When did you know you were different?

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I've always known I was different, but it became especially apparent once I started school at four years old.

Never.
Well, not until I knew about my diagnosis.
And even until some time after that I never felt different.
This was amplified by the fact that I was sent to a school specifically for autistics.
But last year I started having an interest in autism.
And now I am much different.
The quote two posts above this one (at time of seeing those posts, may later cause inaccuracies, will edit as such) made me realise how odd it is that there are people who do not have my consciousness and know not the things I do.
It blows my mind thinking about it.
I could never wrap my head around that thought at a child, either (still a child, aforementioned child is just younger).

I've known I was different from (at the latest) age 3.

~Kate

I knew very early on that something was wrong.

Hard to say. As a kid under 10 I was very oblivious. At age 12 I started to notice people more but I didn't think I was that different, just couldn't make as many friends. At 21 I somehow thought I had ok social skills but soon found out that wasn't true. Then I began to learn all about dyslexia, social anxiety, dyspraxia and autism. AS just sounded like the disorder was describing me because I never knew anyone else like me.

Through 3rd grade, and liklely 4th through 6th grade I assumed I was the norm. Obviously. Of course there were lots of things others liked I didn't abd vice versa, but that's humanity for you.

7th grade rejection started; thought at first it was being from an academic family in a blue collar school, but it enhanced. By the end of high school I knew I was weird [their word, not mine] - but hey, the whole family was weird and proud of it.

Gradually I realized I was a different weird. Then - maybe tthree years ago - I started to see interesting parallels to the spectrum. Gradually I am piecing together scraps out of all my sensory issues - but the returns are still coming in.

Just this week, a note informs me that my mother years ago was discussing my sensory othernesses with my system, speculating maybe I was affected by my big illness in 4th grade [I too used to think that had done something to me, but in fact most of my sensory stuff is documented well before that].

It might have been nice to discuss it with me - but the one thing the whole family has in common is minimal communication.

I didn't care what others thought until the fifth grade, at which point I tried to make friends, failed, and gave up on it. I knew other kids did things I didn't do, but I didn't really care all that much about it, or think all that much about it. I just stayed with my books and my computer. I was aware that I had episodic depression (I identified it for the first time at fourteen, at which point I had already had one episode and was into the second), but I was unaware that autism could apply to someone who could speak until I was out on my own, unable to properly care for myself, and finally got some kind of inkling that I might have some problem other than just not trying hard enough not to be an immature brat.

I think I would've known earlier than the fifth grade, if I took time to think about other people much at all; but I didn't. It took until I was on my own to recognize that I had real impairments and not just moral failures; then it took a little longer for me to start studying neurotypicals, both through observation and through studying people theoretically, and comparing myself to them.

So, properly, I've only known I'm different for a few years. Before that, I was either oblivious or assumed that I was like everyone else and just wasn't trying hard enough.

I knew I was different by the time I was 4, but only because I knew I was much smarter than average. I was the only one in my preschool who could read.

I never suspected I might have Asperger's simply because I've always had plenty of friends and I like to be around people (perfectly happy on my own too, though).

Just about everyone else knew I was different too, but most people thought I was a genius (not being arrogant, just repeating what I've been told; I always made sure to correct them and say that I was not). They considered me a "unique" kind of different, not a "weird" kind of different, if that makes sense.

Different. Now there's a concept.

When I first went to kindergarten, probably. I already knew how to read, and I was bored stiff.

The nuns saw me as a troublemaker, and locked me in a dark cupboard under the stairs. That was different. Unfortunately, sometimes I couldn't avoid coming out and then people would mock me.

(Edinburgh, 1955)

I noticed I was different very early, sometime in kindergarten. At first it didn't bother me that much and I don't think I gave it that much thought. When I started in elementary school I started noticing it more and it started to bother me. I couldn't figure out how I was different or why, I just knew I was somehow different and that everyone seemed to notice. As I got older, I started wondering if there was something wrong with me that nobody was telling me about, but everyone else knew about. That was the case with another kid in my school, so I wondered if the same might be true for my situation.

Since I didn't know how I was different, I couldn't really try to be more acceptably typical. I didn't know how to be different from the way I was and didn't know what I would have to change about myself to become/come across as more typical.

