I don't know if I should be proud of this person for connecting two dots or angry that she can't see the truth and she can't see she is talking down about these children.

The way they move through life has hit her intellectual limits and edges of the box of her education.

These kids are brilliant. They don't do imaginary play because the way we define it, is for children. Children with limited knowledge and experience.

Autistic kids are born with open senses and that creates extraordinary talent in their most gifted areas. They take in enough inputs in their gifted areas they play/think like adults in them. It occurs intellectually not physically. They are spatially modeling it in their subconscious. It may not manifest like adults because the brain and body have limits and they are trapped in child bodies, but it is none the less. This is why video games work. My kids make things in video games most adults simply could not fathom. Again this is extreme giftedness, why can't she and others see that?

I did not do imaginary play because for me the doll was not real. There was no making it real unless I did a Frankenstein on it. But that was gross and I could actually go out into real life and see a real live doll (my baby sister).

Because autistics don't have filters we are super input absorbers. We don't play until we fully understand it. Even then I didn't play mom to my baby sister, I was mom. My mom just handed her over to a me as a 5/6 year old because she was exhausted (4 kids in 5 years). I loved it. It was the love I needed to heal to be healthy. I have so much trauma from society trying to beat into me I did everything wrong because I didn't need to learn steps. My brain formed the patterns subconsciously and then I much more efficiently executed the process my way.

Imaginary play is using your emotions to play. I see this in my siblings and other people. Their emotions do not connect to their intellect across the board like mine do. Where theirs do not connect they treat it like a religion. They fill in the blanks with parts and pieces of reality and the rest is fantastical. I don't fill in the fantastical. I know someday nature will fill it in for me with fact. I am comfortable with not knowing. I see it as opportunity to learn and grow. Most people seem to struggle with it and need to fill it in with placeholder.

Autistic children have embodied intelligence. It's a shame this DOCTOR and most professionals serving the neurodivergent community can't be more like these children and think for themselves to a greater degree. But I guarantee these children can and do.

If you think I am being harsh towards this author remember she could ask these kids and she hasn't. People could have asked me my whole life why and how I did what I did. I knew. Instead they told I did it wrong.

You should try being these kids as they are told there is something wrong with them every day of their life because they don't do imaginary play. Autistic kids know they are smart. This is why some are raging in their schools. They want to add value to society. But society that has excluded them and pretended they are less than. That is rage inducing.

Society is missing out on really seeing and understanding what these children can do and all they can offer the world.

The answers to our future lie in these children and our societal arrogance about what and who is intelligent is in the process of killing us all. These kids are innocent bystanders and deserve so much better.

I gave my kids screens to learn all the rote memorization and it worked beautifully. They enjoyed the lessons and learned the bs way our systems expect them to learn math and reading in elementary school. It made them appear average but then skipped high school and went straight to college. Wake up world. You have really screwed up when it comes to these kids. Everything the experts are telling you is based on the wrong kind of intelligence and they are doing much more harm than good.