How was your childhood?

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I'm talking about the first 10 years of your life.

Mine was really.. strange. I had a lot of fun with my special interests and in the contact to older people (usually I could get along only with people who were at least 15). I collected little plastic animals and played with them a lot, always alone, re-enacting my favourite books and movies with them. I also read a lot. I didn't have friends though and constantly got into trouble in kindergarten and later in elementary school. In kindergarten I once bit a girl because she wouldn't leave me alone, and a guy bashed my head against the wall because he thought I was weird. I also refused to partake in most of their stupid games, turning my chair so they'd face my back when we sat in a circle I taught myself to read when I was about 3 or 4.
In elementary school I really didn't understand how NTs make friends. I just went around and asked people: "Do you want to be friends?" When they said yes that was kind of a binding contract for me, and I felt cheated when those people played with someone else. most teachers didn't understand me and sometimes even picked on me. There were some others though who liked the calm, nice person I was and tried to support me.

Your childhood reminds me a bit of mine. When I was about eight I would walk to first grade, played darts with the adults in the neighborhood and had a lot of fun making friends, I was very social. I had a lot of friends then, and kind of pulled people into my adventures and clubs outside in nature, I was very imaginative.
I had a storytelling ability so I would get kids gathered around me and tell them stories. It wasn't until i hit puberty and we moved to WV that things got really hard to adjust. I became more withdrawn and I think that's how the untreated Autism led to schizophrenia.

It's only a theory of mine. I feel like if someone has a functional difference than severely impedes on their ability to socialize that it can cause it to worsen, any illness really.
In Kindergarten I was making friends with people who were picked on because I felt sorry for them but then I learned why they were picked on sometimes for things like not sharing and being spoiled, lol

I don't know if being more social means schizophrenia over autism. It seems that the stereotypical cases of this illness like January for instance, who has become a media spectacle, is what I was like. Although I believe Jani may be Autistic and not schizophrenic, she seems more Autistic than anything. I think Schizophrenia may be a form of Autism.

School s----d,the kids didn't get me and they were mean,I played mostly by myself till I was eight or so,the teachers seemed pretty mean and cross to me but I was most likely quite a trial for them.I couldn't read or write till about age seven but they didn't really have anywhere to place a kid like me,not that "special" and not quite "normal" either.I was fortunate that my parents were able to get me a private tutor,she was a very patient,sweet person and I probably owe her a lot.I now read faster than anyone I know and can write just fine.I collected a lot of things,toy animals,hot-wheels cars and strangely, nine -volt batteries.I wasn't alone in collecting these as I had made friends with a neighborhood kid that collected them too.We were both geeky kids that the bigger kids terrorized.Looking back,I wonder if my friend was on the spectrum.He was building transistor radios before he was ten and he was always sucking on his t-shirt.I became an avid reader,had my pets and art so somehow I survived but I don't think I would want to go through it again.

Let's see, according to my parents I was an avid reader from an early age; my development seemed normal until I was about 2 or so, when I started falling behind. When I was 5, I drove my parents' car right through my next door neighbor's front door at night. From kindergarten through the 7th grade, I rode the short bus to school and back and was placed in completely separate special ed classrooms. I had issues with behavior, but not so much academics. I would often get very angry, frustrated, or upset and would lash out and have gigantic temper tantra. I enjoyed video games, just reading through books and finding things, and walking through the woods and other areas around my neighborhood. I was obsessed with things like tornadoes (followed by weather in general), space, and ants.

i could relate well with most of the post here.
i had a bad childhood i was badly abused verbally, physically and emotionally.
so i became withdrawn i don't think i have asperger its basically that i am badly damaged
in every way and mentally disturbed.
main problem is that i am tongue tied most of the time and also i get bullied

Profoundly sh***y. Thanks for asking. Things got better in my teens though.

