Were you overall shy/reserved as a kid?

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Were you overall shy/reserved as a kid? (At the age 6-12 years old)

I was reserved but not shy.

Don't remember very well.

I was definitely NOT shy from 6 to about 10. Starting at 11, I became extremely shy, as I became more aware of social dynamics and my inability to conform to them.

Younger than six, I was just plain a mess, due to environmental/food allergies, and nonverbal between 4 and 5, so I don't think shy/reserved is applicable.

Last edited by Tyri0n on 01 Mar 2013, 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

I picked extremely shy/reserved, because I was extremely passive and introverted. I don't know if I was shy but I was never proactive in approaching others, I just drifted along and another child initiated a friendship with me at some point.

no, i was very outgoing. my parents called me a "social butterfly" and i assumed everyone was my friend by default. even though i rubbed people the wrong way and tended to lose friends, i made new friends fairly easily up to a certain age. then around age 11 or 12 people formed cliques, and then i was fully excluded for a number of years.

as i got older i would come up with elaborate strategies to get people talking to me.... make sure i would be at the right place and right time, be approachable, do something interesting, be well-rounded and knowledgeable, etc.

i have never really avoided people as such, and i have never been truly shy or reserved. i get migraines often and other illnesses and i find social interactions exhausting, yet i do feel i need to have people around.

Can a girl with Asperger's be the opposite of shy and reserved, because that's how I was until I was around 13 years old and my life started to really suck, mainly because of SCHOOL. If I had been diagnosed with Asperger's back then things may have been different and a lot better. I'm private and a loner but I'm not shy. Sometimes I think I must have had William's Syndrome as a kid and somehow it turned into Asperger's in my teens, although I didn't have the health problems and facial features that normally go with Will's.

Reserved and shy, however I could be very outgoing at certain times

For you guys who would be very outgoing at times: could this be due to naivety/not being aware of the social dynamics?


I cannot figure out whether this apparently prevalent shyness is inherent or whether it is mainly due to one's understanding that one differs significantly from most other people?

Being outgoing as a result of not being aware of one's differences would seem to suggest the last part. I just have this feeling that there also is some truth to the first part.

i became aware that people thought i was weird, but i just didn't care. at some point when i was older people actually shunned me and i still didn't become shy or try to change myself. i think it just isn't in my personality to be shy, so i am not - i like to stand out.

I was extremely shy. I have met lots of other people who claimed to be shy, but I was a lot shyer than them. At least that's how it seemed to me.

Interesting additional question; how shy are you today? For me, I have gotten a lot less shy. I still am quite shy, but nowhere near as shy as I used to be. And I am a lot more reserved than I would like to be.

I was shy and reserved as a child. I got more shy as I got older. I was able to talk to adults without a problem.

Yes. I had no clue about social dynamics or social rules (and to the extent I did, they didn't make sense, so I deliberately violated them) and no reason to fear people until I started to become aware of social dynamics and gradually outgrew my tendency to consciously defy social rules. Then, I became aware of my inability to participate in them due to autism/sensory processing deficiencies, which led to social anxiety. Since then, the biggest challenge has been to overcome the processing deficiencies that hinder social functioning. As that happens, anxiety and shyness reduce proportionally.

So ODD > social rules > sensory processing > anxiety. I had to overcome my issues in that order.

And, occasionally, even #1 ODD, which dominated my childhood, will still crop up.

The top one is applicable to me. When I was a very young kid, I had no sense of appropriate social boundaries. I thought every kid wanted a hug, or wanted to wrestle. I also had no concept of sharing. All the other kids hated me (which I was well aware of). I was very outgoing because I just had no clue about social rules.

The bottom one is not applicable to me. Understanding that I'm different from others has never made me shy. I'm happy to be different from others; I welcome it. I became very shy and reserved as a reaction to the rejection and extreme unpopularity I faced. I learned to not stick my hand in the fire, so to speak. But now I'm out in the cold.

That is probably it. Actually what I meant, my words just didn't describe it properly.

It's kind of natural to become less outgoing if you have experienced rejection and unpopularity for a long time.

I feel the same way as you, I'm also happy to be different from others. I wonder if you feel that it's weird to think that way when you know how much trouble it brings about to be different? We really love our different nature too much to want to let go of it - even though it might benefit us. When I take a look at most NT's I really wouldn't want to be one of them. I'd much prefer to be myself. I guess it's possible for them to sense that opinion.

Was a little outgoing until around age 8-9 or so when I realized that other kids didn't like my special interests (which was all I talked about). Due to this rejection, I became painfully shy and socially anxious from age 9 until well into high school.