Thursday, April 12, 2012

Reminiscing Childhood Play As a Girl On the Autism Spectrum -Edit

I realized the day before yesterday that I had left out a very important part of my previous post about childhood play.  I had forgotten to mention my all encompassing Star Wars obsession.  This covered years 3-8 or so.  When I suppose Little House On The Prairie took over.  I longed for Star Wars toys, but never had any.  My parents thought that such toys weren't for girls.  I loved going to visit my cousin, so I could play with all of his Star Wars stuff.  I also had an uncle that is only a few years older than me, who had just as big of an obsession with Star Wars as I did.  He had light sabers, and boxes of action figures.  Sometimes, when we would all get together we would play Star Wars.We'd get assigned our character.  I'd always be princess Leah.  Always.  This was not negotiable to me.  I'd cry so hard that I'd get sick if I was told otherwise. The couch was the ship, the chairs were the little personal vehicles.We'd decide on a plot and act it out. It was so much fun.  I wanted to be her in real life and often pretended I was, reenacting scenes.  I could spend hours alone imagining that I was on wild adventures with my imaginary crew.  This didn't go very well at school when I did this at recess.  I'm sure this is part of why I difficulty making friends.  Who says people on the spectrum lack imagination?  I know in this way, I certainly didn't!

It is odd that now, I hate Star Wars.  I've never watched any of the newer movies, despite my best efforts to.  I always fall asleep. It bores me to death, even more so than Star Trek.  I don't know what changed, or made things different.  I just know that Star Wars played a big part of my life growing up.  Too big in fact, to leave out. 

If your child wants toys that seem odd considering gender, please just let them be themselves.  There's no harm in girls playing with trucks and action figures, or boys playing with Barbies, or dishes.  Repressing their true selves is never healthy.

7 comments:

  1. Star Wars!! Oh, yes! It is great to relive these memories. I enjoy reading about other's adventures through childhood, it is helping to see things in myself that I didn't realize I had deemed as wrong, or something. And explains why I am so sensitive to allowing my kids be free to be themselves.

    I had the Princess Leah doll, no one would get me the other figures. However, I had a step-brother at the time who had a ton of Star Wars toys and he would come over during the week with all of his cool stuff.

    He had two light-sabers (flashlights with plastic flimsy tubes)and we would have battles in the living room! It was awesome!! I was sad that my mom got divorced because I couldn't play with any cool boy toys anymore. I didn't really mind her getting divorced beyond that. (Is that wrong? Lol!)

    I loved E.T. too and was SO obsessive about it that my mom got me many E.T. toys so I would stop talking to her about it, and go play by myself. :-) I don't like the movie now.

    Funny, I could care less about Star Wars now too, my husband loves it though and our youngest (5) can describe ALL of the movies in great detail....non-stop...

    I let all of my guys play with what they feel drawn toward because I hated being forced to have to play with girl things. I enjoyed some of them, but I wanted a mix. I still am a mix of gender likes.

    Why do people have such problems with that?

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    1. That is so funny we are so alike! I'm glad that I decided to post an edited version of the other post. Seems like lots of ladies had the same experience!

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  2. Star Trek is the bees knees.
    Picard rocks my socks and Data how can you not love Data!!!
    If it were possible we would be making little semi-robo babies!!!
    oxox

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    1. I think I have to be one of the few aspies that just never got into Star Trek.

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  3. My first cosplay attempt was to portray Princess Leia in an old nightdress. My costumes are more sophisticated these days. I love Star Trek, Star Wars and fantasy.

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  4. I used Lego toys to construct a Star Trek bridge crew. The "starship" was the space beneath a folding card table in my room.

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    1. You were more creative than I. I mostly just lined mine up and organized them. lol

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