looking young for your age

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do you look very young?
I am 21,
almost.
everyone is saying that
I look 12.
I am not 12.
it makes me mad
that
they do not believe me.
I do not lie.

I think I look younger the older I get for some reason.
From your avatar, I don't think you look twelve.

I've been told that I look about ten years old which annoys me.

My almost 5 year old son acts and looks like an infant. If I were to post just a photo of his face, most people would assume that it was the picture of an infant.

From your photo in your avatar (I am assuming that it is you), you don't look like a 12-yr-old to me.

Is looking very young for our ages a physical characteristic in autism/AS?

I'm 30 and people say that I look like I'm in my 20's because I'm short. When I was in my mid 20's people said I looked 16 and when I was in my early 20's people said I looked 12.

I have a baby face (i'm almost 15) and it's annoying. I certainly look younger than I am. When I was younger I had a very high pitched squeky voice too.

You look young for your age, OHEMGEE, how your life must suck! Of course you feel that way because you are young but when you're older... actually I must have been the only teen who didn't want to look older. I wanted to look like my age or even younger because I was never ready to be a teen or an adult. You turn 13 and suddenly you're too old for the kid things you still like, but you find most adult things stupid and you're too young for them anyway, uggghhh!

I'm 40 now, but I still don't really feel like an adult. Except when I walk up and down stairs and my knees ache and make awful crackling noises because of osteoarthritis.

I have always looked a lot younger, although at 52 I would say things are starting to catch up. But at 20, I still looked like a teenager; at 30 I still looked 18; at 40 I was told a lot that people thought I was in my twenties. I actually still got carded at 40, when buying wine in the supermarket or when entering a nightclub or bar. At 27 I had my beer grabbed and taken away angrily from me by a bartender passing through the club who didn't know I'd bought it from the other bartender at the bar perfectly legally.

When I was about 40, I actually dated a 26 year old guy for a while. One night we entered a bar with carding on the door. The door guy didn't look at us funny at all, took my boyfriend's ID, checked it out, handed it back. Took my ID in his hand...and suddenly looked up at me and said "OHHHH......uh, okayyyyy!! !" with a huge grin on his face, realizing that I was a MUCH older woman on a date with this very young man!

I still get someone I newly encounter expressing shock when I tell them my age, so I guess it's still there, but the "gap" is shortening, in that instead of thinking I'm 20 years younger people peg me more for maybe ten or fifteen years younger now. The gap of mistaken age is closing inward now and although I take care of myself, I'm sure one day it will no longer be there, but that's natural.

I also am short and have a high, mild, girlish pitch of voice - I sound like a child on the phone, and have been asked by, for example, my bank calling, if my mother is available!! So this all adds to the impression as well.

I'll tell you though, when I was 30 and still taken for a kid, it bugged the HELL out of me! Because I was desperate to be taken for a grownup, yet people were assuming they were dealing with a much younger person, and yes, there can be condescension when that happens. I got treated as young and it felt like an affront.

Now that I am older, I'm not so mad about it anymore, hahahah! Go ahead, treat me like I'm only 35! I'm delighted to get that compliment!

I would say to you, try not to get too upset, because time will cure this misunderstanding. I was just like you, really fed up with always being taken for younger, because it's true it IS insulting at that stage of life, because people DO treat you with unwarranted condescension when they truly believe it's a much younger person they're dealing with. I totally got that.

But remember you will age and this problem will fade, even if they still think you're ten years behind where you really are -- once that ten years behind is still up in the adult range, the mistake won't be so painful to be subjected to.

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I'm 37, but I look like I'm in my early 20s. Because of that, people are condescending and rude to me for no reason because they perceive me as a kid. (I'm never rude to people, so it's not because of that). When someone asks a question and I answer, they assume I don't know what I'm talking about because they think I'm a kid, and they'll ask someone else. (and usually get the same answer I gave them, unless the other person doesn't know what they're talking about). People talk down to me like they think I'm stupid.
When you're nearly 40, have worked hard for the knowledge and skills you have, and nobody takes you seriously, it does suck.

I have recently started wearing makeup to make myself look older (when I have the time. Sometimes I have to get up at 5 am and leave at 6 am, so I don't have time on those mornings), and I have noticed that the same person who will talk down to me as if I'm stupid and be rude to me when I'm not wearing makeup will treat me with respect if I do wear makeup. It's pretty ridiculous that society is this way.

AutumnSylver, I so totally agree and yours is my experience exactly:

I'm not on the receiving end of it so badly now that I'm older and even the "mistaken age" is also older too, but for at least a couple of decades of my adult life I had to put up with exactly what you decribe, precisely due to the fact that people dismiss the validity of someone they mistakenly think is much younger.

And it's hard not to get angry when your life experience, expertise or wisdom is overlooked constantly just because of "the book's cover" if you will. I had to go through that for the longest time.

I still sometimes get someone of my own age, unaware of that fact, saying dismissively or condescendingly: "Oh, you won't know about THAT of course, you're too young." It's not a good feeling. Happens less and less, but yes it sucks.


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you know people think you are older than you feel when you get called "ma'am" for the first time.

I'm almost 53. I don't know what that is 'supposed' to look like,

when I was (much) younger, people always thought I was younger than I am because I was so petite. I may have weighed 105 lbs when I was 18 (I'm 5ft 5in). and because I was flatchested, I never looked 'mature'.

Now that I'm 'older', and need to color my hair (grey makes women look older, but makes men look distinguished, no fair!) I definitely don't look 25 anymore.

I look around and all I can think is "I'm old enough to be everyone's mom". I'm really at the point where I'm old enough to be someone's grandmom.

I am 19 yo and people usually guess I am 15-16.
From what I read looking younger is preety common in autism.
But also I have a friend that is 20yo and looks like 12yo so I wouldn't say it is exclusive to us.
I don't think you look like 12yo by the way.

Hi Linatet--I hope I didn't push too hard with the Neuroscience thing. But I think you're a natural for it.

I know my ex Girlfriend's best friend has Autism and while she is actually 26, if I were to guess whether she was in High School I would say no, because she isn't old enough yet! She literally looks about 14 and she is also 5'1" and skinny to boot. Not only is she physically tiny but also has a VERY high pitched/squeaky voice and the energy of a young child so I would suspect she might be even younger than that if I didn't know her true age. I almost want to post a picture because I doubt anyone would believe she was legally actually an adult, let alone in her mid 20s.

I'm 30. People's estimates of my age range from 20 to 25.
When I tell them how old I am, they express envy about my genetic makeup.