My poor mother! My poor sisters! My poor teachers! Poor ME!
Nobody understood me, and I couldn't relate to them either. My parents, siblings, teachers, and doctors could not figure me out (high functioning autism and aspergers were not recognized in the USA in the 1960s when I was a boy). I was always overwhelmed by all sensory input. I stayed awake at nights usually (quieter, darker, cooler). I tried to join in with neighborhood kids or at school with no success. I was called "weird" etc. I read a lot. I was reading adult level books of history and science by the time I was eight or nine years old and amassed a tremendous amount of knowledge and a huge vocabulary, which only served to isolate me further from my peers.

I was kicked out of a religious elementary school for being too rebellious and asking too many questions lol. I built many plastic models of World War One and World War Two airplanes and World War Two ships and tanks. My sensory issues have never diminished and my life has been a living hell for as far back as I can remember partly because of that and partly because of the social issues I also have because of my neurology.

I didn't know I was autistic until my late thirties and wasn't officially diagnosed with Aspergers until I was in my forties. I am fifty-two years old now and I'm set up with a Regional Brokerage through the Developmental Disability branch of the local health department. They help me a LOT in many ways. My life might have been very different if I had been diagnosed earlier, but in the USA my condition was not recognized as a legitimate diagnosis until 1994 and I was already thirty-four years old then.

I moved around a lot when I was younger. I never stayed in a specific school district for more than three years, so I didn't keep any of the friends I had made for long. On the bright side, I've been all over Oregon, and even some parts of Washington, so I have a pretty good idea of where I would want to live in the future. I spent most days outside with the neighborhood kids, and I once lived in a neighborhood with a couple of pigs kept as pets. I remember trying to escape from one of them when I was younger.

I used to hula hoop a lot, and would often gamble the change I found on the ground with the other kids in the neighborhood to see how long I could go. I once made 5 dollars at one time.

Although I liked living in Portland, I'd really like to move to the coast eventually. My parents rented a house in Coos Bay that was one block away from the beach, and I would just go there most days, with or without my parents.

Living with my dad was a nightmare, because he had to be forced to take care of my sister and I. If he had it his way, we would just sit and do nothing while he played World of Warcraft for hours on end. He would often punish me out of nowhere, and tell me to do things that he knew I wasn't capable of. My mom divorced him when I was 8, just before my diagnosis. My mom said I said this when she told my sister and I why he wasn't there anymore: "Good. because I'm tired of him being mean to me." My dad isn't as big of a dick as he used to be, but he's still a pretty big dick. I haven't laid eyes on him since March.

So yeah, that pretty much summarizes my childhood.

I had a good childhood as a classically autistic child.

I didn't socialize. I didn't communicate much. I was in my own happy snappy world. I played however I wanted to play, and my parents were glad to have a quiet child who was good at entertaining herself. At school, I was the pet of my teachers. They made sure that I was challenged with learning material beyond my grade level, and they let me learn on my own, which was the best way for me to learn. The art and music teachers paid a lot of attention to me and got me into art and music programs, so I was able to socialize more in a safe environment starting around age ten or so.

I was lucky, I think.

I had seizures as an infant which for some reason went away by the time I was 3, as I've never had one since. As a result, I did things slightly later than average, but by the time I was in school, it was obvious that I didn't really need Special Ed, so I went to typical classes except for speech therapy. Having to leave class and wearing glasses to fix my lazy eye were what made me a major target for bullying, and this was before people actually took bullying seriously. Things improved when my family moved to the neighboring city and I got to go to a different middle and high school. The high school I went to was the big rival for the one my former bullies went to, which I liked. I did end up needing glasses again as an adult, but that's because most of my family wears glasses to see things in the distance. The thing is that glasses on an adult isn't stigmatized as it was when I was a child wearing glasses.