For me, I always knew I was different since around age 4 when I had different abilities than other kids and the lifelong forced efforts to make me be "normal" started. It really, has been a horrible life. I don't see how it can ever get better - Autistic savants just will never be accepted by the "normal" World - only punished for not being able to "normalize," left hung in limbo suspended in an unsurvivable impoverished situation, called all sorts of damaging names, hated for being Autistic - having different neurology, abused with no way out that would not leave us worse off, never given the same opportunities as others or even paid for work we do (already slaved & performed) when we can find any. Never. Never allowed to achieve anything we work for no matter how long or hard, constantly forced to deny our feelings, never able to have access to good doctors who understand us and can help our lives improve, and when it comes to having a real, really good relationship, never never never ever -- I am certain I will die before I experience that. Have a child ? Another sick sad joke played on us - not for us, those dreams don't come true. Yet more of the desires of our hearts and soul denied to us. Always, at every step of the way, made by others to feel nothing we can ever do is good enough or will ever be. Never loved back by who WE happen to love and cherish and hold dear and to be the most special and important part of our lives -- our very lives are denied to us.

i never thought of it in terms of "i am different to anyone".
i thought of it in terms that were similar to "no one is the same as me"

from the time i entered consciousness, i always felt as if no one was like me, and i still feel that way.

i really can not adopt or imbibe the attitudes or feelings of anyone else.

others are wired differently from me and i am in a frame of mind that is not experienced by anyone else on earth.

(i know i may garner disagreement but those who disagree are not educated as to my subjective experience so i consider them equal to a grain of salt)


that does not make me better than any other frame of mind, but it excludes me from identification with any other mind (in a deep way).

It graduately changed here. Looking back, I was already a weirdo back when I was six years old. We had to do a little task for Dutch (my native tongue), and where everyone in my class had world peace as a dream, I picked safe nuclear energy to make the world a better place. I really knew it when I was twelve, and by then I also realised that it was something I was carrying around since I was born.

I've known I was different for as long as I can remember. A great deal of my childhood is a haze for me now, but I suspect that I knew I was different as early as preschool. My differences were certainly apparent to others by then. I must have been three or four years old when my preschool teacher suggested I should be evaluated for learning disabilities, as I withdrew from the other children and generally avoided interaction, I spaced out at times, I couldn't navigate the equipment on the playground, and I couldn't cut with scissors or hold a pencil or write my name in spite of the fact that I knew all my letters, and had no trouble recognizing or verbally spelling my name. I was evaluated, and my evaluators weren't what to make of me, as my results were quite unusual. Apparently, I struggled with some tasks that "should" have been easy, and easily completed other tasks that should have been difficult. It was noted that I had problems with coordination, attention, visual processing and socialization. This was the mid-eighties, and as I'm female, and demonstrated advanced verbal skills, nobody ever brought up autism as a possibility. I was given counselling to help with my "problems", which didn't help me much, as the therapist who I saw from the age of four to seven emotionally abused me.
I probably knew even then that I was different from the other children. Based on stories I heard from my childhood, my differences should have been apparent to others even before that. When I was a little under three, my pediatrician asked me to jump, and I was unable to do it. The pediatrician noted that there was a delay. It was also around this time that I went to the library, and another child (one *younger* than me) pushed me. I was so traumatized by this unexpected and aggressive contavt that I refused to go near other small children for weeks after that. Whenever I did find myself near other children, I screamed and cried untiol my parents were forced to remove me from the situation. This put a strain on my parents' relationship with family friends who had young children. Regardless of my level of awareness then, it should have been obvious to others that something was "different."
To sum up, my differences have been apparent for pretty much my entire life, and I can't think of a time in my life that I didn't feel "different."

I knew I was different, I think, from the time I started primary school at the age of almost 5. Although I could talk and I spoke at home, I was non-verbal at school when I was very young. I didn't know how to play with other children and didn't want to. I just wished they would leave me alone. I was also physically awkward and just about the worst in the school at any activity that involved running, climbing, throwing and catching etc. That feeling that I was not normal grew stronger as I got older and those feeling were reinforced by the way I was treated by the other children. I felt that there was something very wrong with me but didn't know what it was.