Pet peeves about play
When people lament that autistic children don’t do enough pretend play and therefore they’re Doomed to Never Understand Social Concepts, I think about how my preschool teachers kept telling my mom I did too much pretend play. “Couldn’t you just make her read science books instead of books about fairies?” the teacher asked. Little did she know that strategy wouldn’t work, because I’d just do more pretend play about the science topic.
What’s the point of that story? There’s a few to unpack.
People who complain about lack of pretend play don’t understand that:
1) Play is supposed to be fun. Autistic kids are doing what is fun for them. If you try to control how people play, it’s no longer fun.
2) Many teachers hate and/or feel threatened by imagination and creativity. Pretend play will not endear your child to such teachers. A teacher who doesn’t accept your kid won’t model acceptance to the other students.
3) There’s no linear relationship between pretend play and social success where the more pretend play you do, the more other kids like you. If there were, I’d have been the most popular kid in preschool.
4) The way adults talk about pretend play sometimes, you’d think that’s all young children do. But young children play together in many ways other than pretend play.
They run, jump, and swing. They dance. They play sports. They do arts and crafts together. They comb dolls’ hair and dress them instead of actually pretending anything with them. They trade stickers or other objects. They push toys (especially vehicles) around and make sound effects with them, without adding a storyline or situation. They play board games and video games. They play hand clapping games with absurd associated rhymes, passed down over generations. They tell ghost stories. They make booger and bathroom jokes. They sing songs they think are funny over and over until all the adults around them want to jump out the window. They try to gross each other out. They watch kid’s TV shows.
I’d estimate that pretend play takes up at most a third of children’s group play time. If all a child does is play pretend play, they probably won’t be that popular. (Probably doesn’t matter if they restrict themselves to pretend play because they want to, only know how to, or are encouraged by family and teachers to do only that).
Sometimes I wonder whether child development “experts” have ever seen kids outside of a therapy context.
