ditto Shelley,
Alot of my sons imaginative play comes from Songebob. (restaurant,
playfood,pirates) It does not sound scripted when he is doing it, but I know
exactly where he got the words. He also loves to pretend he is a dog or a
cat, he than only makes kitty or doggy noises for conversation. How is that
for not having to talk while doing imaginative play.
Jsper is getting better at pretend play, and is starting to use objects as
something else, like a water bottle turns into a magic radio or something
like that.
But I have to say that I have been taking a couple intensive courses on play
therapy and working with children---I've sat through many video taped play
sessions with preschool aged children, and am just SHOCKED at the level of
imagination they have for really complex scenarios, acting out parts,
assigning roles to adults... it's lightyears away from what I have ever seen in
my son.
Foxl, i think you are correct that not being able to insert yourself into an
imaginary scene is probably part of the ASD
Sarah looks like spontaneous play when she is pretending to be a cat or princess..but I can tell you which movie, book or role modeling we did in ABA that she got her scripts from...that's fine with me:)
ditto shelleyr. In my dd's evaluation one person got my dd to do a jumping thing with toys, then the next examiner walked in and said" good imaginative play"....NO...she is repeating the other guy word for word action for action!The girls are borderline in this area. Their favorite thing to do is play with their stuffed animals and draw characters, both of which seem to be fairly creative imaginative play, however, there is a lot of repetition and perseverative sounding language when they are engaged in these areas. They are now getting to the point where they enact scenarios with their stuffed animals instead of just dressing and undressing them and telling each other their names (over and over and over), and will happily engage in creative scenarios if led by an adult, but their own creative play still seems rather repetetive - but they sure like it.
As far as enacting roles themselves, they'll often pretend to be animals or characters and chase each other around and stuff, but they don't really 'get in' to the character - imaginaging social situations and such - it's more like, "I'm a bat - squeak squeak" (starts running, flapping arms as if flying) - Then the other'll go, "Ah! A bat and start running away", and the bat'll chase the other, pretend to attack her, etc.
Mason still lacks that pretend play in all of his toys--he has basically been "taught" what to play...so if he is playing tea party with his sister he always has cookies on his plate and chocolate milk in his cup...he will pretend to drink and eat it, again though because that's what we showed him. If I see him playing with toys alone, there is no pretend play involved at least from what I can see...he likes to cut up his plastic veggies, but he doesn't pretend to eat them or serve them on a plate...he has a McDonalds play set that has a register...he will either line up the food in certain orders or just press buttons on the register but has never pretended to pay for the food and again eat it.
It's like you said-he does it to an extent with sibs, but not at all on his own. The only "creativity" I have seen was with his dressing up...I thought that was a good sign as more to come, but the more I think about it, the gestures and sound effects he uses while dressed up were probably learned too.
Is this type of behavior just a step in the right direction or is it actually showing more of a problem? I need to do some more research on this.
Abby's question led me to remember one I have been considering about T. It is related, but I did not want to hijack the thread ... so:
T will play with plastic horses and dolls, make up elaborate scenarios sometimes from movies, but sometimes on her own, or combinations of movies RL, books, you name it.
At preK she also used to play dressup. DH bought both girls fancy Barbie dress up dresses, but T never uses hers (her BROTHER does, instead -- LOL).
But what I do not observe, is her giving HERSELF a role, in her play. She will when playing with her sibs sometimes. Does this sound familiar? It's not exactly functional play ... yet something of personal participation seems to be lacking?