"Ready or not, here I come!" is a phrase that echoes around the country in house after house to the delight of many a child. I don't know the history of the game, but I can only guess that hide and seek has been played in various forms around the world for centuries. Requiring nothing more than willing participants, its simplicity makes it readily available to all who are mobile. The thrill of the search and that of hiding is irresistible to young, giggling children. Prior to having my son, I took for granted how hide and seek requires at least one innate ability and that is theory of mind.
If you delve into research about autism, you are likely to encounter the term "theory of mind" (ToM). Simply put, it's the ability to understand another person's perspective which leads to understanding and/or predicting their behavior. For those with autism, they often have what is sometimes referred to as "mind-blindness" because they often have a difficult time understanding or perceiving another person's perspective but their own. See Wikipedia's explanation for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind#cite_note-1. From my own observations of my son, it seems that this mind blindness occurs two ways: his inability to understand another person's perspective and his inability to realize that another person doesn't always know his perspective.
I have played hide and seek with my son off and on for years. Each time, I've been amused by how he plays the game. Until today, it didn't occur to me that the reason he plays it the way he does is because of mind blindness. When my son hides, he often hides in almost plain sight and almost routinely hides in the same place each time. What I didn't realize until today is that, from his perspective, he believes he is hidden because he can't see me. His hiding in the same place every time is also related to mind blindness because he thinks he is hidden and doesn't consider that I might predict that he might hide there again. As far as he is concerned, he is well hidden.
After discussing this with his psychologist today, she suggested that I work with him on this game, to suggest more than one place to hide and how to hide well. As she put it, it would be "golden" if I can teach him to play the game as it is intended, thus improving on his theory of mind. Assignment in hand, I came home and began playing around with ways to teach him the game and I stumbled upon a great website: http://www.toondoo.com/Home.on. This free site allows you to create cartoons. In just a few minutes, I was able to create a cartoon of a child playing hiding and seek with the reader while instructing the reader how to play. My son read it with me and was quite amused by it. Shortly after reading it, we played hide and seek together and, although he still has a ways to go, I could tell he had learned something about the game and I could sense that, with practice, there was potential for him to understand the game.
Having a child with autism (or any special needs child, I would imagine) highlights many things we neurotypicals (NTs) take for granted. From our ability to tolerate sudden, loud sounds to being able to play a simple, childhood game of hide and seek, our NT world is almost blinded to that of those who lack common, innate abilities such as ToM. As I work with my child, I find that my ToM has to be modified to understand the mind of my son's, to recognize how our perspectives differ and to help bridge the gap between our worlds.
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