I still didn't get diagnosed with AS until I was in my late 20's because before then, only the low functioning people got diagnosed with autism, and I was too high functioning for that diagnosis. Also, my gender made it difficult as well as most of those who were diagnosed were males. The only thing people knew was that I was slightly different, but even as late as the mid 90's, a therapist said that "if there were such a thing as a little bit autistic" that would fit me. I later told that therapist about the Asperger's diagnosis and she said that if she had known about it earlier, she would have suggested it then as it was what I really had.

Lets just put it this way if given the opportunity to go through it again I'd refuse.

Children didn't like me. My parents beat me.

It was such an awful childhood, I have an additional diagnosis of PTSD in addition to HFA.

My childhood was great. Even though my family went through some rough times financially and I was bullied at school, I was pretty happy. I kept myself preoccupied with playing videogames, playing with my younger brother, playing with our pets and especially talking to my imaginary friends. Which to be honest is something that I've never grown out of.

A lot of the posts on here (especially the first one) sound very familiar to me.

I also happily played by myself as a toddler, which my mother enjoyed (considering she had 3 other kids to take care of.) However, I hated pre-school. I hated the social games they did. I hated being switched from one activity to another without warning. I begged my mom to let me leave. She eventually let me drop out. (Looking back on it, she must've been very upset by that...)

Kindergarten was relatively easy, since I wanted to learn to read and count (both things my parents didn't teach me, no matter how much I asked.) Although I hated playing with the girls during playtime, since it seemed like all they ever did was scream, throw things, and push me around. The boys were much more fun. They were calm, and we'd usually take blocks and line them up like dominoes in cool patterns, to knock down all at once.

First and second grade I only had two kids I considered friends, but a few guys that sometimes joined us at recess. In second grade, girls started picking on me for hanging out with the boys so much, and it was the first time I ever realized it was unusual. During that time, the only female friend I had slipped away from me.

Third grade, all hell broke loose, as I was basically abandoned by everyone, even acquaintances. The proto-clique that would become the "preppy" or "popular" kids in high school sprouted up, and essentially ensured that nobody ever became my "friend." There were kids that sometimes played with me, but only if I brought a cool toy. Most of the time I sat by the wall during recess, by myself and of my own accord. If I tried approaching someone, that would just be fuel for a new rumor by the popular kids. It got to the point where even if someone tried to be nice to me, I was suspicious of them trying to pull a trick on me. During this period, for the first time, a boy told me that he liked me. I was so used to getting hurt by everyone that I just ignored him. (I feel awful about that now, poor kid)

Granted, at home my mom frequently yelled at me for not smiling. When I was content, but lost in thought, she would ask me, "Why do you always look so sad? Smile, for heaven's sake!" Likewise, I often got in trouble both at home and at school for "talking back"... which, to me, was asking a clarifying question in response to a vague request, or giving a logical reason why I was/wasn't doing something. This constant misunderstanding from my family, in addition to the crap I had to put up with at school, gave me terrible anger issues. Arguments turned into fights, which in turn encouraged kids to pick on me more in order to see what I would do next. It took until I got into high school for me to get a basic grip on my emotions.

My childhood was great. Even though my family went through some rough times financially and I was bullied at school, I was pretty happy. I kept myself preoccupied with playing videogames, playing with my younger brother, playing with our pets and especially talking to my imaginary friends. Which to be honest is something that I've never grown out of.

It was hell...I dealt with constant bullying (particularly from Middle eastern children mad from discrimination from whites in Detroit), had no friends, went through a divorce (with parents fighting vicariously through me), forced family reunions where I often got overloaded, wasn't told about sex (which led to an extremely confusing early adolescence), wasn't allowed to embrace my love of hard rock/metal around people I visited, didn't have an instrument I could play well...I also had the fun of witnessing my mom's many abusive relationships and her depression and my dad's disregard for my health.

For positives I found the healing power of hard rock/metal and was able to embrace my interests like CDs, Yu-Gi-Oh, Rollercoaster Tycoon and Onimusha...but I was almsot completely alone all the time.