Did you notice you were different when you were a kid?

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I only meant to write down my childhood impression, not to insult anyone. You must understand, I was the weirdo and freak, not the children I went to school with. I had no idea that 5 year old children could not read, write, or tie their own shoes. As an adult I realize that normal 5 year olds are toddlers, a step between infant and child and unable to do much more than walk and talk in a limited way. I was heartbroken and devastated because I thought my parents must hate me to send me to what I thought was some school where kids were not normal. I had a complete breakdown about it including self-harm. I didn't realize what normal was. How can you expect even a normal 5 year old child to be compassionate and understanding in an entire class of learning disabled children much less an Aspie? To me, because the kids were so far behind, I sincerely thought I was in some class for ret*d children and being 5 and Aspie I didn't have mature thoughts about things like mental retardation. I think even a normal 5 year old child would get upset if she were put into a class for severely mentally ret*d children (children developmentally many years behind in many areas) with no explanation.

I felt so betrayed by my parents. It took all my Mom's abilities to convince me that the children I went to school with were normal which required the painful admission that I was the freak. The other kids realized that on their own pretty quickly and any evidence of my "specialness" led to beatings and ridicule.

I think it's wonderful you had people who were there for you. It gives me hope when I hear that someone did have good people to depend on. Then I know that the world is not an entirely bad place.
I hope some accounts don't depress you too much. I try not to spill my guts about mine, but it comes out anyway. We can all learn from eachother.

Depends on the idea of difference.

I knew I was different from as long as I can remember, but I never knew I had to be like the other children! It never crossed my mind that even adults disapproved of my behaviour, I always thought they just were like this, acting illogical and strange, without reason most of the time!
In fact, I was obvious to the fact that other children where real human beings like me up to age nine. Then, I slowly realised I was supposed to behave like these annoying beings! And play with them and talk to them keeping in mind, they can think and feel on their own.
Up to age ten, I think I never asked anyone how they felt. Or talked to them about their pets or mother and father. Or hobbies.

That made a huge impression on me, it took me all fourth grade to realise this crazy idea was true and that I was acting all “wrong”.

I don't know, so I can't really answer the poll. I remember being a kid, and I remember being ver different, but I don't remember how much I knew about being different. By the time I was a teenager I had figured out something was very different, and even that part of it had to do with communication, but I was not sure what, nor was I totally sure what communication was.

It took the form of realizing there was some standard that people were measured against, and that I did not meet the standard. I berated myself for not meeting the standard and resolved to try harder. The longer and harder I tried, the less I met the standard, and I could not always entirely even see what the standard was. Just that most people managed to go about their lives and I was somehow in a series of institutions instead. One of my roommates in one of the institutions told me that we were not "cookie-cutter people" and that society didn't know what to do with us so they dumped us there instead.

At which point I felt like I had no map and was stuck in some kind of room but there was no map for how to get out. So I tried a number of ways to get out and they did not work and so forth. I was decidedly startled when I did get out of the system.

But certainly growing up if I had any idea at all it was along the lines of, some people were favored, I was not favored, and things I tried did not seem to make me more favored. By favored I don't mean though, like social favor, I mean that, some people were locked up and some weren't and I was certainly one of the former and I couldn't figure out the difference. Or else, people would do something and I would try the same thing and get totally different results.

All of which (combined with what people told me, or said about me in my presence) had me convinced for awhile that I was deeply defective in some manner and not possible to be fixed. Only two options presented to me were being fixed or continuing to live in various varieties of hell. I have now found a way to do neither (did not need to be fixed, did not need to continue living there), which was the most startling of all. (We were all taught that a certain so-called "level of functioning" -- which I did not approach then and certainly do not approach now -- was needed to live in the outside world, and that anyone who for cognitive, physical, or emotional reasons did not fit that, should be in there with us. We were not taught that people just like us lived on the outside.)

And only in the last few years have I been capable of conceptualizing things about being different really in a more constructive way.

