What were you like as a child?

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I was less feminine and more likely to beat the s**t out of guys (as I did that often) when I was a little girl. I didn't take crap from anybody. Now I'm...less like that. It's kind of sad. Damn feminity! D:

I don't really remember but I was reading my grandmother's journals the other day and it helped me get a picture of myself better. I was a quite baby that would sleep through the night. I was an active child; my mom says I was always hyper. I was overly affectionate when I was elementary school and had to be told to stop kissing my classmates. I don't remember if I was prone to temper tantrums and I can't really ask my mom (she never remembers anything correctly). When I was little I got along better with kids older then me and as I approached my teenage years I got along better with kids younger then me. My sister (who is 3 yrs my junior) and I shared a lot of the same friends. I know I use to talk to much when I was younger, my mom said I never knew when to shut up (well she didn't say it like that, that's my wording). I remember never having any close friends in elementary school, I was considered the freak or spaz as I got older 4th - 5th grade. My classmates were starting to mature and I still wanted to play in the sandbox.

A lot of people here are saying they were quiet as babies. I don't know if I was quiet but my mother once said I'd sleep all through the night even as a newborn. But so did my my Non-Aspergian brother. (I won't call him an NT because he's not all that normal, either. ) When I was a little girl I was actually quite outgoing. I did not know the meaning of the word "shy". It was my brother who had that label. My parents used to take us camping and my brother used to just stay where we were but I'd be wandering all over the place, talking to other campers. I had virtually no fear of strangers or new places. But I had strange anxieties and fears that were deemed part of my being unique because I was unusually smart and artistic. I used to be terrified of public bathrooms and the sight of dead insects (it was okay if they were alive). There were games the teacher would have us would play at school that I found scary and would be crying so much I'd be sent to the hallway.I think one of the games a kid would pretend to be a witch and chase us all around and if they caught one of us we'd be "frozen" or get "eaten" by the witch or something. We were taught religion at the school and some of the stories would creep me out, I remember. I hated it when our teacher wanted us to draw Jesus or something because I hated drawing beards, I couldn't even stand to draw Santa until I was around 8! I had a really bad time with my ears, I would get a lot of infections and I must have gone for ear tube operations every month during the winter! It also took a long time for me to learn shoe-tying. In spite of all this, I was a usually happy kid. It was when I became a teenager that everything started going downhill. Other girls my age were getting heavily interested in boys and clothes and I still wanted to just play with stuffed animals and watch cartoons!

i still sleep with stuffed animals (arms around white ted) and keep one in my car (a bear from build-a-bear) to talk to and my fav movies are cartoons (Spirited Away, ponyo, nemo)
Sometime who we are is who we are.
As a child I HATED halloween because i didn't like dressing up as something else and the other kids looking scary with masks over their faces. Still don't like halloween. Never liked candy much. I loved reading and if i read one book in a series I had to read all, like all 25 hardy boys books. everything that could be read in our house was read by me.

I was a smarty pants.

According to my mom, I was very outgoing until elementary school. I loved bugs, and even as a two and three year old, I'd pick them up very gently so as not to smoosh them. I never crawled- I just went straight to walking, and I learned how to read around age 4. I also watched only nature programs like National Geographic, and was really into dinosaurs and could name each species at the museum. I also had a very extensive vocabulary, and I was pretty artistic.

I developed anxiety by the time I reached elementary school, (around when I stopped being outgoing) and from about the ages of 7 until almost 10, I refused to go in big department stores and grocery stores because the fluorescent lights would make me feel sick and give me panic attacks. They still bug me, but I have learned to cope as an adult. I remember going shopping with my mom and begging her to just let me stay in the car, and she'd get mad because she couldn't understand why it bothered me so much and I couldn't really explain it myself because I didn't know what a panic attack was- all I knew was that it was scary and I felt awful when they happened.

