry and simply laugh when I read some of the cruder descriptions of the "social imagination" criteria. Especially when I think that my DS1 (resolved receptive language delay) could easily be considered deficient in this area.

I also do wonder (no, seriously) where all this social imagination etc. goes when we grow up. Seriously, how imaginative is your average adult?? The only social imagination I see at work these days is women having the 'why doesn't he call me back' group conversation (which, sadly, still happens in one's 40s)

There is a basic principle that language is not the same is the object itself - the signifier is not the signified - the word "cat" is not a cat. So to learn language you need to grasp that things stand for other things. So far so good. But after that it all gets a bit silly and incoherent, not least because professionals are so likely to assess a child's "imagination" incorrectly (judging from some of the near-comic examples on this board). And that article published about Aspergers in girls last week said that the way you spot them is that they live in a fantasy world!

Agree with you tclanger about the useful posts from Amber et al on this. Am tempted to do one of my mumsnet links for SC13. There's a good one where we talk about "social imagination" and someone (Amber? Jimjams?) points out that it's really about flexibility of thought.

I agree about the social communication; I've had massive learning to do in social communication when I moved to this country because the rules, the body language, even the facial expressions (or often, lack thereof) are so different. Sometimes I hope that, as long as DS gets enough language and is smart enough, I can just teach him stuff because I have had to learn it myself and can articulate it, rather than having 'absorbed' it unconsciously as a child, IYSWIM.