I thought I was quite stupid in my early years. I always forgot to do homework and had poor grades. My teachers said I wasn't applying myself. In my teens, I got accepted into two different gifted programs so that was sort of my first inkling that I wasn't stupid. I got picked on so badly that I moved in with my dad just so I could attend a different school and start over socially. It helped a little but it was a really drastic measure.

Well, that cheered me up a little bit. In a way it's really neat (not in that definition of the word, but you know what I mean) to be able to hear all this, because I've got an extremely large story that has a character with AS, and there are all these thoughts and feelings that I never thought about. It actually makes me feel like the researcher who goes to no limits to get the info on African animals, but ends up hurting them while doing so. By hurting I don't mean by making this poll, I meant as in he was being intrusive to the animals. Very, VERY intrusive.

No idea if there's any way to close topics, but I've decided stop wanting to close this one if there was a way to do so.

I voted for the middle option. I noticed I was different since when I was a young kid. The first memory I re: is when I was in preschool. I was pretending to look interested in the drawings on the wall while everyone else socialized. On the other hand, I didn't think about it very much until perhaps towards the end of elementery school. I figured that I would "grow out of it" so I didn't focus on my social awkwardness.

I definitely knew I was different. When in third grade I was in the library and I wanted to check out a high school senior leve book, the lady told me I could not have it as I could not read it. I said oh yeah, opened to a random page and started reading aloud. I got the book. I spent most days alone in the public library learning entire subjects to the point where I probably could converse with a professional somewhat knowledgeably. If something caught my fancy I devoured knowledge of it until it bored me and I moved on.

In second grade I recall sitting in math class, it was extremely hot. I thought it would never end and made a mental note to mark that juncture to see if the adults were right that time flew by, as I did not believe them and felt that was a good experiment. This has been a 30 +/- year experiment, and they were right.

I felt so interminably bored with school as I was so much more advanced than the material, that I just blatantly read books all day in class, or magazines, or whatever I could get away with. I got in a lot of trouble for that but it made the teachers madder that I could get A's on the tests. B's at worst, except math, that was hard for me as I never did the homework and it was hard to figure out math by sheer brainpower even for someone that was gifted.

I have always wondered why everyone else is so slow, or can't seem to see the interconnectedness in systems, or visualize an entire layer 3 IP network in 3 dimensions with all details readily accessible as if there were a drop down box, etc.

Even though I was much smarter than my peers, I had no idea how to interact with them whatsoever. I got made fun of because I would daydream in class staring off into space for an hour, or wander aimlessly around the neighborhood with my hair sticking out five directions at once. I had no idea what other people did, and why they did what they did.

Socializing and dating were pure calculated experiments. Try something, note the result, add to the body of knowledge, repeat.

I could go on, but yes I have always obviously been a complete odd man out in most circumstances. I can fool people for a while, but the truth that I am a social imbecile becomes obvious eventually.

Oddly enough my only lasting friends all seem to have many AS like traits, if not a diagnosis of HFA or AS.

take care,

Jester

I for the most part knew that there was something differant about me, but for the most part, the 'differantness' lingered in the back of my mind. There were occaisons, however, when the differantness bothered me, and caused me to question what the hell it was that made me differant from all of the other kids. --This usually happened after I completely misread a social situation, and wound up getting beaten up for it.

In second grade, I was pulled out of class for psych testing, of which I have no idea of what the results were. The same thing happened in another school in fifth grade.

I would say that the true scope of being differant started to manifest itself when I was in fourth grade. In fourth grade, I felt partly that I couldn't really keep up, plus the fact that I hated the teacher, and her rules. I would have angry outbursts in class. --For the most part, fom then on, I was left to do my own thing.

Councilors from the local university psych program intervened towards the end of fourth grade, but nobody really knew what it was.

In fifth grade, the general downwards progression continued, to the point where I had more psych testing, and was placed in the SpED class later in the year. --Nobody would tell me what was going on with me.

