Did anyone have childhood problems like this?!

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I can remember my childhood its just that most of it was not like a childhood should be i spent my time working a job to pay the bills in my childhood.I wish i could go ack and try to be a kid.

I wasn't much of a drawer as a kid. I was always bad at drawing anything, but especially people, they all turned out stick figure-like (gee, I wonder why). Anyway, I mostly stopped drawing after I realized that my drawings don't look good. Still, I managed to produce a few decent-looking works of art. My parents even let me stop by their work to use a color copier; I used it to shrink down a drawing, cut it out, and glue it onto handmade greeting cards. (My parents said that I managed to make a good impression on the boss the first time I stopped by, so I guess he looked the other way on me using company property.) The reduction in size concealed a lot of imperfections in lines and coloring, making the drawing look better. Even my parents, normally highly critical of me, said that using shrunken-down drawings as greeting card decorations was genius. I managed to make the cards themselves look really good too, since most designs were geometric shapes, letters, and numbers, which I could draw no problem.

Very few of my drawings were even remotely morbid. I was one of the most non-violent people I knew at the time. In a typical aspie fashion, they were highly repetitive: the most common themes were a farmhouse, a city street, or a small forest. The worst (read: most violent) thing I ever drew was a slaughterhouse machine for killing cattle, after I finding out what happens to cows during a visit to a farm. The drawing was somewhat abstract and schematic, but it was clear what it was. My parents were appalled, but I'm sure they calmed down after realizing that it was cattle being killed. Other other "violent" thing I drew was a burning building, but that was a school assignment after a field trip to a fire station. I guess the teacher saw it as a cautionary drawing of some sort, so I didn't get in trouble for it. (Mind you, it was during the early 1990's, before all that paranoia started.)

I don't have much information about my childhood. I know that we moved every couple of years, and that we almost never had visitors. I don't remember anyone (parents, teachers, etc.) taking any particular interest in anything I did. I mean, it never occurred to me that they should; my mom was just always busy with her sewing.

We didn't have home movies, and pictures were not taken often. Actually, I recently got a hold of some pictures from my childhood. A lot of them were of me crying, with captions on the back like, "Evy being cranky." I didn't like getting my picture taken, because the person taking the picture would try to get us to pose and smile, and no matter what I did, they had a complaint about it. My sister made goofy faces in most pictures, but I was the one who would get called "cranky" and "negative" because I wouldn't smile. I just couldn't see how I could smile if I was unhappy (which I was, because they were giving me a hard time.) I do remember that my parents (and whatever relative was visiting at the time, since pictures were only taken if a relative was visiting) would go on and on about how "negative" I am. My mom would tell the story AGAIN about how my first word was "no", which illustrates my negativity. Mostly I just didn't like people pointing out everything that was wrong with me.

We had this jigsaw puzzle, with an abstract painting on it. Our family used to do the puzzle together sometimes, and I was only allowed to put in the pieces that were entirely red, which was just four or five pieces. So, my parents and big sister would make the puzzle without me, and then allow me to put in the remaining pieces. Apparently it was because when I was younger, I bent some pieces. But they kept this "red pieces only" rule for a long time after that, and I remember feeling hurt and angry with them for treating me that way. It's pretty much how I was always treated, though. Not that that has anything to do with autism. But still, that feeling of not being quite good enough to join in with the rest of the group, and being "less than", like the family pet, has followed me throughout life.

My drawings were often of food on a plate and root beer floats. I also remember drawing women, with round noses, long hair in barrettes (70's style), and big toes. And cleavage.

Was shy quiet kid most of the time. Extremely clingy to my parents. Too many manners.

I'm pretty sure my drawings were normal except in 2nd grade we had to trace a picture and I traced the line of the character's breasts like it showed and didn't think anything of it. But everyone in my class laughed at it and was amazed I included it. I think the teacher snatched my picture away from me and that was that.

As for handwriting... I always had trouble with cursive. In preschool I used my middle name because I couldn't form some letters. As for printing it was just average/bad. At around 7th grade I developed a new handwriting style of EXTREMELY small print. Everyone complained about it but it was neat and precise so it made me happy. In another school I went to they made me type everything and now I can't write like that anymore. Before that they gave me huge elementary school lined paper. ): I get an AlphaSmart to use next school year for everything. :]

When I was little, I was apparently quite passive, easygoing and shy. I did have quite a few sensory issues though, and could get rather "whiny" and picky about those- (I know it sometimes drove my mother nuts). Otherwise, I guess I was not that difficult as a child.

Once, when I was in about 3rd grade, we had a creative writing assignment, and I wrote a long poem about a china doll with a knife who went around murdering people. My teacher seemed to be horrified- (I believe she wrote "horrifying!" on the paper), but it was well written so I got a good grade. My parents kept it, so I´ve read it recently...(I vaguely remember writing it, but can´t remember why). I do know that I did a few "weird" things like this as a child, and people (adults) were often wondering what was "going on with me" from a psychological perspective....

Stuff like that is pretty typical for boys of that age, actually.

I recall a meeting involving me, my school principal and my mother when I was about five or six, and I can clearly remember that a drawing of mine had attracted the wrong kind of attention. It was of an alien planet, and there were eyes looking out of craters and strange creatures standing around, and as I recall it now, there was some concern as to what, exactly, they had between their legs. (I knew absolutely nothing of genitalia at that age, I just figured that since people had an opening down there to poop and pee out of, aliens probably needed one too.) I recall the principal wanting every tiny detail of this drawing explained. I don't recall the conversation between her and my mother that followed, but I wish I did because it might throw some light on the rest of my school career. There are oddities in the way I remember being treated, and the way my mother remembered it, that don't add up.

I also remember wrecking some foreign language coursebooks belonging to a relative, when I was slightly older, by drawing cartoons of devils all over them. Somehow I knew that would be seen as weird, not to mention she'd be mad that I'd ruined her books, so I hid them.

My handwriting only ever got called scruffy and illegible by one person...same person who always told me I held my pen 'wrong'. Since nobody else told me those things, I conclude that person just had a problem with me.

I was also told I held my pencil "wrong", as well as my fork and knife, etc.

Forgot to say, I like the story about the aliens. Your childhood logic makes sense. My, what a prudish world we live in!

When I was a kid, I drew a lot of pictures of myself in a cage. If I wasn't in a cage, I was in a whirlpool or vortex. My Mum used to put all my pictures on the wall, and there are several family photos of our living room wall... very freaky stuff.

In my pictures I was always alone, looking out at other people ... the most obvious one being myself dressed in yellow for the sun locked into a grey barred cage, while everyone else was at a picnic.

It's hard for us to feel a part of what everyone else is doing. Boys might be more violent in their imagery, but I think they're just expressing the same sense of being alone.

As for the rest of it... there's stacks of stuff, I don't want to bore you. I do remember my infancy and childhood in often bitter detail. Auties and aspies seem to either remember nothing or everything.

I can relate to drawing weird pictures. I have a picture that I drew at school when I was 6. I wrote below it..."the earth is on fire". I've also got a book full of pictures that I drew at that age at school. Most of them have something to do with people getting injured, sick, or dieing and some had to do with me being sad. I never really drew 'happy' pictures.
I just remembered that I once drew a picture of a mass grave of animals and said that they were all my pets of the future. Maybe I just knew that nothing lasts forever.