Aspergers/Autism/Sensory Integration Chatter #3

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Just reminded about something on another thread ... what are aspie children like with toys?

I thought for years that my daughter was just fussy, practically no toy I bought her she'd play with - and she's been given loads of toys over the years. As a toddler she liked peg puzzles and things you put shapes or letters into place, and a set of alpabet coasters you could arrange into patterns. She also liked blocks that she could arrange into symmetrical patterns (not make houses out of). I got her toy animals, she'd arrange them by colour not play with them. She doesn't seem very interested in computer games, she gives up very easily unless they are pattern matching games like Mahjong or she has some sucker on tap to get her through the game. She likes to play simple board and card games with other people.

But mostly she makes beds for her fluffy toys - her room is STILL full of fluffy toys in beds. I bought a huge amount of lego a few years ago at considerable expense hoping it would interest her - for years it sat there and she wouldn't play with it but now she makes rooms out of it with beds in them for lego people (she makes the people herself out of blocks, like a small block - no face - on top of a rocket nosecone for a skirt, she doesn't like the minifigs) and she has a large cardboard tower for her fuzzles, again mostly beds. When she plays dressup it usually involves beds too. Beds beds beds. You could sum up her 'play' as making patterns, and making beds.

My other kid plays with anything that isn't nailed down, making animals kiss each other, hide in houses, play games, makes them talk to each other, makes them houses to live in. She's given quite a few of her toys names, which is cute. She already tries to make things out of lego. Visiting children tend to have a fit when they see how much lego is in this house and can be very hard to remove from it at the end of the day - my elder daughter gets quite huffy they want to play with her lego not her.

The end result of all this is the huge collection of toys that has been bought for DD#1 over the years have all ended up in DD#2's room (except the lego), and DD#1's room now has a box of barbies she never ever opens except for when she wants to make them beds (which she hasn't done for about 2 years), and all the white fluffy toys, which either live on her bed as decoration or end up tucked into beds around her room. The toyboxes that used to be full of toys are now all made into beds. So I look like a horrible mother who hasn't given any toys to one of my kids.

Edit: DD#1 spends a lot of time drawing. Princesses and beds, mostly, with a smattering of dungeons, fights and graphic murders and torture. Her drawing style hasn't changed much over the last 5 or 6 years.