As an adult, I asked my dad abouth this, and I was told that the school councilors had seen this before in other kids, but really had no answer for it, other than to say that there really wouldn't be much hope for me.

So again, for the most part, I always knew that I was differant from early on, but for the most part it the question of my differantness pretty much lingered.

I noticed that when I was on Kindergarden. I didn't have friends, and I was the smartest of my classroom, when the teacher made a question about our knowledgments, I almost always was the one that has the answer. I only talked with my teacher and a boy. And I liked to play with cars and other boys toys instead of dolls, and I had no idea.

First grade, elementary school, my mom bought me a little car, and I was very happy. Next day, I went to school and I brought with me the car, I used to passing reccess spinning its tires, and a girl told me "what are you doing? Cars are only for boys, you are weird". And that day I discovered NTs have toys for boys and toys for girls, I discovered I was different

Yeah I can see over my life time of 20 years that I am majorly different from everyone that I knew. Always good picked on for being different.

I voted quite a bit.. I hung out with other kids like me in school.. There was normally about 3 of us.. We kind of just did our thing.. We were good at fitting in but didnt care to.. Other kids would invite us to play whatever when they needed more.. When we went home I kept to myself.. I spent my summers hanging out with the same friend almost daily.. or alone

I was lucky.. one of my interests was reading people, themselves.. I always avoided any confrontation by telling kids the things I knew they wanted to hear.. I also watched the one kid get bullied at school.. Whether he was AS or whatever, I dont know.. I know one kid was but it never clued in to me why people did that.. Bullying seemed pointless.. if you're going to beat someone up, have a reason.. well.. maybe being 'different' is a justifiable reason? I dont know

It's a justifiable reason for NTs, and I can never understand why. It's almost as if they perceive it as a threat in some way. I try to think of it this way rather than assuming that they just *enjoy* having a reason to hurt and upset someone, because that would imply they're even nastier than they seem...

I never noticed. Of course, I spent my elementary school years in a GT class gathered of kids from all over the county, and of these, one or two others apparantly had AS (I know one is diagnosed because we've kept in touch and my mother strongly suspects that one of my best friends was also an Aspie) and about half the class had ADD. Since the kids in the class never changed, I was never exposed to that many other kids my age, and I thought that obsessive interest in learning, poor coordination, and sporadic eye contact were norms, or at least not too uncommon--maybe on a par with glasses. I never met many other kids through extracurricular activities either; while I did participate in soccer (which I hated) my teammates were all a grade below me due to my being born right around the local cut-off area and I didn't associate with them much, preferring to make grass pyramids during practice and keep as far away from the ball as possible during games.

It was only in middle school, when we moved and I got thrown into a large school and, with the multiple teachers, got exposed to a lot of kids my own age that I finally figured out that I was a little unusual. Looking back, I think I was a lot luckier than a lot of people here.

I was actually, when exposed to GT environments... way out of the norm, and so far out of the norm that I saw no difference between GT environments and regular mainstream environments socially. In institutions I was slightly more normal but still usually the one who got picked on the most if someone was going to be picked on (it depended on the mix of people there, too), except if there were other autistic people or other extremely unusual people around and then we usually saw ourselves in each other and got along. And then in special ed I did not stand out all that much, mostly hung out with other autistic kids and kids with intellectual disabilities, and did not feel too different there.

For me, it was obvious as growing up, I was the odd person out, and the #1 target of bullying. The only subject that was a problem was math, but I was one of the top readers in my class, even reading books that most people didn't read until high school at the earliest. I also had glasses to try and fix a strabismus or lazy eye in my left eye, and eventually braces to straighten my teeth.

By the time I was in my first year of middle school, my family moved about 5 miles away, and the bullying stopped. The only reason they moved was that they found a bigger house. It wasn't until I was nearly 30 that I finally got the diagnosis, as growing up, autism meant the classic low-functioning kind, not Aspergers or HFA.