Maybe he's not Aspergers!!!!!
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Maybe he's not Aspergers!!!!!
| Thu, 01-19-2006 - 10:42pm |
Ok---any of your guy's kids actually play with others?
I am witnessing my son sitting and playing dollhouse with his 4y sister. Those little Fisher Price people. Still lots of noises and crashing people, but my 4y asked if "that was daddy" and my son said---"no, it's grandpa". I have never heard him actually play "pretend" and "talk".
Maybe he's starting to use his language when playing--finally.
I guess I assume that if he can do this kind of play---he isn't ASD. Am I wrong? I thought these kids CAN'T play normally.
Holly
Jacob--6y
Bipolar
ASD
Anxiety

Hi Holly,
My 4.5 year old son, diagnosed with Asperger's just started playing those same little Fisher-price people with his 6 year old sister. I have never seen him interact and play like that before, but so far it has just been with his sister. They have the same set at school and the preschool teacher tells me he never touches it. My two little cousins were over during the winter break and he didn't play with them either. I think it must just depend upon their mood, comfort level, and if they are being social. My son still will interact with his sister for a short time but most of it is parallel play but with the same toy...so that's a step in the right direction.
If he was diagnosed by a reputable physician, then chances are he has Asperger's and that this change in play may be due to maturity, or even perhaps learned social behavior. Either way, don't doubt the diagnosis, be happy for the progress!
Carol
My son is 8, and dx with Asperger's and bipolar NOS. He does that pretend play all the time. He is obsessed with Legos and Bionicles, and every day, he will build some new thing and then say, "Does anyone want to play ?" However, he generally doesn't make the characters talk to each other or speak for themselves. Like, he'll hold a Knights Kingdom guy in his hand and say, "pretend you hear a whooshing sound, and you look up to see a huge spaceship about to land on Danju's head. And now Danju is sucked up into a giant void and you don't know where he's gone. Now pretend you want to follow him, but a mysterious force is holding you onto the ground." Very imaginative, but if it were me playing, I'd be making my guy do the talking, "Help! Help! I'm being sucked into a giant void!"
I play with him every day, and before I knew he had AS, his playing style used to drive me crazy. You might hear this about AS kids: He's like a little director. Now, I try to encourage him to make his characters talk to other characters. Playing with him can be tedious, because he REALLY wants to play, but once we start, it's all a bunch of whooshing and swooshing, while I make my little Lego guy amble around saying, "Gee whiz, I wonder if someone will come around and explain what that big thing is?" After a while, I get interested in mail or something, and David says, "Mom, are we still playing or what?" And I have to say, "I WAS playing, but your guy wasn't talking to mine." It's kind of like pulling teeth. If I don't have other things, like laundry or dinner, I look at is as a kind of "floortime" experience, and I do my best to stay focussed and interested in the storyline so I can help keep a flow of conversation going between characters.
Having said this, when I think about it, I realize that there are times when he's able to make his characters say things to other characters, in a way that I consider normal. He has a lot of trouble doing that if both characters are his own, but he knows it's something that I've tried to encourage, and he sometimes attempts it, although I can tell it doesn't come easily.
These days his little brother plays with him too, and it can be a real problem, because David (my AS child) totally takes over. Like, he'll say, "Hey Nathan, do you want to play Lego fire engines?" Nathan gets all excited and says YES, because he loves fire engines, which David knows and uses to his advantage. And David says, basically, "Okay, you be the fire fighter and pretend you are on your way to fight a fire when all of a sudden all of my Bionicle characters suddenly pop out of nowhere." And when Nathan cries that he doesn't want Bionicles ruining a perfectly good fire engine game, David can't handle it. It's my way or the highway with him, at least much of the time. It's not a control thing so much as the fact that once he gets a scenario in his head, he feels very strongly that he MUST play it out. It really distresses him if he cannot.
I sometimes am confused when people say that kids with AS can't do pretend play. As I think about it, I realize that my two boys also often play a thing where one of them is a baby dinosaur or something, and the other one is rescuing it...and they are definitely both acting in character. So...maybe my kid doesn't have Asperger's either. He plays, he's not geeky (no more than any of the boys in his class), he doesn't flap his hands, or memorize train tables.
Evelyn, mom of two boys who just are what they are, regardless of the labels
David, 8 AS, BP; Nathan, 4, ??
My DD (4 y.o., PDD-NOS) does play with her brother, but only when he plays her way! If he dares to disrupt the rules of the game (meaning HER rules) all heck breaks loose -- even if he decides to stand rather than sit or sit rather than stand. But given those conditions, she does enjoy playing with him. She also does do make-believe play, although mainly by herself. But she will pretend to feed her dolly and put her to sleep, pretend to cook me food, that sort of thing. The thing that flags her play as ASD for me is the rigidity of it: not only does she get to make up all the "rules" but her pretend play usually has the same, or similar script each time. So when she pretends to cook, she usually does the same foods in the same order; when she plays with her Little People farm, the animals usually do the same thing every time she plays. That's why it's difficult for her to play with peers, I think; her brother (who's only 2) will go along with her style of play, whereas her peers usually want to have some input and will mess up her routine.
That being said, the other day a friend of mine came over with her two boys for a playdate. Her older son is 4 y.o., and NT. I have one of those rugs with roads printed on it and a basket of toy cars, and Sylvia, who never showed much interest in this rug before, was VERY intrigued by the boy playing with it. She got out her own little truck and sat next to him and tried to imitate him while he played, and complied when he asked her to move so he could get his car by, etc. Then, a bit later in the playdate, he started demonstrating some gymnastics to her, and she had a blast running around with him, laughing, trying to imitate his moves, etc. It was a *really* successful playdate, and I'm so pleased with the progress she's making, socially! But I have to say that I still see a lot of ASD behaviors in her, and I know that playing with other children will always be a crapshoot with her. For example, if a little girl came over to play, rather than a boy, I question how well she'd do... Girls that age tend to be VERY into elaborate pretend play scenarios, and I know that Sylvie would have a very difficult time with the unpredictable, unscripted nature of that style of play...
I think it's GREAT that Jacob is playing with his sister -- that must have been so wonderful for you to see! It sounds like he's doing great, and my advice is -- forget about the labels. Keep on doing just what you're doing with him, and enjoy the fact that he's at the point where he's able to share in this kind of moment with his sister!
Jennifer
Liam does play with others, but he too has the director complex and has to organize the tone of the game etc.
Just like everything else in autism, play skills are also on a spectrum from kids with milder delays in play, atypical play skills to extremely poor or no play skills (ie sit and stim all day but no interactive play). A diagnosis of ASD does not mean that the child cannot have pretend play, however, thier play skills will typically not be up to thier peers.
Sometimes when they are younger and higher functioning thier play skills may appear almost normal but as other kids continue to progress they may continue to lag behind for longer again how severe depends on the child.
Renee
PDD-NOS DD plays with other children, but not very often. She is typically a loner, but will occassionally play with others. Sometimes she plays with other kids nicely and at other times it has to be her way, or no way.