There are many different definitions of the word play. I found the one most suitable one for this speech on Wikipedia; according to their citation it was taken from Catherine Garvey’s book Play from 1977: ‘Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment.’
Accordingly there can’t be any way of ‘playing inappropriately’, and yet this is exactly what many autistic children are accused of. To be Frank, oxymorons such as ‘appropriate play’, ‘play skills’ or ‘teaching kids to play properly’ make my skin crawl. While autistic children may have other interests and approaches due to their individual nature (as opposed to the social nature of others), there is always purpose in their way of playing, even if that purpose isn’t obvious to others. Furthermore, activities don’t always have to be physical; many of our activities are mental which gives outsiders the impression that we are inactive.
In many (if not most) cases play also involves an element of voluntary education, due to children’s natural desire to learn about things they are interested in.

I will talk about several types of play that are particularly common amongst autistic children and often misunderstood and therefore pathologised.

The most discussed form of autistic play is lining up toys. Lining up is part of everyday life: in libraries you will find books lined up on shelves, people line up in a queue at the ice cream stand, and we put our mugs in a line on the kitchen counter. Apart from this, the child may be honing their counting skills or create a pattern that goes unnoticed by others, such as one blue car, two trucks, one van, one racing car, one blue car, two trucks and so on. The same goes for stacking up blocks and toys, which - by the way - was Albert Einstein’s favourite pastime as a child, and which also may include the balancing challenge to stack them up as high as possible.
Or imagine a girl who just learnt to count to ten. She takes all her toy animals and arranges them in one-two-three-four-five rows with one-two-three-four animals in each row, with no toys left over. After this she will find out whether she can put all of them into six equal rows without having any left over.
Another possible reason for lining up things can be creativity. Of course we all have our own opinions of what constitutes a work of art, but if the child considers their creation as such, we should accept it.
The probably most famous example of how autistic play is routinely pathologised is an experiment by the mother of Cadence, an autistic girl who was 10 years old at the time. She had lined up hundreds, if not thousands, of Shopkins across the floor, creating shapes such as spirals and loops, going up to the edges of her drawers and chairs. Her mother posted an image of her creation in several groups, including one regular parenting group and one group of martyr parents of autistic children, not mentioning that Cadence is autistic in either group.
Reactions in the regular parenting group were along the lines of ‘Beautiful’, ‘Gorgeous colours’, ‘A piece of art’, ‘Love it, it reminds me of a 3D zen tangle’, ‘What a great display of patience’ and ‘Such creative play’.
Reactions in the martyr parents group were quite different: ‘It’s sad that they don’t know how to play’, ‘My kid does this too - it’s so frustrating’, ‘What a shame they can’t play in normal ways’, ‘They must feel so isolated’ or ‘Yep, my kid is always making a mess too’.
Other children may structure or organise their toys, for example by colour, size or type. Just as lining things up, structuring and organising are part of everyday life, and there is nothing wrong with children teaching themselves at a young age.
On top of this they will learn to make decisions; some toys, just like some children, will not fit neatly into a specific category. Does the medium-sized toy animal belong with the large or the small animals? Should the red and blue car be placed with the red or the blue cars?
Some autistic children put toys and objects on the edge of surfaces such as tables or counters to look at them from different places, angles and perspectives, thus increasing their spatial understanding.

Observation can be a very fulfilling form of play. As a child I could spend hours on end watching a cross spider build a web or investigating the social life on an anthill. This helped me get an understanding of and an appreciation for nature. If someone had seen me, they probably would have thought I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Other children may observe how falling raindrops impact differently on different surfaces, how fish in a tank interact with each other or how the smoke from a chimney changes direction with the wind.
Autistic children may observe things that appear mundane to us, but that shouldn’t prevent us from respecting their interests.
Observations help us connect with the world around us, see how things work and discover connections and patterns. The value of observation as a form of play can not be overestimated.

One very common way of autistic play is reading. I was fascinated by letters and words and kept nagging my parents about how certain words were spelt. Initially they didn’t support my efforts because they were afraid I would get bored and fall behind once I’d enter school, but there was no stopping me, and as a toddler I left my mother dumbfounded when during a walk I pointed at the sign of a petrol station and asked her, ‘Mum, does that say Esso?’ (Of course this is not the best choice for the first independently deciphered word, but I didn’t know that at the time.) I had taught myself to read around the age of three and spent most of my childhood buried in books. At the age of six I read novels intended for children twice my age, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. My parents assumed that I didn’t understand everything, but I did.
Reading opened an entirely new world to me and taught me about history, different cultures and a lot more, and it laid the foundation for my own literary work. It also helped me to identify areas of interest and research them intensely. The advent of the Internet added a completely new dimension to the possibilities, and I spend a lot of time researching topics for my articles and poems.

