Asperger Syndrome and Kindness During Childhood

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When I was little, that is, before my teens, I was, or least considered myself to be, a very kind person. Examples: I willingly shared my food with my classmates who claimed to have forgotten their lunch, I never hit or insulted anyone, I felt compelled to bring a sick animal into my home and nurse it back to health, did whatever I could to make my parents happy, and I loved giving giving gifts to people, even simple things like candy or handmade cards. I was super-generous with consumable items, like M&M's, or disposable items, like Bic pens; at the same time, I was willing to sacrifice my life to protect my toys. In other words, I was willing to share or give away anything, as long as I could easily replace it with an identical item; selective generosity, if you will. I even made a medal for myself, out of cardboard, aluminum foil, and twine, inscribed with a heart and the words "Kindest Child Ever Lived" on the obverse, and the abbreviation "KCEL" on the reverse. On a more serious and sadder note, after I learned about the concept of sainthood in Catholicism, I had visions of myself being beatified as a saint. (Ironically, I was an atheist for most of my life, save for a brief stint with Judaism during my early to mid twenties.)

My family, on the other hand, used my kindness for their own advantage. They punished me, spanked me, and yelled at me for every smallest reason they could find. But during they few times they realized they took things too far, they'd say: "you're a nice boy; you should forgive people". My classmates went one step further. After word got around about my kindness, they'd claim to have lost or forgotten their lunch or money, only to happily collect it for me and laugh after I was out of sight or worse, in plain sight of me. They were sneaky enough about this that my teacher never caught on to their trickery. In retrospect, I'm slightly confused and pleasantly surprised that it didn't occur to them to simply take my lunch money; after all, it would have changed hands just the same. A few kids were genuinely appreciative, though, and did nice things for me in return. When my parents caught wind of my kindness, and yelled at me for "being so trusting". (In 20/20 hindsight, they were somewhat right, just tried to get the message across to me in the worst way possible.) I interpreted it that they simply didn't understand or didn't care that a little child could have so much kindness in him.

Around age 12, my childhood kindness gave way to teenage angst, and was lost forever. Now, at age 29, I'm left to wonder. Was my childhood "kindness", medal and all, really kindness or just garden-variety naivety that comes with AS? I was an aspie child, with almost zero social intuition, so I guess somehow, I picked up on the fact that kindness was "good"; at least I found it to be winning me brownie points with adults, and to a lesser extent, with peers. As I got older, I found myself losing out at times because of it, but since that was all I knew, I kept being kind. Now, on a darker note, I'm wondering at this point if my parents trained me to be kind to people because in the end, it made it easier for them to control me. It had an even worse effect: it put me in a moral dilemma, when strangers (especially 65+ women) complimented me constantly, while my own family harped on me for every little thing.

So there you have it. Let me start a discussion by asking questions. Does Asperger Syndrome and one's kindness during childhood go together, or is "kindness" really just naivety? And what would you say my own case was: true kindness or just naivety?

Last edited by Aspie1 on 11 Oct 2012, 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

sounds like a combination of both true kindness and naivety.

I was like that all my life. It's part naivety but also a strong moral sense and not really seperating yourself from other people. Mainly it's just being from another planet.
People will take advantage of you when you are kind, but I don't understand why they do that. I don't understand how their minds work,

It was true kindness.

The naive part was not realizing that such kindness is not innate in most people. From our perspective it should be. From the NT perspective, it's a privilege they save for the people they like, or the people they want to kiss up to. That's not your fault, though. Your parents were either unwilling or unable to enlighten you, no one around you is going to clue you in. But it makes me wonder what the world would be like if more people thought as we did.

The reason so many kids shows are filled with lessons on being kind and caring towards others is because it's so contradictory to their nature, that the lesson must be ingrained. To us it came naturally.

Your post sounds like it could be my life story. I'm also 29. Also considered myself kind and caring. Was also taken advantage of, and also had inept parents who believed screaming, hitting, belittling, and shaming were more effective ways to control me than to actually rationally explaining things to me.

Wow I can relate to a lot of the aspects of your story too. I am still DAILY frustrated and confused about why other people in this World can't just be kind to each other...
I just don't get it
I used to lend people stuff all the time, and it would rarely come back. I had to learn over time to just stop doing it for the most part. Yet I say that but I still do it
I have been walked all over, manipulated, abused, taken advantage of, etc. I work in sales (nightmare nightmare nightmare but no new job to move onto yet...) and people walk all over me there, take advantage of my kindness for free, and spend their money with other people who are mean and manipulative!
I have ended up with this this really strange dichotomy where I naturally am kind to others and trust them, yet I don't believe anyone and am very skeptical. I have learnt a bunch of stuff, but innately I still expect others to be decent, kind people. One day maybe I will finally learn!!

Not sure that really answered your questions

Mostly this


That is so cute, and I am not even 65+ yet. I was not so sharing in that age, I would look after my things well and it irritated me when other children did not. I have two kids near or at the spectrum and they are wery kind and caring (and very different) individuals.

I wish there were more nice people in the world.

I don't get it. What's cute and what do you need to be over 65 to find cute?

you sound a bit like me. i was way too kind as a child and my parents also kept telling me to always give in to people, always do whatever someone asked me to do, and i dont just mean to do what the teacher says, but other children as well! to always put someone else's will above my own and let people take advantage of me.
i once told me father a girl in school was bothering me and he said i should make friends with her. i told my mother another girl was bullying and threatening me and she said it's my fault because i never bothered to make friends with the neighbor's kids, so now they pick on me.
not all my family was like that. my brother always told me to stand up for myself.
to your question: i think it was real kindness, with a touch of aspie naivety. you did strive to be kind and good, probably because you have it in your nature, but didnt realize you were taken advantage of.
i've taught myself to say no to people and hold my grounds. i think aspies must stand up for themselves. and as far as how it never occured to them to just take your money.... i always say aspies must learn self defense. i did. aspies who cant defend themselves get eaten alive in this world.

