Toys which resemble humans are not a symptom of autism

To be honest, I did not play with many toys which resembled humans when I was younger. Most of the toys that I liked were cute and fluffy stuffed animals or stuffed Pokemon, with bright colors and adorable cartoon faces that you could sleep with. Whether or not I internalized my own identity as a person due to these plushes I cannot be certain, however I am currently confident in my identity as a human. I had a few little girl dolls, but I found them harder to play with. Perhaps this was due to my childhood extreme social anxiety and fear of other people. I’m not sure in what way exactly little kids would play with, for example, a Barbie doll, but the way I played was through story telling. When I was younger, I was somehow able to remember word-for-word the scripts for musical theater plays (I wish I still had those memorizing skills now). Then I would assign an animal to each character and “reenact” the play for myself. Like any kid in the 2010’s, I was also obsessed with youTube — including sketch comedy videos of teenagers being stupid and offensive. This would soon evolve into my sense of humor, so of course I had to use my stuffed animals to make my own stupid youTube videos. To be honest, playing with toys didn’t have the hugest impact on my identity growing up as some other things did (Internet). I never had that many either since as a kid my pride and independence made me feel ashamed to desire things that cost money, or to ask my parents to buy me something.