Pretending when you were a child?

[Slinxter]

My memory is not great, but reading all your experiences is definitely unearthing some of my own. It is really crazy how much I identify with all of this. I remember reading Izzy Willy Nilly so many times the cover fell off. I remember loving Knight Rider because it originally began with a debilitating accident. I had such a crush on David Hasselhoff, embarrassing much?

I am starting to remember more about my childhood pretending, I appreciate the memory jog. I am also fascinated that this is such a specific, repeated set of commonalities, and comforted that I am not alone.

Thanks for this thread revival!

[Spiral]

I remember pretending as a kid and just thinking it was a fun thing to do, until my friend, who I played with, implied that it was weird. That's when I started hiding it.
My father caught me once after that and was super pissed about it for reasons of dumb superstition.
So the shame of of it all was hammered home pretty hard and early for me. To this day I still struggle it and am not "out" to anyone in my life. :/

[elbs]

I also pretended as a kid, but it's intriguing how different my experiences were from everyone else.

Firstly, I had basically no interest in disabilities until around age 10 or so. My mind control kink developed super early, I remember being four years old pretending I could hypnotize people like Kaa from The Jungle Book, and I also had sadistic fantasies from a very young age, but I had a disabled classmate in elementary school and the only reaction I remember having to her disability was being grossed out by her drooling. She was kinda my friend but not my best friend, and I admit her drooling was part of why we weren't closer. Plus, she had cognitive issues that made her a less interesting conversation partner for me.

In grade 5, in a different school, we had some disability awareness unit where we tried out various assistive devices and also had various disabled people give talks to us, and I was riveted. I started pretending because of that, and I've been fascinated by disabilities ever since.

I also never made it any secret that I liked pretending to have various disabilities. Maybe because I was first invited to pretend in a public context with adult encouragement, but I also wasn't remotely secretive about my mind control play and kidnapping play and such at younger ages. Maybe it's just that I have very little capacity for embarrassment - I'm autistic and don't tend to know or care what others think of me unless they make it my problem. I remember getting into disputes with Mom because she wouldn't let me play with the wheelchairs in the Medi-clinic. If she hadn't said no, I totally would have done so. I also remember wandering around in public with my eyes closed, and only stopping because someone thought I was blind and helped me and I thought he might have gotten angry if he knew I was faking. (I didn't realize there are actual blind people who walk around with eyes closed, so I thought it was obvious that I was pretending.)

[messybun]

This is so interesting to read all the experiences and memories of everyone. I don't remember pretending as a child but I remember imagining lots of stories in my head with the boys always in an accident or some type injury that they can not walk. All the stories always had to do with hospital or injury or the boy having to overcome an accident or trauma. There was also kids in school with broken arm or leg and I remember a fascination with this.

[em]

Omg yes. I could write a whole essay about it, but my earliest memory is when I used to play with a girl from the neighbourhood and we pretended we were in a hospital with broken legs. We'd lie on the floor with our legs up against the wall. I lost touch with her but I wonder whether she has any interest in disability or if this was random.

It definitely intensified in teenage years, and I'd also create stories about boys who had accidents, much like messybun. And I really wanted to try walking with crutches, which I think I mentioned to one or two people, but I couldn't explain it fully so stopped talking about it. I discovered the sexual connection very late actually.

It's such a relief to see that other have had similar experiences.

[dapperdev]

OMG wow this thread is awesome. So good to know that i wasn't the only one who pretended as a kid. defo a private thing since as some of you have also mentioned, even though i was a child and hadnt developed sexually yet, i knew there was something different about this feeling. I used to spend hours in the bathroom, tying up my arms and putting my elbow through the sleeves and pretend to be armless, or tie a leg up and pretend to be an amputee, sometimes i'd just lie on the floor and pretend like i was paralysed and sometimes on occassion when i used to go swimming i would paddle with my arms and let my lets dangle and pretend i couldnt feel or move them. When my sisters and I used to go for classes to this sports center i would always jump in the wheelchair and wheel my self around while we waitied for our parent to pick us up, and sometimes i'd push my sister around too. So many memories and its so cool/strange/funny that so many of us had similar experiences in childhood, well before we understood what was going on. I did however start to masturbate while pretending once i was 12-13. I guess it proves that all of us to some extent do share a certain overlap on the dev/pretender/wannabe spectrum. I recently started chatting with another female dev, and we've been discussing what it would be for 2 devs to date each other, perhaps its best to start a new thread for that topic!

