Were you a Good Little Aspie?

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i was well behaved. at school i was labeled as lazy and not working up to my potential, as well as talking during class too much (i wasnt ever loud though, just to my tablemates)
but at home i was just a quiet curious kid who liked to play with my dinosaurs, beanie babies and hot wheels. i followed orders. i dont think i ever really embarassed my parents. except for this one time during halloween, i was very small. i went up to a door, and when it opened, i pointed, turned to my mom and shouted: "look, mom! black people!! !!"

I was always very well behaved when adults were around, and remember them complementing me or my parents on how well behaved and old for my age I was. However when I was off on my own which was most of the time I pretty much exclusively did "trouble making" things.

A few of my favorites were throwing water balloons at the buses that past by my house and enjoying the explosion of water as they burst against the large flat side of the bus. The other was sneaking into the golf corse near where I lived and stealing golf balls from a particular fairway that couldn't be seen from the green and then taking them back to my house and bouncing them down the street towards a busy intersection and listening to the wonderfully frantic noises the golf balls would make after bouncing around under a passing car.

In terms of school my teachers were always baffled by my poor performance. I would regularly ignore all the assignments that held no interest for me but then going way above and beyond with anything that happened to catch my attention.

Social situations with peers was never good, not until I got out of High School.

Meeee! The only discipline problems i had were when it came to authority (starting around fourth-grade-ish). You know how it is, i actually thought that teachers and such were equal humans beings to me and that i could negotiate with them and that my opinion meant something. Silly me But, for the most part, i was too quiet and off to myself to be a behavior problem. I was just kind of *there* most of the time as a kid. A few times one of my "peers" would hear me talking to a neighborhood friend of mine or something and then gasp and say "wow! i didn't think you could talk!" But i generally followed what was going on in class pretty well and everything, so most of the time there weren't issues.

I was very obedient at school and probably more obedient than most at home (but not totally obedient, I did for examples teal candy from my parents with my little sister on early week-end mornings - they knew of course but never really punished us). ON the other hand, however, I was very bad in the sense that I had many meltdowns, and still do. I am still as an adult obedient to the rules, but still bad for my meltdowns.

i just noticed you have a tegu! *screams with joy*

continue with the conversation, please.....

As a baby, my mom claims I was a relatively easy child. Whereas my brothers would explore and climb all over everything and need to be constantly supervised, I would just sit there. As an older child, I was mostly considerate but very stubborn. I was a real brat if I didn't get my way, and my temper tantrums were intense.

I was very well behaved at home but always got in trouble at school. My mother could never get her head around this she always thought the teachers were mixing me up with someone else.

When I was a kid all of the other kids would say, "here comes trouble" whenever and wherever I showed up.

Let's just say there was an extra psychologist at our my high school for me and another kid. That was doing there dissertation on us. However, since I hadn't done anything violent, except for the time I was attacked by three kids with knives (After that fight surprisingly didn't have any more trouble with bullies), they were not able to send my to juvenile camp/jail because everything I had done wasn't consider to be non-violent (or could never be proven), and the state mental/behavioral school "did not have facilities for me". Half my school day was broken down into being in a combination of the ROTC room, resource room, and career center though. Middle school and Elementary school was always in the resource rooms or with one or two other students. Other than that I wasn't any trouble at all. Not one bit. What was nice was have an accomplice at my school sadly though they committed suicide there senior year just before graduation.

I was very quiet, and hardly threw tantrums only when I felt it was justified. My parents used to try to sign me up for school sports, and I wouldn't notice. I would be sitting inside putting together a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. "Huh? There's a soccar game today? Why are you telling me?" As an even younger child, I would be the one making piles of dirt in the middle of a kickball game (eventually getting whacked in the face by the ball).

I was very unaware as a child. Not only of life around me, but of social rules. I was at a friend's house and didn't notice that her parents were hinting at me that it was time to go home. I was zoning out at some activity that the friend and I was doing. Suddenly, her father erupted and started cussing at me and threatening me. At the time, I had no idea what that was about. To this day, I'm still really bad at taking hints (especially if they are badly given).