Edited to add: I also was a total bookworm. Haha, I especially loved the Goosebumps series.

um i played with some other kids. id jump up and down and hug them lol. in school when we were playing with toys or playing game i had to have a certain one or id cry lol. everything had to be "fair" i liked climbing on stuff alot...had some sensory stuff like i hated getting messy and i also hated water(couldnt get water on my face at all or id freak out) and having someone lean over me and i was always getting upset in games that the other kids were to rough if they pushed me or something...

i was really interested in spying at one time lol and the human body...idk...

i loved bugs and i used to feed the ants

and up to 12 i cryed alot. Oh and I was literal to and got tricked easy. Like my brother was jokeing and said to put salt on my cut and someone told me the sign on my Teddy bear ment cancer so I threw it out I was scared I'd get cancer

I'm not diagnosed with autism, but I think I MAY have it...

Anyway, my mother has always said that I was super quiet as a baby. So much so, that it frightened her--she would always walk into my room and look at my crib to make sure that I was breathing. She said I would just be lying there staring at the ceiling or around the room. My grandmother always told her I was "looking at the angels". Whatever that's supposed to mean.

I've never really asked my mother what I was like as a young child, never thought to. I just know the small things. That I was quiet and sometimes very mean to kids--bratty is the word? Haha! I remember asking my mother something insane like what my name was when I as four and my mom wrote it down for me. I do not know why I remember such weird things like that. My aunt was a "teacher" so I learned how to read and write fairly early. In the 1st grade I taught myself the times table since I thought we had to know it. I spent a lot of my childhood reading and drawing--I've never really been interested in TV. Origami was a hobby of mine when I was five and I loved creating my own comics.

I had Barbie dolls, but I was abusive with them sometimes. I would throw them up into the fan or ceiling to see what would happen, like a mini experiment. And I would mix different lotions, etc. and say it was potions. I remember smashing up flowers, dirt, and water into a bucket and saving it somewhere and doing it every weekend 'cause I said I was gonna feed it to the "bad guys".

Ahhh, haha.

I was really hyperactive and oblivious of the world. I lacked a sense of danger. I took things too literally, and I jumped out of my mom's car going 40mph when she joked about it blowing up since it was so old. I would run into traffic and wander off. Luckily I didn't get hurt.

I was often described as "bright" and "highly intelligent" with a sense of humor. I just would not sit down, and I was extremely hyperactive.

Now, I am very calm, wise, and a keen sense of danger if you don't include people danger.

When I was born the doctor said "that is a huge head". Interesting that macrocephaly characterizes autistics up to their fourth birthday.

I was extremely precocious speaking, reading and writing, but late walking. I later became an athlete, but was constantly made fun of for having a strange walk (head down, stiff... many times I walked into people or objects and injured my head badly on one occasion), not making eye-contact, not smiling and having no facial expressions. People still say they can't tell if I'm serious or joking, and my jokes are frequently misinterpreted as stupidity because people don't realize I'm engaging in sarcasm or parody, and I also make the error of assuming people have the necessary level of knowledge to understand my jokes and often they do not. As a child, I had a tactile fascination with sticky things, and would wait by my mom while she changed my brother's diaper because she would cut off the sticker part so I could "stick on the sticker". I'd just sit quietly playing with tape or stickers in my fingers, and I still feel comforted by sticky things. I keep tape in my pockets for that reason. Nobody in my real life knows about this (and its one of those things I dare not bring up with my parents).

My parents didn't send my to school until the 8th grade when I started becoming problematic at home. I blamed my social ineptitude on the fact that my parents didn't send me to school. My mother won't give me any straight answers, she isn't interested in accepting the fact that I'm different and will never be the person she wants me to be. She treats me like I'm looking for attention when I ask her about why she home-schooled me or why I was virtually mute between the ages of 6 and 16 despite being a gifted writer and having a large vocabulary.

Here is what I can get from her: my IQ was "off the charts" and I was evaluated by doctors who said "kids like me" turn out either "really bad or really good", and I would not do well in school because I only interacted with people on my terms. If I didn't respect or like someone, I would behave as if they physically did not exist. I generally acted as if kids my age did not exist. I would speak to adults who would listen to me, and the only thing I wanted to talk about was whales. I knew a lot about whales. I would also sing songs from the Wizard of Oz on request.