[ayla]

I’m working on a little theory about this. Like most (all?) devs I used to engage in some flavor of pretending as a child. For me, this always took the form of relaxation. I don’t know how I got started but it was very young. I would fall asleep by imagining part of my body “go to sleep” as if they were paralyzed. Basically a progressive muscle relaxation meditation. I also used to do this in tense situations especially waiting rooms or car rides, the school bus, basically anywhere I had to sit still but didn’t want to. It became a comforting, grounding habit. It wasn’t until later that I realized there was such a thing as paralysis. Once I discovered that, I was fascinated (typical dev stuff — obsessive learning, imagining, and detailed pretend play with my toys, but already getting more secretive about it). Sometimes I would deal with new situations by imagining how I would experience them with a disability, as sort of a cognitive reframing? I was a weird kid and the idea of my weirdness being transformed into something concrete was appealing. Anyway, back to my theory: I think some of the sexual thrill comes from the embarrassment of realizing that the thing I enjoyed fantasizing about in those comforting and/or playful moments was a reality (often unwanted) for other people, and that perhaps my habits were in very poor taste and disrespectful. Tale as old as time, the thrill of enjoying the forbidden.

[feelsunshine]

ayla I probably would have never remembered it but now that you mentioned it, it comes back to my mind. Same here, car rides or in school, anywhere I had to sit and wait, I imagined not feeling my legs.
I have actually no ambitions for pretending, but somehow it was interesting to try how it would feel like to be paralyzed.

[ayla]

Jan 17, 2022 15:31:53 GMT -5 feelsunshine said:

ayla I probably would have never remembered it but now that you mentioned it, it comes back to my mind. Same here, car rides or in school, anywhere I had to sit and wait, I imagined not feeling my legs.
I have actually no ambitions for pretending, but somehow it was interesting to try how it would feel like to be paralyzed.

I also have no interest in pretending and whenever I have had the opportunity I felt very uncomfortable. Once, as a teenager, I was the stage manager for a play in which a prop wheelchair played a major role. (Total coincidence.) I remember there was another girl who always wanted to try out the chair after rehearsals and, while I was thrilled that she felt some sort of a draw too, I was averse to having a go myself. Weird.

Also weird, I used to have recurring nightmares in which I was pretending! Haven’t had one in quite a while now but this just made me remember.

[olive]

I’ve never pretended. I’m actually turned off by the idea lol. When I broke my foot in middle school, it just felt extremely awkward and I hated the attention it brought to me. I’m aroused by other people being disabled or injured, not myself.

But I’m curious to know, what’s the appeal of pretending for those of you who like it?

[ruthmadison]

I didn't do much pretending as a kid but yeah a little bit. There's actually a photo of me using a plastic baseball bat and a broom as crutches.

[dapperdev]

Feb 4, 2022 10:26:49 GMT -5 olive said:

I’ve never pretended. I’m actually turned off by the idea lol. When I broke my foot in middle school, it just felt extremely awkward and I hated the attention it brought to me. I’m aroused by other people being disabled or injured, not myself.

But I’m curious to know, what’s the appeal of pretending for those of you who like it?

I guess that's where devs and pretenders go there separate ways so-to-speak. I'm a dev with no real proclivity for pretending. I would however be open to dating a pretender or a dev who was open to pretending, as a form of role-play.


I think for us devs especially when we were young, a lot of us explored our newfound quirky fascination by pretending and reframing and imagining what it would be like to be paralysed or amputated and then eventually realising that there was a sexual component to it.

How did you explore your devness when you were young? 

[blueskye101]

I did lots of pretending as a child. I remember being as young as 5 and bandaging my Ken doll and wanting to play Dr so I could have a friend be on crutches or couldn’t leave his bed. Was naturally drawn to books about people with disabilities , especially other kids with a disability.

[lexidee]

I'm brand new here, and never have "come out" so to speak. Bit finding all of you and knowing I'm not alone in this is pretty awesome.

That said, yes, I used to pretend when I was younger. I'd use sticks for crutches and pretend I couldn't walk without them, or put my Ken dolls in makeshift wheelchairs. I thought I was the only one doing this.

[triquid]

I absolutely did this. My earliest memory is from preschool when we were playing Pokémon, and I suggested we all had some disease or were hospitalized. I played a Pokémon bound to bed with IVs on. Later on in elementary school we played animals and again I suggested we all had some condition and had to intervene on each other before time ran out.

As a bit older kid I sometimes took a shower with the lights off, imagining what would it be like if I was really blind and finding all the correct shampoo bottles. Shower was great for it because the space really got pitch black when the lights were off.

I'm sure there's other instances like this that I just don't have recollection of.

Something that only struck me later in adulthood was realizing that at one point in my childhood I had pretended to be deaf to a boy a little older than me in an online game. I must've been 13 or 14. This actually went on for a while before he figured it all out. Realizing this in adulthood was quite shocking and terrible to be honest. I can say with full confidence though that I was a child with not enough self-awareness to understand what I was doing and why, and why one shouldn't.