I was also painfully shy. I was afraid of friends in particular. If I stood next to someone I liked, I felt the bone-tingling blood-chilling fear that I still get when I'm next to angry hornets. Well, I was also bullied a lot. Maybe that kind of explains it.

Suddenly, after my second year in middle school, it was like I woke up and became aware of my exsistance.

Yes! I have his baby picture as my avatar. His name is Loki and he's an Argentine Black and White. Tegus are my favorite lizard

Oh yes I was definitely a very well-behaved child. I rarely said or did anything in the presence of non-family members and would mostly just stand next to my parents quietly. Among family I was rather talkative and would yammer on about things no one cared about...

There are several reasons for why I was well-behaved. I took everything as "rules" and would tell my sister "mom told us not to" or "you're not supposed to do that!" for example I would not run around because you're not supposed to run unless you're at a park.. etc. The second reason is that my parents were very dominating and strict.

When I see kids acting out these days it drives me nuts and I'll say things like "when I was that age..."

Ironically, my mother always thought I was the problem child because if I did perceive something to be unfair or I didn't like something she said, I'd call her on it and not back down when she tried to bully me whereas my sister would 'yes' her to death and tell her what she wanted to hear then go do whatever she wanted behind my mom's back anyway. My sister pretended to agree with my mom to make things easier on her and I stood up for what I believed in. So I was regarded as the trouble maker.


[edit] I just read zeichner's post - that's exactly what I was trying to say about the rules and all. I think he put it better.

i didn't cry ever until i was 3 years old. i didn't start sleeping through the night until then either but mostly i just sat in my crib quietly or walked around the apartment by myself. i was abused physically from an early age so having learned such behavior at my mother's hands i was a somewhat violent toddler. i was separated from her for ages 3-5 and that was a very good thing.

whatever violent tendencies i had were mostly quelled then. i did get into some fights as a child but only in self-defense. i was the invisible child at home and at school i was an "overachieving underachiever." (read: never really worked hard for my perfect grades)

even now i'm still the good child. my older sisters have done some pretty crazy things. while i have nothing against going to bars, i've never been drunk, never wanted to smoke anything, and overall have never gotten into any kind of trouble.

he's way cute! arg. b/w tegus are my favourite lizards as well

I was extremely well-behaved and obedient, but it wasn't really by natural inclination. I was scared to death of my parents, my mother was ashamed of having a weirdo for a son, and my father openly hated me; I hoped that if I was submissive enough they would love me, or at least despise me less. At school, I obeyed because I was terrified of having people's attention drawn to me and tried to just fade into the background so I'd be picked on less. The only exception was a short time towards the end of 8th grade, when I got in a series of fights with kids who had been bullying me all through middle school.

Thank you all for your detailed answers! I guess it is quite common for aspie kids to be very good kids but not 100% common as some of you have said you were at the other end of the scale.

This is exactly my experience. I was very well-behaved, as I have said, and only got into trouble when I challenged a parent or teacher in some way. Examples:

* I corrected my teachers' spelling on the blackboard on more than one occasion. It was never appreciated.

* I always asked "why?" when an adult told me not to do something. I wanted to understand the reasons behind certain actions being forbidden, because then I would feel that it was just for me to not be allowed to do them and would obey. I hated being given the "because I say so" answer.

* I was standing on the edge of my childminder's living room, not quite on the carpet, with my shoes on. She said "Get off the carpet! I don't want it to get dirty." I corrected her "I'm not on the carpet." She thought I was being willfully pedantic and gave me a bit of a telling.


Zeichner - I don't like rules - I do like structure though - and I hate authority. I like having a framework to work within -clear parameters - but I will deviate from and subvert it. I always used to subtly deviate from the assignment brief or the essay title, always wore the slightly wrong uniform but kept within the limits. I enjoy existing in a world that has rules but need to bend them regularly in order to be true to myself. In my dissertation I used the pronoun 'I' - which is something you are never supposed to do, it's supposed to be objective - but I gave my supervisor such a convincing argument for why I had made a conscious choice to do this that they indulged me and I got a 1:1.