I got into the habit of punching kids in the face when they bothered me. My father encouraged it. Both my mother and father told me that friends were a waste of time and I should focus on myself and my mind. They would tell me "its all fake, all the smiles and talking". I concurred. When I watched children interact with each other, I saw a bunch of manipulative, selfish creatures playing a ridiculous game of unwritten rules and unrewarding rewards. I remember overhearing girls discussing who had more boys' phone numbers in their phones, and I thought "Aha! So that is the goal, to get their numbers". I thereafter made it my agenda to collect phone numbers from my classmates, especially boys, thinking this was the right thing to do. I later realized that the point of having the number is to contact someone because you are friends with them, the number itself is not meaningful. Honestly, the idea that being friends with many boys is intrinsically rewarding made less sense to me than the idea that collecting phone numbers for the sake of the numbers is intrinsically rewarding. How did these kids know the rules and rewards of this game they played non-stop and unquestioningly?

I had a hang up about smiling and would fight with my parents when they begged me to smile. I would say "most smiles are fake". Of course, I meant that most smiles are voluntary. This is a fact. People "fake smile" all the time, and I saw it as dishonest. This was the beginning of a deep mistrust I developed for extroverted or bubbly people. I saw all their actions as being contrived. Now I realize that my judgment reflects my failure to appreciate non-verbal social cues. The fact is, a smile is no different from a spoken sentence: it conveys something about the smiler's intentions, mood, and feelings toward the recipient of the smile. Similarly, even though a polite fake laugh is still "fake" in some sense, it can still be used to convey something real (i.e. I enjoy your company, I care about your feelings, I'm listening, etc.). But I had a very hard time with these concepts as a child. They hit me as epiphanies during my college years.

I had a massive obsession with Mr. Spock from an early age. My cat is named Mr. Spock. I related to his alienness, and the fact that Mr. Spock fails to understand humans, fails to be understood by them, and can't decide if he cares or not. He seems to realize he is missing out on something and is drawn to the emotional Captain Kirk as his soul mate, but at the same time he sees emotionality as a weakness and resists. Despite all this, he is a deeply ethical and caring creature. Unfortunately, all most people can see is a cold and indifferent statue of a person.

I was a quiet and good baby.

Asa child, I was a quirky and silly girl - but with aspergers. Inside I was outgoing and fun and imaginative, but outside I was shy and reserved because I didn't know how to interact with people.

As a child I was very possesive of things I thought were mine like when I was in Kindergarten I had a favourite easel and if anyone else had it I would get upset and rip their picture off the easel
When I was a bit older there was this girl who wouldn't leave me alone everyone said how nice she was but I found her to be annoying then one day I had a meltdown and threw a sprinkler at her it hit her in the forehead she never bothered me again
I think I kept to myself more as a teenager.

Well, I talked way more than now until my parents scolded me for talking to myself at school, so then I switched to talking to myself inside my mind. I also was a scaredy cat when it came to horror movies until I learned about special effects. Other than that, I acted pretty much the same as I do now.

- I was a quiet baby. I hardly cried but I smiled a lot and loved taking pictures
- I babbled a lot and my parents would ways tell me to "speak English" or more clearly
- I was very competitive growing up. Whenever my team messed up or lost a game I would either yell, cry or become very frustrated. I also didn't help that I was always on a losing team
- I started school when I was 4, about the same time I learned to read
- I always favored female characters over male characters while growing up from Peach to Sailor Moon to female teams in various Nickelodeon shows
- I had a hard time concentrating on my homework. What would be as assignment that should only last 30 minutes took 2-3 hours
- I became obsessed with computers and video games when I turned 7 with playing my cousins' and friends' Nintendo 64 to various activity centers on my dad's computer. Before that is was cartoons in the form of Nicktoons and Disney animated movies
- I had a short temper and often get into arguments and fights with my brother and bullies at school. I've once bitten a friend out of anger and beaten up my brother a few times because he would not leave me alone after telling him to leave.
- Once I got into junior high, I often preferred to be by myself, especially because my friends grew up and made other friends.