Pretending when you were a child?

[finally]

I went to kindergarden in the same building that houses a school for "severely handicapped" (as I posted in other thread, in Austria we have this "nice" little shelving system). So every day I was seeing wheelchairs, braces, crutches and so on. I remember a feeling of wanting to watch but feeling I shouldn´t. My girlfriend who went with me to kindergarden once told me, she was always afraid as a child that she would get the same disabilities by touching the handrail (stairhold? I don´t know which one´s the correct English expression) that the dis kids touched.

I think this is such a burdon for a child to be confronted with those fears and having noone to talk to. It´s a shame adults don´t talk about these things with children. My guess is, it´s because of their own fears...

So, whisperingpines, I´m glad to hear you had this openminded people around you in childhood. That´s I think more the exception than the rule. At least here in Austria.

But I alway felt, in the USA things are different. I have been there several times and one year as a 16 year old exchange student.

Much more buildings, streets etc. are barrier-free - and so seemed the minds of the people I encountered. It was much more "normal" to be disabled. I really liked that. I always dreamed of how nice it would be to live there with these open minded people surrounding me. (I had noticed all of that before I had my handicapped son)

[laur]

I actually think about this a lot. If only because I was so unaware that my fascination with broken legs and wheelchairs made me different as a kid. I used to be very into making up stories, from acting them out to role-playing with dolls. For a long time, my stories involved the guy romantic character having a broken leg. I used to use toilet paper to make fake casts. Eventually, I started to transition to making them use wheelchairs for two broken legs and later made them paraplegics. I remember really wanting the Barbie in the wheelchair (Becky?) and making up some weird story about why. Of course, I planned to use the wheelchair for Ken instead of the doll that it came with! So, I guess in some way, I knew it was something I wanted to hide.

Even now, my family doesn't know about my dev side. I often wonder if they ever caught on to the trends when I was a kid though and wondered what was up. Maybe they just chalked it up to my mom being a nurse and trying to emulate her? I don't know. I don't think I was ever that discrete though! It wasn't until my teens that I started to realize that the awesome feeling I got from watching TV shows/movies featuring male paralyzed or blind characters (and my general love for all shows featuring such characters) was a sexual thing.

[Ath]

Parents feel guilty about a lot of things, maybe they can see you are into disabled but are afraid its their fault because they exposed you to disabled ppl when you were young.

I had disabled ppl around me but I wasnt nearly as "exposed" as some if you.
I had a father figure that became an amp and I think that is when I started pretending but I dont renember much from childhood. I had a boy with cp in my group of friends and two with autism (it wasnt even called that then) in my class.
There were two disabled boys in my extended family, one with md and one non-verbal boy with cp. He was younger and lived far away but when we met a few times per year we connected in ways that just amazed his parents. When it was just us it was natural, something I never thought twice about, but the people around us reacted on it.

[theodora]

Hi there! I’m completely new to this community and decided to start posting! I’ll introduce myself later when I feel a little bit more comfortable.
Well, yes, I’ a devotee and remember pretending a lot as a child! I must have been pretty young as I was in kindergarten. When I was in my home’s garden or barn and didn’t feel observed, I used to put tissues or even round pebbles in my shoes so I couldn’t walk properly and used my grandfather’s old walking sticks (I was very happy when I found them!). I once tried to make myself a wheelchair out of a doll’s pram but failed as it collapsed when I sat down on it, .
I used to be very concerned that nobody was watching as I felt ashamed but thrilled too. The only thing I shared was pretending to have a broken arm or leg. My grandmother had to bandage me. I tried to convince her to get plaster too but this was too much for her!

[Deleted]

Did I ever pretend as a kid? Oh, god... it was ridiculous.

Let's see, heh.

I, too, would use the L-shaped curtain rods as legbraces. They were perfect!!! I'd sit on a broken tricycle I'd lodged in a low tree and pretend I was a DAK amp. Stuck in a tree, I guess? I have no idea - I must have been about 6. I spent lots and lots of time sitting in chairs and imagining I couldn't move my legs. Hmm... we had a family friend who had an antique, wicker wheelchair. I spent entirely too much time sitting in that. My mother was already on to me, and I think it made her a bit uncomfortable that I was doing this at a friend's house. We also had a friend who had a pair of crutches lying around from when she broke her ankle, and those were fun. Most of the time, when I was at home, these sessions ended with masturbation. Actually, I literally cannot remember masturbating as a child without some form of devvy play or fantasizing, and I started when I was about 5, if I recall.

I think I've only told one person this next one, but we used to take very long road trips when I was little, often driving overnight to get places. I would sit in the dark, in the backseat, trigger the seatbelt lock, then pretend I was a quad. I got eerily good at hands-off self gratification that way.

The pretending just sort of... faded away, somewhere during puberty, however.

