Aaron did something amazing today!!

Overall today wasn't a great day however, Aaron did something today he has never done before, ever. He did pretend play (make believe play) with his little sister's baby doll, a blanket and the baby's bottle (the kind that the milk "disappears" when you turn the bottle upside down) and he did it for a long time....or what I consider to be a long time anyway, about 20-25 minutes. He covered the baby up, gave it lots of hugs and "fed" it over and over again. I was amazed. He literally has never done anything like that before in his entire life. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
The way I understand it, the love of everything literal makes pretend play difficult to understand for the majority of autistic kids. Most of them do not engage in pretend play and just plain don't enjoy it. The same goes for sarcasm, metaphors, euphemisms, idioms, etc. They just don't get it. If you tell an autistic child "It's raining cats and dogs" they would probably have a heart attack and believe cats and dogs are literally falling from the sky. I heard a whole lecture about this very topic in the conference I went to last year (which I talked about in the "Books/Crazy" post).
Aaron absolutely falls in to this category, it is one of his "classic" signs of autism. He "flew" a hotwheels plane once for like 30 seconds but in hindsight I think he was flying it by his eyes because he was using it for stimming purposes or because planes are supposed to fly, not because he was pretending it was flying. He was helping it do what it was supposed to do, and when it didn't do it on it's own after he tried to help it, he didn't do it again. It clearly wasn't fun for him. His therapists call that pretend play but I consider that to be a pretend play gray area and the reason behind the action is not in his imagination, therefore in my humble opinion, it is not pretend play...one could consider today the same thing but Aaron knew the baby doll wasn't alive (as he has never played with or been affectionate with any stuffed animal unless he is using it as a pillow) and the bottle wasn't real (as he had it in his mouth several times trying to get the liquid out and it wouldn't come out).
The only animal he is affectionate with is our dog..our live, real dog...
....anyway....
A good example of Aaron and his dislike for the "make believe" is his love of Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars. Aaron loves all vehicles (cars, trains, planes, etc.) he uses them for his stimming, he drives them by his eyes at odd angles at all hours of the day, he loves to watch them drive and make them drive all over every part of the house. His favorite colors are red and blue, or those are what I have observed him becoming the most excited about in the past (he even has his own word for blue, it's "pop-pee"). Lightning McQueen is a red car. That is why he likes him. I had tried on many occasions in the past to put on the movie Cars for Aaron because he loves actual cars so much and he literally wanted nothing to do with it. He would leave the room until I turned it off. Once we found out Aaron had autism and I learned about this pretend play aversion and everything has to be literal then it made sense. Cars don't talk in real life and he knows that, so the movie Cars freaked him out. It also made sense why he only likes some cartoons, he won't watch cartoons where there are excessive amounts of talking vehicles or where the animals that talk look super realistic, animals don't talk either.
I only realized he liked Lightning McQueen when I couldn't decide what backpack to get him for preschool, it was between Spiderman and Lightning McQueen. Even though Aaron had never liked the movie Cars I asked one of his big sisters what she thought and she said since he liked red cars might as well go with Lightning McQueen. Seemed like the logical choice for sure so I went with the Lightning McQueen backpack, he seemed pretty excited about it when I brought it home. It also had an orange car on it which he was equally excited about. On his second or third day of school though there was a hot wheels size toy car of Lightning McQueen that was in a box of cars. He also happened to have on a Lightning McQueen shirt that day and the combo of those 2 things and his backpack got him pretty excited. He kept wanting to bring home the toy car from school and would get pretty upset when we had to leave it there so I decided to get him his own Lightning McQueen toy car for home and he has been obsessed with everything Lightning McQueen ever since. We decided to wait a couple months before we attempted a showing of the movie Cars again so hopefully his love of Lightning McQueen and Mater now (thanks to a friend who gave Aaron some toy cars from the movie and Aaron also happens to like tow trucks a lot) would be so great that seeing them on our big screen TV would just be amazing to him. I put the DVD in and the first scene came on with the race and he definitely liked that and recognized that it was Lightning McQueen, he was holding one of his many toys and pointed at the screen and the toy all the while excited jabbering was in full force. Then the race ended and all the cars started talking to one another and while Aaron didn't leave the room this time his interest waned quickly and he didn't care anymore just as before.
It's a bummer because it's a super cute movie but I get it. Cars don't talk in real life and the whole concept is just illogical to him. He would rather just do what he wants with the "real things" than be a spectator and watch animated versions of the things he loves doing something he doesn't understand.
The baby doll stuff today made me so proud though. I kept telling him what a good big brother he was to the baby and how sweet he was to feed her and give her hugs. Every time he would smile and of course that makes me smile.