Do you connect better with kids than adults?

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Yo.

So I'm a musician (classical), and I've also taught middle school and high school band and orchestra for six years, but it just miffed me too much when administrators kept encroaching on my style, and other teachers started getting nasty and rude to me because my students genuinely enjoyed my laid-back weirdness more than any of their other classes. Our ensembles were becoming truly awesome, recruitment was at an all-time high, and for the first time our school was producing students who were going to college to major in music... but I just couldn't stand that I was being micromanaged, criticized, and treated like the bad guy, so I quit and moved back to live with my family.

That was the end of a good thing for those students, which hurts, but I was very quickly on the road to complete burnout, and probably to having an episode, because I was already drinking too much in an attempt to clear my mind most nights.

Oh, did I mention that I'd already broken up with the girl I'd been dating for five years, bought a house on a whim, and had only recently figured out that my personal brand of weirdness sounded exactly like a lot of people I'd met online with this thing called AS? Anyways, yeah, I was transitioning, and I'm happy to say that I've managed to break out of treating my body like crap. (I still haven't gone on a date in roughly three years, but that's another story.)

While trying to figure out what else I might possibly actually want to do with my life (because I sure as sunrise don't want to work in a public school again after the way that all turned around), I was called and offered a long-term sub job teaching music at an elementary school, being the only under-employed-but-well-known person in town who is actually highly qualified to teach music.

I was hesitant about it at first, but after just a couple of weeks doing it, I am constantly enjoying working with little kids. It's very different from the intellectual work at the high school level, and worlds away from the sense of humor and camaraderie I had with parents and community members before, but people I've never even met have come up to me to tell me that their son or daughter is suddenly talking about what they learned in my class, they're talking about it with their other teachers, or just that they've "heard I'm doing amazing things".

I can't help but feel that I get along with children better than I do with adults: that they somehow connect with me, that they feel that I really care for them and share my enthusiasm, and that they join in with my little conspiracy to not care what other people think about me ( as evidenced by wearing a suit and tie plus tennis shoes, or replacing the standard "classroom behavior" sign with a picture of Bill and Ted ("Be Excellent To Each Other!")).

I can honestly say, right now, that my only two real friends live four hours away and in Hawaii, respectively; we talk on the phone maybe once a month, but the moment we say "Hey" on the phone, it's like we've never been apart. But other than that, since I've come to understand myself and stopped trying to be 'normal', I've simply had a no-go at any attempt I've made to bond with people... it's like I've just slipped out of society.

It's awesome to have the gift of having found something I can do so naturally and well, but it's dreadfully lonely to be a 30-year-old single guy who can only really seem to communicate with people who are under 18 (and no, not in a creepy way.) Does anyone else have similar feelings or experiences?

I do connect better with them.

I connect better with "childlike" adults more than anybody, and to a certain extent preteens as well. I find small children to be annoying, I find most teenagers are immature and try too hard to act like adults, and I find most adults to be too serious and focused on work/money/relationships/whatever.

Somewhere around a decade ago I did some supplementary education teaching working for the Princeton Review for a few months.
During that short time I taught elementary, mddle, and high school students.

The high school studdents were generally just apathetic or chatty with each other, which I could deal with.

The middle schoolers were nightmares, and eventually led to me quitting the job.

I enjoyed working with the elementary school students the best.
They were attentive, engaged, generally respectful, and a lot of fun.
If given a choice, they're the ones I'd be most willing to teach again, although I've only rarey had contact with young children in my adult life outside of that experience.

Younger kids are just like everyone else to me.
There are some i like and some i dont like.

Yes. They have not learned the social codes yet.

yes,out of all human groups am able to connect to toddlers the most.

I always got on better with people much older than myself, especially when I was a child but it still remains the same today.

Whether it is because I was raised by a mother who was in her 40s when she had me or whether it had to do with my development as a child or both, I don't know.

I don't mind, old people are cool anyway.

To the two posts above: just to say when i was going to school for developmentally disabled,
it was essential that the teachers bonded more with the kids and we called the teachers
on a first name basis, so it was a lot closer and more informal than regular school.

Quite the opposite. I've actually have had a better time enjoying the company of adults, even when I was a child. It seems that I've never been able to understand or want to talk to people my own age group, due to how I would want to talk about topics that anyone was really interested in.

I don't really feel that I connect better with kids, but it seems to be the case according to my NT friends and family. I'm not so interested in children but I like them and I don't feel any social pressure with them. And now that I think of it, most of the children I meet like me too and seem to enjoy being in my company. So I suppose the answer is in fact yes.

I tend to connect with younger kids better too. Just like ouroborosUK said. But I also get along better with people who are older than me as well.

It's the same for my NT brother as well. We both have really high IQ's (and slow processing speeds) and the psychologist who tested him has noticed this pattern before and has nicknamed it "smart child syndrome." I guess the idea is that smart people, especially kids, can have trouble relating to peers because they are not on the same intellectual level, so it is easier to relate to intellectually, though not developmentally, more equal individuals who are older, or to take on the role of mentor to younger people. I'm not really sure how true this all is though.

One reason for me is that I was bullied pretty badly by my classmates but not any of the older or younger students. This now makes me socially terrified around people my exact age or year in school, but not nearly as much around people who are not my exact peers. But this doesn't account for the way I really connect to kids.

I also love playing games and can find adult chitchat rather boring and tedious at times.

And if this makes any sense, it seems that kids are less 'NT' than adults.

This is an area where I'm completey derived from other people on the spectrum. My interactions with those older than me tend to run deeper than those who are below my age. I often talk to my teachers on variety of things while there will be classmates who's discussion are tedious high school drama BS that will make me more pumped for graduation in June.