[Celaena]

Nov 11, 2015 12:41:53 GMT -5 theodora said:

Hi there! I’m completely new to this community and decided to start posting! I’ll introduce myself later when I feel a little bit more comfortable.
Well, yes, I’ a devotee and remember pretending a lot as a child! I must have been pretty young as I was in kindergarten. When I was in my home’s garden or barn and didn’t feel observed, I used to put tissues or even round pebbles in my shoes so I couldn’t walk properly and used my grandfather’s old walking sticks (I was very happy when I found them!). I once tried to make myself a wheelchair out of a doll’s pram but failed as it collapsed when I sat down on it, .
I used to be very concerned that nobody was watching as I felt ashamed but thrilled too. The only thing I shared was pretending to have a broken arm or leg. My grandmother had to bandage me. I tried to convince her to get plaster too but this was too much for her!

Hello and welcome from a fellow dev!  It's funny you mention this... I was looking through old photos the other day and remember playing house with one of our neighbor boys.  I would always make him act like he was in a wheelchair or blind or deaf.  Those dev habits start from an early age!  I wonder if my husband would be willing to play this old school version of house now...  :-P

[savannahgirl]

Yes from about age 7 I would lie in bed and pretend to have been in an accident causing paralysis. I would have "pretend" boyfriends that were para's. I never really thought it was normal until I joined this group. I always wanted to be the caregiver in my imagination.

[kathy23rd]

Another great topic, and so nice to read all the answers Yes, I pretended too, a lot, and my earliest memory is from when I was about 5, and I pretended I had a right AK amp. It was always very private for me, all the pretending happened when I was sure that no one could see, and I was a lot in wheelchair and on crutches too. I can't say I remember being embarrased, but it was just private. And as many others have said, I didn't connect the dots before later in my late teens/early twenties.

[Deleted]

So why do we all have "privacy" in common?
What would make a 3 or 4 year old KNOW they are doing something wrong when they haven't been exposed to the world enough at that age?

[blueskye101]

Nov 18, 2015 23:10:34 GMT -5 @girl said:

So why do we all have "privacy" in common?
What would make a 3 or 4 year old KNOW they are doing something wrong when they haven't been exposed to the world enough at that age?

Yea, that is strange. I remember feeling the need to be quiet and careful about these interests as early as about 4 or 5. I don't remember anyone saying anything to me. I was always kinda alone with a lot of my play even though there are 4 of us. I remember when playing with friends I always wanted an injured chRacter of some type and my friends would get bored with it quickly. Somehow I felt even at this age to be careful with this request and how I asked so I didn't draw too much attention to myself. Weird

[Deleted]

blueskye101 and you know what's even more weird? It's the fact that this attraction was clear to all of us even before sexual attraction was there.
We were devs even before we could identify as straight or otherwise..
not only that, but most of us older devs had no access to many kinds of media as is available now..specifically internet..
so how did we know!

[theodora]

Nov 22, 2015 0:54:51 GMT -5 blueskye101 said:

Nov 18, 2015 23:10:34 GMT -5 @girl said:

So why do we all have "privacy" in common?
What would make a 3 or 4 year old KNOW they are doing something wrong when they haven't been exposed to the world enough at that age?

Yea, that is strange. I remember feeling the need to be quiet and careful about these interests as early as about 4 or 5. I don't remember anyone saying anything to me. I was always kinda alone with a lot of my play even though there are 4 of us. I remember when playing with friends I always wanted an injured chRacter of some type and my friends would get bored with it quickly. Somehow I felt even at this age to be careful with this request and how I asked so I didn't draw too much attention to myself. Weird

It’s very interesting to see that so many devs pretended in childhood! I always guessed that I wasn’t the only woman in the world that feels attracted by disabled men but I never thought that other devs too pretended in their childhood.

The fact that pretending was a privat / secret thing to almost all of us makes it even more interesting! So I gave it a thought! Like you, I wonder why we felt the need to keep it all to ourselves. I also heard of gay and transgender people who put on the opposite sex’s clothes when they were small children. They too did this secretly. Somehow, people even in early childhood seem to sense if something is appropriate in the eyes of society or not. It seems like it doesn’t even need someone to tell you. Furthermore, our subconsciousness possibly knew that this is something sexual or something that will evolve into a sexual affection before we even knew about sexuality itself. And maybe it’s a subconscious self-protection thing for a child not to let anyone know about its sexual awakening.

[anniemouse]

I never pretended that I'd been injured, but boy did my toys take the brunt of imagination! My stuffed animals were perpetually bandaged, and mom took away the barbies because they kept losing limbs requiring Ken hospitalization. I think I ineffectively created wheelchairs out of card board and crutches out of pencils.

When I was two, I broke my femur doing ballet and ended up in a wheelchair--I wonder if that's what altered me for life. Freud would know.

[Valkyrja]

Like I said, I remember creating stories in my mind and me pretending to be the para. I used to pretend freely until my mom scolded me, telling me that I was doing something bad and that you couldn't play that way.
Since then, I pretended in "privacy". I was no more than 6 or 7 years old.

[Deleted]

I have always assumed all kids pretend - I certainly did.

I also once totally terrified my no-nonsense mother by telling her I was unable to move. I think I was about eight at the time. I believed it and so did she - and called the doctor (an exceptionally rare event). The doctor put it down to a fever at the time. Mum still mentions it to this day.