This brings me to screen time. When I was a child, the first and only screen was that of a black and white TV my parents inherited when I was 12. My screen time was limited, and I found it very frustrating when I had to choose between an interesting history documentary and my favourite detective series because my allocated time only allowed for one of the two.
Today screens serve a multitude of purposes such as education, information, socialising, creations, entertainment and gaming. Some autistic people, both children and adults, have a device on permanent play to create a soothing background noise.
Autistic children may use their devices to be creative, communicate, play games, entertain themselves or educate themselves.
Many parents feel the need to limit their children’s screen time, which often leads to distress, frustration and anxiety in their autistic children. The topic of screen time was repeatedly discussed in the Autism Inclusivity group on Facebook, and it was pointed out that electronic devices help autistic children with emotional regulation and support the many of us who are visual learners.
Parents who removed their autistic children’s restrictions on screen time reported that their children thrived and became more balanced, and that some whose speech had been delayed showed rapid improvements in their verbal communication.

Sensory play can be quite important for autistic children. Certain sights, sounds, textures, tastes and smells can have a soothing or stimulating effect on us.
I remember how I spent ages in the sandpit just letting the fine sand run down my hand and how it used to calm me. I also used to pick up ants and put them down again, afterwards enjoying the invigorating smell they left on my fingertips.
I often sat in front of the washing machine. Looking at the gentle movements, the changing colours and the rising and falling water level with the many bubbles had a soothing effect on me.
I also took great pleasure from my kaleidoscope, watching the beautiful patterns and knowing that each move creates a new design, at the same time bemoaning the fact that it also made the previous design irretrievable.
Autistic children may enjoy exploring certain textures with their fingers or tongues, watching moving objects such as ceiling fans or listening to the same song over and over again, to give but a few examples.
Some autistic children love a certain type of movement, such as jumping, balancing or spinning in circles.
Many autistic children, especially sensory seekers, are particularly fond of outdoor play because it provides them with endless opportunities for sensory input. Other autistic children, though, may prefer the indoors, especially sensory avoiders.
In some cases, when the child is listening to a sound, watching something or enjoying a certain smell, it may look like they are not doing anything. They are. The autistic mind is always busy.

A lot of our play consists of examination and experimentation. A child constantly spinning the wheels of their toy cars is likely to study the mechanics, a child repeatedly throwing sand or leaves into the air may study their trajectory while enjoying the pattern and movement, and a child permanently dropping toys or objects on the floor from different heights may be in the process of figuring out gravity, as well as how different objects react to the impact.
I often took toys apart to see how they worked and then put them together again, with mixed success.
Autismophobic professionals often point out that many autistic children don’t engage in what they call ‘functional play’, which means playing with a toy in the way its designer intended. Many autistic children are more interested in how things function, which could be called analytical play and should be just as valid.
I vaguely remember an incident my parents often told me about: at the breakfast table I, seemingly out of the blue, emptied my glass of milk into the sugar bowl in one quick movement without spilling any. I had seen small amounts of sugar being dissolved in liquids such as my tea before, but I wanted to find out how equal amounts of liquids and sugar would interact.
I also had a habit of repeatedly touching the hotplate on the electric cooker when my mother was using it. My parents kept telling me that the plate was hot when the cooker was on, but it wasn’t as simple as that. Immediately after being switched on, the plate was still cold, and immediately after being switched off, the plate was still hot. I had to get to the bottom of this.
Of course I’m not promoting cooker play, but the example may give you a little glimpse into the mind of the autistic child.
Back then I wasn’t able to explain the thoughts behind my actions, and so I was simply considered to be naughty.
In one of her articles Evaleen recalled how she used to play in the bathroom by flushing toilets and refilling the cistern with cups of water. This type of behaviour would usually set any so-called professional’s alarm bells ringing: inappropriate play, unhealthy obsessions and so on.
Evaleen explained: ‘While playing with the cistern in our upstairs bathroom I learnt about gravity. I learnt about displacement. I taught myself about the velocity of water, flow rates and capacity. While playing I taught myself about many scientific concepts. These were taught to me again later on in school when I studied physics.’
She was lucky. Many parents actually lock their bathrooms to prevent their children from repeatedly flushing the toilet.

I dare say that the vast majority of scientists, inventors and technicians engaged in analytical and experimental play when they were children.

Some autistic children prefer to play by themselves, and that’s perfectly fine. Others may not approach other children because they fear rejection, or because the idea never occurs to them. Long before I knew that I’m autistic myself I worked in a crèche with an autistic girl who didn’t seem to notice any of the other children in the room. Seeing that she wouldn’t approach the others, I encouraged the others to approach her, and soon she was the centre of attention and loved it. Shortly afterwards I was called into the crèche owner's office to explain to her therapist how she made such huge progress in just a few days.
Of course I assumed her mother had been aware of my role, but a few years later I heard her referring to me as ‘just the guy who changed the nappies’.
For me as an autistic person, even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, this was mere common sense, but it seems that non-autistic persons don’t naturally think along those lines. Seven years after the event a scientific study was published which concluded that autistic children are ‘more likely to engage in play when initiated by peers’.

