When did you know you were different?

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I was aware I was different about the time I started kindergarten. I was probably different from others from the time I was born, however.

Pretty much as long as I can remember....so probably about starting in kindergarden.

I've known my whole life I was different. I was about three when I realized it. I knew something was missing and I didn't know what it was. I knew there was something about me and I didn't know why I wasn't like the other kids. I felt different.

Kindergarten. I have this one memory where I was sitting off to the side one day and just looking around at all the other kids playing games and socializing and I felt so, so out of place, like there was a huge gap between us that I didn't know how to bridge. Little did I know that this would be the story of my entire life.......

I was young, probably around the age of 5 years. I always played by myself. I had no problems writing my name and all that. The pictures I drew were dimensional instead of flat like the kids in my class and my kindergarten teacher was surprised. I had no problems reading to myself but I had speech problems and they put me in a special class by first grade with separate speech lessons. I remember being compared to my older half-sisters and other kids my own age. People would talk about me being different. It was pretty obvious.

8-10 years old.

From a young age I could read before I could talk, had to take speech therapy, and was leaps and bounds over most of the other kids. My behaviors led other kids to consider me a "ret*d" and "in need of special help", so I had few friends growing up. When I was diagnosed back in 2007, I did research and felt that it explained everything over the years.

I was oddly oblivious to the idea that I was significantly different from everyone else for a very long time. I really didn't occur to me that making peer relationships and playing with others was considered normal. I had little to no interest in this, so I just assumed that everyone else didn't, either.

I think I realized it around 5th grade or so. I remember someone around that time asking me why it was that I pushed people away who were trying to be my friend. My thought at the time was, "Gee, I didn't know anyone even wanted to be my friend! I guess I better figure out how to better pay attention to this."

It was painfully obvious, however, to my parents and teachers that I was strikingly different from my peers (and strikingly different from my brother). A mantra of my childhood spoken by my mother was, "I want you to try and make at least one new friend this year." It rarely happened... until high school, when everything changed and I suddenly found friendship with the bookish crowd.

In kindergarten I used words that non of my peers really understood, and at the time I didn't realize how weird I might have sounded to them. I never played with others unless we were put into groups, and I was surprisingly quiet and shy. In the 4th grade (9 or 10 years old) I didn't like what all of the other girls liked, and I dressed like an "old lady" compared to them. Then in middle school (6th grade), it all went down the drain and I really started to get teased and threatened.

For as long as I can remember...

I feel different all my life. I always was this taller, louder and unsociable kid. I didn't understand why people do these odd and aimless things (socialisation category). I don't understand it also now.
Teachers thought me Wonderkid, because of hyperintelligence (but it stopped, now I'm not like before), but they didn't like me, because I wasn't pretty, sweet and nice girl.
Children thought me mad and somewhat ret*d (clever but not normal). So nobody liked me. Now it's the same.

Yes I was different. I don´t know exactly at which age I guess it was at elementary school. I was not interacting with other people I would spend long periods of time alone. And I would almost not speak at all, and also tryed to avoid people being extremely shy.

Yes. I can see they exist ... but then, do they really?

However odd I might be, if I actually am, I would definitely *not* want to *not* be me.

I guess when I was singled out from everyone else in forth grade and everyone hated me, I think I made fun of somebody else who was in special ed with me, and no one else thought I belonged in special ed so they all stopped talking to me. Even I didn't think I belonged in special ed, but after all that, I was glad I was, they helped me through that issue.

I've always felt that I was different, the earliest I can remember was in elementary school.

Wonderfully Stated LeeJosepho!