The 4th characteristic of the Autism/Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) profile is that these children are very comfortable with pretend play and role play usually to the EXTREME.
Early studies of children with PDA reported that a third of the subjects confused reality with pretend and that this could be severe and cause huge conflict during play time with other friends or family.
This is the one characteristic of the PDA profile that Isla did not match up with early in her life.
Isla was 6 years old before she “learned” how to pretend play and that incredible gift was possible with the help of one of Isla’s greatest, most beautiful therapists, June Olive, her sister.
June and Isla were born four years apart but with Isla’s delays and June’s super smarty brain, they were on the “same page” when Isla was 6 and June was 2. That was the critical year when their relationship really started to grow. They loved each other, looked after each other, cared for each other, worried about each other, played together, and slept together.
It was during this year that for the first time in Isla’s six years of life, she played. They played house and school and grocery store, and Isla started using her imagination and pretending. That sounds so natural for most, but for Isla it was groundbreaking.
As Isla matured this role play and pretend play have taken a more extreme turn with her sometimes confusing pretend with reality but we do not deal with this at the severity that some other children with PDA deal with.
Most of Isla’s imagination and pretend play are more inconvenient if anything.
For example, if she is playing with her baby dolls, she has to use REAL milk which she will force into a pretend bottle that spills the milk all over the baby’s face and hair and the floor.
If she is playing store she wants my REAL credit cards, (which have been lost many times) and she wants my REAL keys to “drive” to HEB (which have been lost many times) and she wants a REAL purse and REAL cell phone and REAL sunglasses… you get the picture.
In regards to how this affects those she is playing with, like June or her cousins, they mostly find it amusing. The only conflict that arises comes from the fact that Isla feels (she KNOWS) she is a real grown adult so she always wants the adult role in pretend play. So she is always the daycare owner, the grocery store clerk, or the mommy. Always in charge and she refuses to switch or take turns in roles.
For the sake of being complete, please keep in mind that for some children with PDA this characteristic can negatively affect relationships because they will dominate the play time. The activity must be on the child’s terms so they will direct others which character to play and how, what to wear for dress up, what to say, etc.
Also SUPER important! This is one of the characteristics of PDA that DIFFERS from the assumed AUTISM characteristics. The majority of children with autism are found to be greatly deficient in imaginative and pretend play which can also cause misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis particularly in females with PDA.