Many autistic children, including older ones, enjoy parallel play. Their way of playing, such as analytical or experimental play, wouldn’t be understood by others, and their participation could seriously disrupt their play and their thought process, or they could alter a prepared script the autistic child is playing out. In parallel play they can enjoy the company of others while still doing their own thing.

Some autistic children are more sociable than others, but I think it is safe to say that all types of socialising, no matter how enjoyable, take a mental toll on all of us, and we therefore need sufficient time to spend on our own and recharge. My parents tell me they felt excluded because I spent so much time in my room, but that time was needed to recover from social interaction such as school, play with friends and even family life.

A while ago I was contacted by the mother of a non-verbal boy who panicked because she feared he was regressing by having lost his counting skills. She had attached a photograph of the sequence he laid out: 1-2-3-4-5-10-9-8-7-6. I immediately noticed his system and told her that now that he knew his numbers he got bored with the repetition and started experimenting. There was an invisible line in the middle of his sequence; on the left side the numbers read left to right, and on the right side right to left.
When something is taught to us and we understand it, we are ready to move on. A study in 2015 demonstrated that repetition is detrimental to autistic learning; it dulls our senses and reduces our attentiveness by neglecting our constant need for intellectual stimulation.
In many cases autistic children use the acquired information creatively, just like the boy I mentioned, by including it in their play and improvising rather than merely repeating it. As a child I was supposed to learn my English vocabulary by repeatedly reading the lists of German words and their English translations. It was boring, and there was no context, so instead I used the new words to create sentences or write short stories, and I believe that I still acquired a reasonable grasp of the English language. Rote learning doesn’t work for autistic children.
When I was a child I was sent to piano lessons and was told I was very gifted, but practising the same piece over and over again was too boring for me, so I improvised or made up my own tunes instead until my parents cancelled the lessons. Later, in secondary school, I was allowed and even encouraged to improvise during music lessons and in the school band which is one of the very few fond memories I have of school.
As a child Beethoven was supposed to practise certain pieces on the piano but instead improvised or made up his own tunes for which he was severely punished by his abusive father. Fortunately his tutors appeared to have been more accepting of his way of learning.
Einstein played the violin at a professional level. He had been given lessons as a child which he did not enjoy, but at the age of 13 he discovered Mozart and taught himself to play, as he put it, ‘without ever practising systematically’. You will find that autodidactic learning like this is quite common for autistic people.
You may have noticed in these examples that learning things our own way is not only far more effective, it can even turn the learning process into play - an intrinsically motivated activity done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment.

One activity that fits the cited definition is usually not associated with play: thinking. Autistic people think a lot. An awful lot. Even, and maybe especially, autistic children.
Albert Einstein was repeatedly told what a slow child he was. This caused him to increasingly reflect on the nature of space and time; we know where this led.
As a child I was often believed to live in my own little world, to stare into space, to be daydreaming or simply to be lazy because I wasn’t physically active. I was thinking. I was thinking about all kinds of things: the meaning of life, why food was wasted in our part of the world while people were starving, whether a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar would be technically possible, what would happen if ants in a colony suddenly started acting independently, why all my classmates wore sneakers, why parents are automatically considered an authority or, in case there was intelligent life in outer space, if they could be bothered with us.
We also tend to link information or observations that appear unrelated or concern different areas and come up with unique ideas or theories. You could think of it as connecting the dots on different sheets. For example, as a teenager in the late Seventies I learned that Cro-Magnons, who were the first modern humans, had the largest brains of any Homo sapiens. At that time I already knew that Neanderthals had lived in the same area at the time, and that Neanderthals had the largest brains of all hominins. I therefore concluded that the Cro-Magnons must have been the result of interbreeding with Neanderthals; however, back in those days scientists still categorically believed that the two species could not have interbred.
This type of thinking, even though it may look like inactivity from the outside, is intrinsically motivated and brings us pleasure and enjoyment and therefore has to be considered play as well.

Many parents suppress their children’s autistic play on the advice of so-called professionals who have no understanding of it and thus cause their children’s frustration and stress levels to go through the roof. They may even force the child to engage in conventional play - which, in their case, isn’t play at all since it isn’t intrinsically motivated and gives them anxiety rather than pleasure and enjoyment.

Play is natural to all children, autistic or non-autistic, and comes in many different forms. There is no such thing as ‘inappropriate play’. Whatever form of play your child has chosen is perfectly healthy and helps their development. Regardless of what you’re being told, there is nothing to worry about.

© 6262 RT (2021 CE) by Frank L. Ludwig

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