A child in an adult world

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I'm very new here.

Please can anyone relate to my feeling that "I just don't belong in the adult world"? I'm 50 years old and I feel like a child, trying to play adult games in an adult world. Adult decision scare me. Other adults always seem so much more "with it", so much more competent, that I do, even though I'm quite highly educated. I often wonder where these "real" adults learned to be so adult! Examples: I feel as though my son's teachers are like my teachers, whenever I attend parents' evenings; I feel out of my depth when dealing with 'grown up' issues like buying a new car or discussing my finances; if I were to introduce a work colleague to my wife, I might feel as though I were a child sitting among two adults. It's sll as though I've never really grown up.

Background - I've only recently realised, through internet research, the extent to which I exhibit aspie behaviours. These include...

- Very esoteric and exclusive interests;
- Build-ups frustration and outbursts of anger, usually over minutiae;
- Getting stressed out because of an overload of information - I always try to master all the details of things, (e.g. getting obsessed with the need to learn which keys fit which cupboards and cabinets in the office where I have just started working, and getting wound up because it's too much to learn by rote) instead of being satisfied with a general understanding;
- Perfectionsm - overly high expectations placed by me on myself;
- A tendency to make "black or white" judgements about people;
- Boring people with a monologue rather than engaging in a two-way conversation;
- General lack of interest in other people's interests and lives;
- A history of limerence, i.e. romantic infatuations with people (or rather with my idealisations of those people).

So can anywone relate to my "child in and adult body" syndrome?! Is this characteristic of aspies too?

I'd really appreciate any information.

Welcome, Epibat, and I can relate to everything you have shared.

I can specifically recall sitting in a civics class in High School (circa 1967) where a teacher was talking about learning how to be an informed voter and how to file tax returns and do various other adult things, and I was mortified. Before then, I had always just assumed adulthood would include automatically knowing how to do all the necessary stuff ... but yes, I also "feel like a child, trying to play adult games in an adult world."

I have only been here on WrongPlanet for a few weeks, and I do not know how typical our "'child in and adult body' syndrome" is among everyone here. However, I suspect there are others, and I know you are now in good company either way!

Again, welcome!

You drive a car and you have children so you already have two things that are associated with adulthood (I don't drive and I've never even kissed a girl let alone impregnated one!).

Those things don't make you a child.

I still need my mom to help me with things and that's okay. She helped me with my wedding because it was too stressful. I am hoping I won't need her as much when I get older because she won't be here forever and my husband isn't much help. She may live over 500 miles away but I have a cell phone and she tells me what to do when I need her help.

They don't make me an adult.

Why?

I live in constant fear of how I will manage when my parents are gone. All my life, every time I've had a car problem, I took it to my dad - I can barely change a flat by myself.

Though I managed a 'career' of sorts from 15 through 45, if I hadn't had my family to help me out from time to time, I'd have gone under financially a dozen times over. All this while watching my baby sister and her husband pursue yuppie careers, build beautiful homes, buy new cars every year and send three kids to college.

I know exactly what you're talking about. I know I'm not stupid, at least in any intellectual sense - most of the people I know actually defer to my intelligence. But when it comes to functioning in the adult world, I have a sort of retardation that makes it all seem a big grownup mystery that I just don't have the capacity to understand. Thank God for SSDI or I'd eventually end up homeless and commit suicide.

An old girlfriend once called me emotionally ret*d - little did she or I know, she wasn't off by much. Its just not emotionally based - its a social handicap, not just in terms of interpersonal intimacy, but across the big picture as well. At a complete loss as to how to appropriately interact and function in the company of all the enigmatic creatures who operate which such alacrity and confidence in this world.

Smug buggers.

Yes. I used to call myself an emotional cripple, but now I know that is more of a mere symptom than the actual crux of my AS/HFA. I *look* like an adult and I am talented and I have mechanically "learned to do" some adult things like work and try to keep my bills paid, but I actually *feel* much more like the face we all saw when "Blaster" lost his helmet in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome".

I used to be really self-conscious about all of this and I was greatly afraid of being found out, but now I no longer give a rat's patootie about what people think. In fact, I sometimes think out loud *for* them and say things like, "Oh yeah, and just never mind when I go off into telling you far more than you might ever even want to think about possibly hearing about ...", then just smile on one side of my face and walk away. But, I do not recommend that for everyone, and especially not for people who learn about their AS/HFA while still young enough to benefit from some coaching.

My mother died about a year ago, Willard, my dad is in his 80s and I know your feeling of concern about how we might do without them. I got a few thousand dollars from my mother's estate and I still have my old school bus ...

Just drop me a line if you need someone to stop by and pick you up some day!

A Driving Licence is regarded as a hallmark of adulthood. It demonstrates that you are mature enough to rise above your personal feelings and be responsible for the behaviour of other people besides yourself. (I get into a strop at the slightest provocation!)

Parenthood is this responsibility raised to the nth power. You have to sacrifice every aspect of your life in favour of your child's welfare. Your life will always come secondary to that of your child. (I could never make this sacrifice).

Whew. I got married and became a parent without having even the slightest clue that was either necessary or expected, and now I have two estranged daughters in their 30s who cannot comprehend the fact they have a child-dad.

Glad I'm not the only one...

I feel like a teenager trapped in an adult's body sometimes. I just don't talk well with other adults a lot of times, I feel comfortable around younger people.

I am also glad I'm not the only one. This feels particularly weird when the people who have surpassed me are the ones I used to play peek-a-boo with. I think I've learned a lot about how not to drive myself crazy but in the actual mechanics of adulthood I am still a child. I can see the way people respond to me at IEP's etc. when I am representing myself as a parent.

I can function pretty much independently now (although I couldn't until I was 28 y.o.).

But I still feel that my tenuous grasp on the world may collapse at any time.

What shall happen to me then is yet indeterminate. I had decided upon suicide in that event, but maybe living in a "home" wouldn't be so bad, as long as it had an elevator that I could operate.

I feel like a kid and I'm 19

A lot of what most of you are saying is very familiar grounds to me. Whats weird is that when I was a kid I wanted soooo much to be an adult and to have the rights and all the "stuff" grown-ups had and to be treated as an equal by them. When I got closer to adult milestones like turning 18 and graduating high school I really wanted to slow it all down, though, and stay where I was a while longer. No way was I ready for all that and even I'd panic over it sometimes but, of course, I had to act like I couldn't wait to become an adult.
I can do a fairly convincing job of acting like a seasoned adult but that's all it is; an act!
If I live to be 100 I'll still be an adolescent.