When did you start to know you were different?

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I didn't really notice until grade 5 or so, when I found out what "special ed" (more like s**** ed) was. My parents found out when I was 4 or something ret*d like that. I liked soccer until about grade 2, but I started playing again in grade 7. I was ahead in my class in math and reading. I used to be called a "human calculator" from around grade 2 to 5. in grade 6 my parents tried to get me to meet people "like" me (nothing like me, just a bunch of idiots obsessed with pokemon), which bored me to death when they started talking about some random pokemon's abilities.

I was teasted somewhat in elementray school, but I didn't really get suspiscions(sp?) that I had a "disorder" until 4th grade, when I would get pulled to a special ed class for an hour or so every few days. I also went to that same class in 5th grade as well, and my regular teacher would give me certian accomidations, including time on the computer after I did enough work.

5th grade was really tough for me because I was worried about being "ret*d" in the eyes of my classmates. I also had a lot of meltdowns in elementary school. It was my most embarrasing school year ever.

When I finally learned that I had a disorder from my parents, they told me I had ADHD. (I think)
When I learned that I was actually autistic a year or so later, I was pretty depressed about it. But now I've gotten used to the fact, and I'm sometimes proud that I'm an aspie.

Ever since I was in preschool when all the kids would play in groups and I would be by myself doing my own thing.

When I was in kindergarten and I was too frightened to ask to go to the toilet so I would wet myself!
Nuff said really.
School sucked until the day I left to move country and I never looked back.
I thought the feelings of being "different" would wilt as I got older but apparently they are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Later Later

Always.

Have I ever *not* been different?

I knew I was different when I was three or four and I was quick to remind anyone who forgot.

The day I started Kindergarten at the age of 4.

Up until then, I had had very little interaction with people outside of my family. I grew up in a family of Aspies (although I didn't realize this until much later of course). On my first day at Kindergarten, I had no idea what I was doing there, what it was 'for', what I was supposed to do - I was utterly bewildered. I remember clearly that I did not identify with the other children - I felt very different to them. There was one exception, a boy who I now realize was an Aspie too. We miraculously found each other on that first day, and remained friends until I had to change schools some years later.

Me neither.

That's why they call it being "on the wrong planet". Ha.

6yo is the average age of a first grader in the US, for those that don't know. That was when it became OBVIOUS to me. My school noticed then as well. So I am like the fourth person to say this. In my school, 1st grade was about when things were REALLY supposed to start. I learned to read before I was 4, but it seems I was the only one in my first grade class that read SENTENCES! Everyone else was obviously sounding out the words. The difference in cadence was like night and day.

I'm in my thirties, and i'm still in the process of figuring it all out (we didn't have the same resources and knowlegable adults when I was little), BUT...

Kindergarden I told the teacher all the letter and number stuff was easy (loudly) and she shot me a look I will never forget. I never mentioned it again... hated that teacher.

The first day of school I stood 20 feet away from the jungle gym and stared at the mass of kids playing. I had no idea what to do. My older brother's friend asked what was wrong with me and said I looked stoned (had no idea what he meant). Later I understood the jungle gym and enjoyed it.

In first grade I realized that although math was simple (theoretically) I had trouble conceptualizing the numbers into what they were supposed to be doing (eventually I developed some other way to think about it, I mean, some instictive way). I also realized that I could visualize an image and draw it, nothing terribly complex, but I new this was different, I'm not sure why, but it was something I thought was special. One girl decided I was her boyfriend because I could draw her a dinosaur on command much better than the other boys. In first grade I recall drawing complex steel bridges (stick figures really), with cross bracing and everything, over and over again; they were hung on the wall in class. My best friend turned out to be mildly ret*d and by the end of the year I was pretty unpopular. I examined rocks and sand in the playground, so that was fine.

I have clear memories of being 2 years old which for people my age is apparently odd. The memories are clear (my brother convincing me to eat food on the floor with ants on it, didn't think anything was odd about that at the time).

When I was six I remember staring at a tree in the neighbors backyard and having this really interesting thought that that tree represented the development of human society over the millenia... same year being convinces, for a short time, that the rain I saw outside from my deck would eventually cause the world to flood; this was quite distressing, until after thinking it over and staring and staring for a long time it dawned on me that the water went into the ground, or the streems, and that they ended in the lake, and that clouds were overhead and that water must have come from somewhere, and I though about steam I saw evaporating from a desert lake and likened it to clouds...

I didn't know I was different at a really young age because there was always one or two kids I could seem to pull into my world...

I spent most of my life trying to be the same, and in a way dumb, I think I might need to rethink things now...

Several years ago I thought I might be slightly autistic (in my twenties) because I somehow identified with the classic autistics I saw on TV... It was also one of the first things I told my wife who I met when I was thirty ("I think I might be slightly Autistic"), though she and I thought I was sort of joking ( a day later after ordering pizza I positioned myself on my bed to wait for the bell to ring until I realized this was odd, to which I said to her "see what I mean")... Now I am just waiting to see if I can get a dx.

When I was maybe 4 or 5. At 4 I realized that I lacked the same kind of interaction skills as my 3 sisters, and my parents realized that I was different than the rest of them (thus began how they've been rubbing that in my face for the rest of my life). At 5 every kid in my kindergarten class, and my teacher made sure I knew damn well that I was the one who stood out, didn't fit, and wasn't good enough.

Age 5. I remember watching children at school spontaneously forming social groups and wondering how they knew how to do that.

Looking back I was different in so many ways though it was only in later life did i realise i was different to others. Up till then i thought i was special in some way but no different. I really thought it was everyone else that was strange and that i was totally normal, when i was diagnosed everything made sense for the first time in my life and the Guillt of my past life messes and the shock of finding out nearly killed me. My old life ended that day and it has taken a year to realise that in many ways i new life has begun.

Same here. Likewise, I had younger siblings complaining that they had to work harder making friends, because other children would simply assume that they were as "weird' as I was.

Yep. Us aliens recognize each other.