Were you a cut-up in school?

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I was. I was a "behavior problem" from the moment I started the first grade. Looking back, I have no rational explanation as to why. It brought only negative reinforcement, and it wasn't like I didn't get enough attention at home.

As I grew older, I shifted to the opposite extreme ... I became rather withdrawn. I did well academically, and teachers frequently urged me to "speak out" more in their classes. I didn't tell them that my grade school teachers had wished for the exact opposite.

From an early age...i was either concidered nice and quiet and shy...I had one day-care teacher say she wished all her students were as quite as I was and that she just had a class of kids like me and the rest of them could go to the daycare across the street....
.....or...... I was always getting punished...and i didn't know why...I had another day care teacher who was constatnly isolating me from the other kids...though I really don't know the reason...especially since I hardly interacted with the other kids.

In kindergarten, I was frequently in time out with the boys...I was among a small group of kids who always seemed to be in time out.

In first grade, it seemed I spent the whole school year being punished for one thing or another...without knowing exactly why.

When I hit puberty, I became very hyper...and had trouble staying in my seat and speaking in turn...

When I was in my mid-twenties, A guy walked into the lobby of the radio station where I was working and introduced himself to me as a classmate from first grade - I remembered his name, but of course the face was unfamiliar - though he claimed he lived in the apartment complex across the street and had recognized me getting out of my car (how's that for 'Aspies don't age'?).

So I stood there awkwardly as he reminisced for a few minutes about things I'd done in school as a first-grader - like fake epileptic seizures in the aisles. He went on and on about how wild a cutup I had been. He reminded me of a time when I had raised my hand to be excused to the restroom which was adjacent to, actually a part of, our classroom, gone into the bathroom, locked the door, climbed out the window and come back in the classroom door to my seat, leaving the restroom locked from the inside. That's when it hit me - he was right - I had done all those things and forgotten about them as if my mind had been erased! Although by second grade the AS shyness had begun to set in, during kindergarten and first grade I was far more on the gregarious side of inappropriate behavior - probably because I did not know how to connect with my peers socially in any other way.

You had no idea at all? Was that because they didn't say, or because you just didn't understand?

Your user name cracks me up, by the way ... I never read any of the Longstocking stories, but I see references to them from time to time.



Ah, those hormones.



That's pretty clever for a first-grader!

I really don't think I understood...I also don't think it was often said..or if it was said, it wasn't understood by me.

Things got really fuzzy for me in the first grade. I seldom interacted with the other kids....other than the ones who picked on me...Maybe I was punished for responding to the boys who were teasing me...My first grade teacher was really abusive towards me and called me names (like "little idiot")...and constantly singled me out. It might have partially been because I am left-handed and she was of the old-school mentality to ostracize southpaws...or I just had really limited self-awareness...

I was constantly swatted with a ruler, or made to stand in the corner during movies..or "sit on the wall"

She would also randomly move me from reading group to reading group...which was a way of singling me out.

I think she was crazy. She left a lasting impression on me.


As an adolescent, I was more of a "cut-up" in the class-clownish sense...I had a weird sense of humor and was constantly amusing myself.

As an adult I briefly had a job where I worked with children...over 1 but under 2...I had a big problem with the way that some kids were disciplined for things they didn't understand....then again...I was a "problem child" at that job, and eventually walked out on my boss.

Yep. The only way that I actually got through school was that I was smart, and even that didn't always protect me (though it did so more as I got older). Otherwise, most of my teachers didn't like me or at least didn't know what to do with me, between my penchant for questioning any authority I believed was wrong, my sensory issues and my unwillingness to tolerate abuse from other students. Some of my behavior was outlandish and inappropriate, but a good amount of it could have a) been stopped by someone willing to explain to me WHY it was wrong and what to do instead that made any sense on my terms or b) been much less of a problem if people had bothered to meet me at least part of the way and not do things to me that by MY standards were inappropriate.

When i was young i was usually the perfect student. Verrrrry quiet, didn't act up, did my work. As i got older i was still pretty quiet, but i tended to get into arguments with the teachers.

I was lucky enough to get out of school before I got argumentative. It was just unfortunate that a 1960s Australian university wasn't a particularly supportive environment for an aspie sixteen-year-old.

Never mind - forty years have passed and I'm still here. If only I could decide whether that was evidence for the futility of hope or a triumph of spirit over adversity.