#if they aren't lonely or sad just let 'em fuckin go through a bag of mixed beans and sort them by density of spots

[naamahdarling]

I am not to my knowledge autistic, but I'm ADHD and a lot of me is in the middle of the Venn diagram. I remember sorting toys or objects into various orders and arrangements, classifying and reclassifying them, trying to find the best way to do things so that one item flowed logically into the next. I would do this for hours with just about anything, including a jar full of spare change. Buttons were AMAZING! I remember often taking an interesting object from one of my dad's glass-front bookshelves and handling it for long periods just enjoying the colors and textures and taking in everything about it, imagining scenarios about or within it (a carved ivory puzzle ball was a favorite, and a small carved landscape in a glass case), making up how it might be magical and what its properties might be. I would much prefer doing this than playing with others, and generally occupied myself on the playground by looking for lucky clovers or making flower chains or finding interesting bits of gravel or glass scattered about the ground because that was all that was available for me to play with that the other children wouldn't try to take or teachers wouldn't try to force me to use with other children.

This is a very neurodivergent kind of play. I very much share this with autistic folks. I can say, from within, iot is just as active and just as imaginative and just as appropriate as "normal" play. And it really pisses me off that these parents and "professionals" pathologize this mode of play as less advanced or whatever. Sorry not sorry but they could not even BEGIN to understand the nuances of bottle caps. They find bread clips boring!!!

Here's how this sort of thing always comes across to me, filtered through the lens of what I like.

"So the other kids can play house, a simple mimicry of the stuff they see everyday, or play dollies, reenacting things they have seen a hundred times. Yeah, they make up stories, but they insist on physically acting them out and vocalizing continually, and they often need help from peers to fully achieve an appropriate level of imagination. They can't keep it self-contained. That's really not very introspective, and it isn't developmentally normal to be so far behind their neurodivergent peers, many of whom are able to do these things without assistance. What can we really say about these neurotypical kids who haven't developed an intimate relationship with a plain wooden sphere or figured out how their little bowl of rocks relate to each other or discovered the optimal arrangement of their Lego bricks? If they can't spend even half an afternoon making domino art, how emotionally and imaginatively advanced are they, really? How involved with the world can they really be? Maybe we should punish them for not being able to sit still and stare at a glass fishing weight for two hours, or sort a bag of mixed beads without fidgeting and kicking their feet. Surely that would not harm them in any way, make them sick, give them trauma, or torture them."

See how fucking senseless that sounds?

I am not autistic but man do I have all y'all's backs, and all the kids' backs, on this because I fucking FELT IT. Every damn day. PLEASE just let me make a gradient from leaves and stop making me run around pointlessly after a ball with unpleasant topography.