Questions about childhood friends

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How easily did you make friends as a child? What were your childhood friendships like, if you had any?

Has your ability to make friends changed as you've got older?

Does anyone know if different autism sprectrum disorders (Asperger's; high functioning autism; etc.) are characteristically associated with different problems with making friends, or is it simply something that varies from individual to individual or is dependent on the severity of each person's disorder?

It was hard making friends for me when I was a child. I had my first friend when I was almost 10.


I had two friends, a girl and a boy: they were kind to me, but we often argued. Then, I lost contact with them when I started middle school.


Yup; I improved since I was a child.


I don't know, but I guess it changes from person to person. I have an older brother with LFA, that started showing autistic symptoms since 2 years old, according to what my mother said; he stopped talking when he was 5, but my mother told me he enjoyed playing with other children when he still could talk, and sometimes even in elementary school, when he couldn't talk anymore.

I was pretty much a loner and unable to make any proper friends until I was about 10 and even then it required effort on my parents part to manoeuvre things into place a little.

I started making a few friends with more introverted, geeky types as I got into my teens but still found friendship stuff difficult and confusing. I still do really as I very recently burned my bridges with a friend through the usual causing-massive-offence-without-intention-or-understanding thing. He started laying into me and actually accused me of having some sort of problem with understanding how I make other people feel! That was meant as an insult I think but I found it strangely vindicating and almost reassuring given my pre-diagnosis status and all the uncertainty I have been feeling since recently joining the dots in terms of AS.

I massively digressed there but, basically, yes, always been rubbish at friendships but try to hang on to those few who 'get' me.

Not very easily. I usually had one "best friend" every school year, but the friendships never lasted, probably almost always because of me and my communication issues.



No. Well, not really. I still don't have any deep friendships, but I probably socialize less now that I did as a child (not that I socialized a lot as a child either).



Everyone is individual of course, but we all have SOME sort of social difficulties to varying degrees based on common symptoms (of varying degrees of severity).

It wasn't very easy for me to make friends, my childhood friendships pretty much only existed for a lack of children at our school, and I think many of the kids would just use me for their own purposes.


Nope. It's just as hard making friends, if not harder, as I try to make sure whatever male friends I make (easy to make male friends, as most of my interests are male-dominated) also become friends with my husband, and I've never been a big fan of women, due to past experiences, and the type of women I'd get along with are few and far between.


I think it varies from individual to individual, but I think social awkwardness is spectrum-wide.

It was pretty hard for me to make friends. It still is. My first friend was in the 5th grade, because we were both in special ed. To this day, even though we live almost 100 miles apart now, she still visits. No, my ability to make friends has not improved, since I've only had 2 people that I could actually call friends, lol. The above mentioned, and a best guy friend. Oddly enough, when I am in social situations, I find guys easier to talk to. I think it depends on the individual. I'm classic autism, but I've known aspies who are worse at socializing than I am.

The only friendships that endured for me were the ones where we had common interests and where we could do those things together. I never could keep a friend to where they just enjoyed my company, it was always just coming together to swim, play tennis, study, etc... Now, the fact that I'm raising a son keep other mom's with son's hanging around with me. I have an adult son too. The experience I've gained with him seem to keep the other mom's interested in me by picking my brain for information. I honestly don't think they'd want anything to do with me if it weren't for the common situation. Now I understand why it seemed as though my teen friends all became pregnant together. I didn't so I was ejected.
I really didn't care because I had a goal of becoming a nurse which I did do.

I struggled with friendships growing up. It didn't help matters that my dad was in the military and we moved a ton, 13 schools I went to before graduating high school. I managed to learn to at least become part of the outcast groups and was generally quiet to avoid attracting attention to myself. I generally managed to have 1 or 2 friends I hung out with, but almost never anything close. I have gotten better at making friends, but can still struggle socially from time to time and even on my second marriage still struggle to talk to girls.

While I have a bunch of friends on facebook thanks to meeting tons of people because of all the moving that continued once I was on my own, only one ever got really, really close, and that was my ex-wife. Sadly that was all we really had and it simply wasn't meant to be, and even though we are on amiable terms, I haven't let myself talk to her much really due to all the feelings that were involved. I felt that was important to move on, but it makes me sad sometimes.

As a child I didn't do too bad for friends really. Then again, I think I'm sort of more along the lines of an extrovert/outgoing. So my problem was never really making friends, it was keeping them, and figuring out who would be a friend that'd potentially get me in trouble or take advantage of me. I can make friends OK, just because I'm not really like, afraid to talk to people. Just the problem is I'm apparently super eccentric most of the time without realizing it. For example, my dad bought some sardines. I tried them and I liked them. So I brought them to school to eat. And everyone thought that was weird. So things like that make it hard for me and finding and keeping friends. I guess in the best case scenario, my friends stick around because they somehow or another see positive qualities despite me being weird.

One thing oddly as a kid, until about second grade or so, almost all my friends were girls. Then parents/teachers/etc tried to convince me more to play with the boys, kickball and stuff like that. For some reason the girls would tolerate me rambling on about Star Trek and stuff. I had like two male friends, one who was as far as I can tell, NT, but liked Star Trek and Star Wars and sci-fi like I did as a kid. However, the girls got more distant with me as I got involved in "the group" more. I started being included in "the group" after about second grade. I went to a very small private school, though, were there was like 15-16 people per grade. So in that sense, people were sorta forced to include you in "the group" just due to like, not having enough people otherwise. In 5th grade and 6th grade, too much change happened in my life, we moved, my parents got a divorce, my uncle's family moved in for a bit and totally annoyed the hell out of me, and I more or less shut down during that time. Then I got diagnosed depressed. People noticed I got more distant and basically more "Aspie-like" in elementary school then, as it was simply too much to handle.