I am referring to Aspie1 (see op)

I was too selfish to help others but yet anyone could take advantage of me by manipulating me to give them my Barbie outfits or my toys if they begged me and bribed me and they wouldn't keep their promise and they also used to get me to do things, even the wrong things and I always get into trouble. Mom would even tell me to put my Fashion Magic away because my friends have their own. She even had to spy on me to protect me and one time she told my friend to leave my Barbie outfits at our house and she said "Beth gave them to me" and mom told her "No she didn't, I heard it all." This was also the same friend who would threaten to rip the heads off my Barbies if I didn't do as she said As I got older, I turned into a helper because I wanted to please people and not be selfish. Now I just say no. I don't let people make me feel guilty anymore. I still help out if I want to but I don't help people I don't know and if I do, it's over something like holding open a door and I will sometimes give away a quarter or coins if I have no use for them. I gave two quarters to a guy when we asked if I had any for bus fare and I said no and then remembered I had a couple in my son's stroller so I took them out and gave them to him. But I still have some passiveness in me where I can easily be pressured into things. I just have to be strong to say no and dig in my heals and then I feel anger. That is why I avoid sales people and telemarketers, I just hand the phone to my husband when they start. I might just start handing it to my son if I ever get a telemarketer. I know how peeved people get when parents hand the phone to their toddler because they don't find it cute to try and talk to them. Or I can just simply hang up.

I find that if you are too nice, people will take advantage of it. You just need to learn to be tough and be the bad guy.


I do think it was kindness and a bit of naivety. It's when people start taking advantage of you is when it becomes naivety.

Aspie1: it was genuine kindness. However, there is an inherent emotional naïveté with children on the spectrum.

I heard about a study on Asperger's recently that I think helps explain this:

It was basically concluded in the study that people on the spectrum, especially children, have difficulty differentiating between "like me" and "not like me," and when in doubt, tended towards the former(in other words, we believe others are more similar to us than different).

Now, if you combine this with the fact that Aspies tend to like ideals(as they are usually easy to understand rules that we put more effort into following than NTs by and large), and then figure how much kindness as a child is valued as an ideal(Golden Rule, etc), it's no surprise that not only do we really strongly embrace kindness as an ideal, but we expect it from others as well.

From an anthropological standpoint(sociological too), Aspies have less of a differentiation from Ideal Culture and Real Culture, as we lack that capacity for deception and willingness to compromise on our belief in rules(the ideal culture being that kindness matters and the real culture being that nice guys often finish last).

There's also for a kid on the spectrum a great reward response in play thanks to many of us over-empathizing(ie we feel good because others feel good and also because the praise matters even more to us).

Unfortunately, this tendency to over-empathize(especially if you agree with Intense World Theory), I think(no study showing correlation here that I'm aware of, sadly, just my hypothesis) when paired with Real Culture crashing down on us(meaness of peers, hypocrisy of parents, world being intense and mean) is what causes so many of us to reject socializing(if I had a dollar for every time I saw an Aspie who was a happy kid and now loathes social interaction, I'd be playing a lot more video games).

Sorry for the excess of parentheses. to summarize in a simpler fashion:

Aspie kids walk the walk when it comes to kindness better than most, but that means that when people and the world in general hurt us back, it hurts us more. And eventually, we stop trying. Some of us wonder what the hell we we're thinking in the first place, and that's tragic.

I could have written this (though thankfully I managed to escape from that job a few months ago). I completely understand what you mean.

I think a lot of us will empathise with this. I spent my childhood just wanting to make others happy too. I was extremely obedient and compliant and always did as I was told by anyone (including other children). Partly this was because I wanted to please them and partly it was because the world so confused me that I never knew what the right thing was to do - and had experienced that doing the wrong things had negative consequences, so I just always did as other people told me to. Unfortunately this led to me being manipulated and taken advantage of as well as made the butt of jokes and the cruelty of other people hurt and bewildered me to deeply that I just shut myself off from others completely.

I simply could not understand why others were not kind and accepting and helpful in return. I still don't. I am completely bemused by people who are cruel or angry or manipulative, it's entirely beyond my understanding.

Sagroth, thank you for the interesting post. It describes my history as well.

Actually, I should thank you for posting(Thanks!), as I've been noticing a trend where I try and make an informed and detailed post only to have the thread die directly after.

In any event, I would love to see a study testing my hypothesis. Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of examples of it(myself, yourself, and Aspie1 being good examples, as with others in this thread). And, truly, it breaks my heart to see.

As was mentioned in detail, there is an assumption that others' have the same level of ethics as "I do." But from what I've seen typical kids have this or believe in this. Sooner or later they will do what they see others' are doing and copy their environment. Typical.

I always had a resistance to "copying" or imitating anyone. My own ethic: I keep trekking in doing my thing and still do it 'right' and not " do what everyone else is doing." In their dismay, " you're not like everyone else." You bet. I don't do tit for tat.

Be your own person.

I think all children are inately kind too, but they also have a lot of learned social behavior that may be less then kind, that children on the spectrum do not pick up.

Your story is so similar to mine that I could have written it...

I stumbled upon the idea that I could have asperger's only recently, and it amazes me to see how many people have experiences and personalities similar to mine, when I thought I was a very peculiar (and lonely) bird...