When they say autistic people don't have imagination and don't engage in imaginative play, what do they mean? I knew I had imagination, and that was one of the biggest things holding me back from thinking I could be autistic, because that was something always stated and listed and formalized. Autistic people don't have imagination.
I never really was into playing school or house, like other kids were (why would you be a grown-up when you could be a HORSE?). But I would play all sorts of imaginative games with my cousins and my sister and myself.
I played Orphan Kittens. We played all sorts of games with our stuffed animals and model horses. Admittedly, we often wrote out the scripts before and they were usually similar patterns that happened... but that is a trait common to children. (You notice it when you babysit or have younger siblings or really just encounter things like that).
We played Lord of the Rings and went on quests where grapefruits or a pomegranate were palantir. There was a game where we were princesses that also involved horses and we would switch roles between them back and forth. We also played a lot of complicated games involving chickens and occasionally my cousin's goat which we were all afraid of, but those were not always imaginative games--I don't really remember the point of them, so they are a bit irrelevant.
In 4th grade, I made snail houses and fairy houses and for one brief moment, I was a trendsetter when everyone else in 4th grade also made "fairy friends". (Although I was a bit upset that they treated it as a game, because I at least half--probably more--believed in it). I played games where the swings were the way to outer space and the only way back was to go down the slides. I was good at coming up with games and stories, so as long as everyone else was still young enough to play stories and pretend at lunch, I had company. They grew out of it earlier, so I switched to books.
And I lived in stories and books (and still do) despite the best efforts of literature analysis to beat that love out of me. And I still half-live in a world of stories, although I read much less than my high school minimum of a book a day. (I have a lot more reading to do of other materials than I did in high school.) (Also, I don't like going new places myself which is why I haven't been yet to the [non-campus] library even though I love libraries.)
Anyway, on any given day, I'm about 80% sure I'm autistic and I've had official professional people agree with me, so I just wanted to summarize this to say that autistic people can be creative too and that is a silly requirement to say they can't.Labels: autism, autistic?, cousins, did you really say that, dsm v, fitting in, friends, me, Medium Sister, reading, special interest, when I was younger