Let's Play VS Stop Playing

All of us probably remember the dreaded ADOS evaluation that helped to diagnose our children somewhere on the Autism spectrum.  One of the worst parts for me was the pretend birthday party.  When James was presented with this part of the test I was told I couldn't say anything to him.  Here is what I was saying in my head, "Jamesie, DON'T eat the candle!  Jamesie, dolls are NOT for throwing!  Jamesie, the play dough DOESN'T go in your ear!" I was soooo glad when that experience ended because I could again protect my son from the unknowns of pretending.

Lack of pretend play is a big tell tale sign of Autism.  James basically drove cars on the wall, windowsill, peoples bodies, and hummed.  That is what he did everyday ~ all day long.  After his diagnosis it became our mission to teach him about pretend play.  We built cities with blocks and drove cars on make believe roads, we used puppets to do things that we wanted him to do, we became pretend play experts.  James eventually started to catch on and loved dressing up and "becoming" the character.  His pretend play was very rote.  It barely deviated from his taught script.  Eventually he started to request to have things that would help him in his play.  He loved knights so a sword and shield were favorite items.  He defended his "kingdom" from all invaders and kept us all safe.
James has come a long way in his pretend play

ventures.  He loves to role play with his friends.  They play wonderful games of Pokemon, Goku and other boy things.  Sometimes it seems like James' pretend play gets to real for others and I get phone calls or emails from the school indicating that James needs to stay after school for detention because he hurt another student while they were playing or more likely the other kids stopped playing and James didn't realize it (social pragmatics suck some of the time).  I hate it when he has to do that but he needs a lot of repetition to learn social skills so this is all part of that experience.  Also if he didn't have to go to the principals office, I would never get letters like this.  I guess we may have allowed pretend play to go on too long.  Is there a ADOS test for that problem on the spectrum?