Hi, all! Welcome to my blog hop post for RJ Scott’s Autism Awareness Month. I’ve learned a lot about autism being friends with RJ and following her social media posts about her lovely son Matt. This topic deserves all the focus it can and I’m happy to take part.
AUTISM FACT
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) isn’t just one thing. It encompasses a range of conditions that share a difficulty in social functioning and repetitive behaviors or stereotyped interests. There are four distinct diagnoses that fall into ASD including Asperger syndrome, autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specific. Some individuals have an intellectual disability while others have average or above average intelligence.
CHILDHOOD TOYS
This year’s blog hop theme is childhood toys. Awesome. My childhood was quite a long time ago. :-) I was born in 1963 in a little town called Palmerton, Pennsylvania. Think DEER HUNTER. I am not kidding. My father was a minister in a Protestant church called Church of God. Here’s a photo of me, one of my brothers, and his friend outside our church. I was about three or four. Deer Hunter. Seriously.
As a kid, I was obsessed with books. The first thing I ever “collected” in my life were Dell Yearling books. I treasured every volume. My dad being a minister, and my mom being a homemaker, our family did not have a lot of money, so everything we got was a treasure. The books looked like this.
This was the start of my love of reading and writing. But, you say, books are not toys! This is true, but they certainly make up my most vivid memories of the objects I owned and loved as a kid.
Other things I can recall were Barbie dolls. I liked to make up stories and act them out with the dolls. Nothing sophisticated, just bopping them around and making up things they said to one another. “Oh, no you can’t bring a dog in here!” or whatever. Ha. Genius, I tell you.
I liked to incorporate anything I could find into these doll games—not just Barbies, but Ken dolls, my brother’s GI Joes, Christmas ornaments, little wooden thread bobbins I could make into furniture, plastic animals or whatever I could find. I wasn’t sophisticated enough at that age to makeup same sex couples though. More’s the pity!
Another thing I loved to play with when I was a kid was a bag of fabric squares my mom kept to “someday” make quilts with. I loved laying the blocks out on the floor or stairs to make different patterns and designs. I have no idea why, but I think it was the puzzler side of my brain showing itself.
GIVEAWAY!
Thanks for visiting my blog hop stop! As a thank you, I’m giving away a $5 Amazon gift certificate. To enter to win, just leave a comment below.
Eli