Old School Reports

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The lady who is doing my assessment asked my mum for background of my school history, my mums actually a teacher and teaches at my old primary school so today she asked the one remaining teacher left from when I was there 10 if she could write a bit for her. The my mum found my school reports.

I feel really bad and now I'm doubting everything.
All my childhood reports from 5-11 say things like 'She is making lots of friends' 'She has lots of friends and finds it very easy to make friends'

Thats not how I remember school at all. Not at all.
Now im all confused.

Has anyone else looked back on their school reports and found they really don't match up to how they felt?

Yes. Being diagnosed as an adult can be trying as they try and get as much information from childhood as possible. Seeing as how teachers and others may have interpreted your behaviour very differently than you felt, it can seem to compromise your memories.

My mother remembers me as being quite social. I reminded her that I only ever had one friend at a time, and never fit into any cliques or had multiple friendships. My mother doesn't remember me having trouble looking at people...until I remind her that everyone thought it was cute that I was shy. She remembers that I was a chatterbox, and I remind her that I used to follow her around and talk about my favourite topic of the moment.

I have to remind her of the odd things, and even then she has difficulty accepting it. It's too bad that my father and I don't speak. He's the one who told me at the age of 10 that I would never be like everyone else. I would never have many friends, or be able to engage in small talk...but that it was important to try. (I think he as also AS).

Don't worry about it terribly. I know that I am AS as I fit every criteria almost to a T.

My old report cards had few, if any comments on them-I was never a discipline problem in school, I did great academically, so what was there to say ?

The one comment I got from teacher in one academic quarter (marking period) during 5th grade was "- seems disinterested", because it was when my mother had nervous breakdown & left me for a month. My father's response to the comment (rather than addressing the problem in any way) was to argue with teacher about grammatical propriety (and whether this exact word applied to my reaction to situation) of the word "disinterested". He crossed out the first 3 letters of it ("dis"-) and wrote in 2 letters instead ("un"-), to make it "uninterested". No attention was paid to what I was actually going through, though ! How ridiculous is that ?

In junior high school & early high school (grades 6-9) I was teased & taunted sexually by other students, but that never appeared in my school reports. Since I never got physically hurt, there was nothing for anyone in authority to see/take seriously. No one (teachers/adults who could definitely see & hear this going on) was willing/able to find way to put stop to the relentless teasing, taunting, and verbally cruel behavior of other students towards me. Fortunately, I moved away in 10th grade.

I didn't take my elementary school reports though I have them.

Yeah,mine all sounds very positive too. Even the first, in which in one sentence it says I can't connect to the other students suddenly says in the next sentences that I improved in that aspect.

One report also says I get along very well with the other children and that I am a part of the class (in a social sense).

That's not how I remember a school either.

I wonder how my teacher came to these conclusions, because they are untrue.

I wasn't on birthday parties, I wasn't asked to play with others except for always once (I don't know why they asked me once and then never again), none of the children talked to me much. I hit the teacher and I was an extreme crybaby.

Funny enough, that all is not in my report.

General aspects were also untrue. The reports say I was working hard and concentrated. I didn't. I was always very dreamy and stared out of the window a lot for which I got called up in class and I often demonstrated my boredom by wandering around in the class.

I guess school reports are crap.

As I said I didn't have to take them to the shrink. Or else I don't know what would have happened. I don't really know what you can do about it now...

If you haven't already spoken about these school years with your shrink, you could write down everything you remember from school. Write down major events that happened in each year (if there were any) and just give your side of what happened during that time from your memory.

If you remember it differently, do you know why your reports say you had many friends? I'm not sure how intelligent your shrink is (hope she is!), but even if it looked like you had friends (or even really had them), there are some questions to ask. Just to be sure.

Like for example, do you remember whether there were any children you interacted with that could have looked like friends to outsiders? And, if you remember them as not your friends, how would you describe your relationship with them? I mean, did you follow them around, did they follow you around, did you talk to them (about what?)? Also, did you like them and wanted to meet them on your own? Or did they ask you to meet them or did your family arrange you to meet them?

I know people can be friends with you while you don't think you're friends with them. Having Asperger's doesn't exclude the possibility of interacting with people in a way that looks like friendships to others. (Or even having friendships for that matter.)

So maybe it looked to your teacher as if you had LOTS of friendship, but in truth, you yourself didn't fell like it. Or you were doing really good and just never thought about such things as friendship. You were maybe just talking to them.

Or the teacher had no idea and it wasn't like this, but the students made it look like that. or maybe the teacher wanted to write something really nice.
Teachers do that often when they like students. Or when they want the students to have a good school carrier!

Well, only you know, I'm just writing down examples, yeah.

That's partly what my shrink asked me when diagnosing me. I suppose she didn't care for what the reports said but rather about how I thought/felt about other people.

Or maybe I really did take the reports to her... I can't remember. At least we never discussed them. She just asked lots of question about my time in elementary school and beyond.

Most adults in the school environments look at whether kids pay attention to you, not whether you pay attention to the other kids. They will count those who pay attention to you as your "friends," even if you consider them annoyances, rather than friends.

There is a tremendous difference between those you consider friends and those you consider merely aquaintences. I thought I had only two friends in elementary school. I'm now discovering there were quite a few others who thought they were my friends, whom I never recognized as friends of mine. Of course, 60 years of time having passed, perceptions change.

Pops

Thank you

My mum has said she used to worry about me never really having proper friends, and I've been asking her about a couple of things to check I wasn't imagining them or even making them up and she said they happened. I also had a look at my secondary school reports which sound a bit more like me.

I think I am going to write things down that I remember, I'm likely to forget otherwise, but things can't have been as happy and smiley as they were in their reports or I wouldn't be here now.

Thank you

I really noticed this actually they seem to repeat, she is popular among the children, and then it gets less at goes along, they obviously realised I wasn't as fun as I looked

MAN, have people told lies about me. SOMETIMES SECONDS after the fact TO MY FACE! They have misinterpreted things, misidentified things, etc....

Around 2nd grade, I got in trouble for not turning in some work. I said I DID turn it in, and did it that very day! I found someone ELSE erased my name(poorly), and wrote their's in! I was once slapped by a little girl I NEVER saw before, in the 2nd grade. Another person said it was because she thought I was someone else. The guy identified didn't look like me!

HECK, if a person treats a piece of chocolate cake like a book, rather than FOOD, I have ALWAYS refused to eat! People then figure I don't like chocolate cake or whatever. My MOTHER has told me things that I have had to constantly correct her on.

In short, your "permanent record" says NOTHING about YOU! It is about how others STATE they perceived you. Sad, but true!

I STILL don't know what my record says. I guess I really shouldn't even care. I remember SOME people ACTED like they liked me. They asked for help, etc... I DID have bullies ALSO. I was a nice smart kid that wasn't pretentious, but still didn't keep my mouth shut simply to be "polite". And even though I remember relatively little, I still have a clear PICTURE of a lot of it.

BTW I DID get a memory map program, and started making at least some record of when I knew what or was where.