Not quite as early childhood, but after that private elementary school, I was in public school. For 7th grade, my first year in public school, it was relatively great. I was almost popular, and the "popular" people liked me and stuff. I did sit with "nerds" at lunch, though. Then someone started a rumor about me and that was the end of that. I don't know if it was the rumor itself that was more damaging, or my response. Partially my response of denying it because it wasn't true, which made people bring it up more. But also, my "depression" or whatever that happened after due to it, thus changing my dealings with people.

High school was terrible.

Adulthood I have like 3-4 friends left from high school and that's it. I've not really attempted making friends anymore, since it seems like I'm just weird and nobody likes me. So instead of acting with the assumption that other people like me like I used to, now I assume the opposite out of people for the most part.

How easily did you make friends as a child? What were your childhood friendships like, if you had any?

Pretty easily. If someone new moved in and they had kids, I just went over there to play. Plus kids would come over to my house to play. In school, they just came to me and we played together on the playground. I also had friends in special ed too when I was in there full time. I had very few friends in school outside of special ed.

They used me because they be mean to me and come over to my home just to play with my stuff or because their grandparents would lock them out of the house so they come over to play if none of their other friends were home. Other friends would come over if they had no one else to play with. I was rarely allowed into their homes and only two friends from elementary school invited me over to their house. For some reason it was just easier if we all played at my home than at theirs. It was even easier to be with them when they be at my home than it be when I be at their house. Plus they also reject me. Couple of them bullied me.

Has your ability to make friends changed as you've got older?

Yes. It got harder and then I was playing with kids who were below my age group because I could relate to them better. By 6th grade, I had no friends of my own age until I befriended a girl with Down's syndrome who was nine months older than me. Then we moved and I had a friend who was a year and a half younger than me and she was also an outcast. She always came over with her brother and her and I play together. Then she moved.

Does anyone know if different autism sprectrum disorders (Asperger's; high functioning autism; etc.) are characteristically associated with different problems with making friends, or is it simply something that varies from individual to individual or is dependent on the severity of each person's disorder?

I sometimes wonder if kids were friends with me at school because I was in special ed and then I was moved to my new school and put into a normal classroom with normal kids, they became my friend because I came out of special ed. But that ended after second grade.

It was a lot easier for me to make friends as a child and it got harder as kids got more socially developed and their interests changed so I got left behind. Now I have no clue how to make them and I think shyness also takes a toll in it. Things are different when you're a kid but as an adult, it's different. I had that child skill as NT kids had to make friends but I didn't have the skill to make them as a pre teen or teen and even as an adult. But yet in my childhood, I didn't make any friends who were in other classrooms and I didn't make new ones if they moved into our neighborhood and didn't live on my block or close to it.

In primary school I had one who lived nearby, who later gave me a picture of a fat cartoon mouse and told me that's how she saw me. We were in touch on and off through my teens and I had another occasional friend in school but rarely socialised .

There were a few cousins and a family friend's son who occasionally visited or who we visited (arranged by parents), but much of my time in my teens, when I wasn't engaging in reading about my current interests, was spent complaining about not having friends. When the opportunity to socialise arose, however, I quickly tired and became overwhelmed, so it's probably for the best.

I did, through tap dancing classes in my late teens, meet two women slightly my senior who I'm still friends with and see a few times a year, and during a year at university before moving abroad I made another friend whom I see every time I visit.

Aside from my partner, I have two good friends here (both ladies older than myself) and a casual acquaintance whom I sometimes see. I get on well with a couple of team mates at work and that usually fulfils my need for social interaction, sometimes it's even too much and I've taken to having a long walk on my own before I am ready to face chatting to my partner after work.

To me a friend is someone you hang out with on a regular basis (regularly but not necessarily often), whom you like as a person (and they like you) and you should be willing to help each other out in case of need.

There was one girl I played with in my first kindergarten, then none in the second one I went to so they decided I should start school one year early since I was sitting there drawing and writing (self-taught reader) all day.
I had one out-of-school friend in elementary school. There was some boys I played with in school but not real "friends", more likely they were fascinated by the fact that I didn't care about school rules and catched lizards and pidgeons with my bare hands.
In middle school I fell out with my elementary school friend and became friends with my current friend.
In high school I was kind of friends with one guy but we never hung out and I haven't talked with him in one year.
When I went on exchange I didn't make any friends apart from a couple of other exchange students, but we haven't talked since I came back.
I now see my friend (the one from middle school) approximately once a month and she calls me maybe once every two weeks.

I've had a fair amount of friends overall, I think, but I've never initiated a friendship myself and I find this really difficult because you have to start from small talk and I'm not good at that. My first friends were the "empathetic" kind but we didn't share many interests. My current friend is kind of a misanthrope and can be quite difficult to deal with sometimes (for instance she gets mad at me because I "always want to be right" but refuses to aknowledge that it takes two to have a discussion so she must be just as stubborn as I am about her opinions) but we share more interests.

Disclaimer: I have no diagnosis and I'm not sure whether my friendship patterns are "normal" or not (opinions welcomed), so I hope my post wasn't too far from what the OP was looking for.