Aspergers and Development Question.......

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This has been on my mind for a while now,are us Aspies prone to living in the ''past''?? I consider myself very mature smart and professional yet mentally I still feel as if I am in middle school or high school,adult stuff such as marriage and kids is the furthest thing from my mind I am more into my dog and my special interests,yet how come NT'S crave to get married or start a family right after high school or move into adult society??

My name for this phenomenon is Arrested Development Disorder, which I named in my early 20s, when I noticed that everyone my age was grown up, and I wasn't, and I still felt like a 10 year old, and I still do.

Did I write this?

Seriously though, I'm the same. I feel like I'm very mature when it comes to intelligence and schoolwork (especially compared to most of the people that are around at school). But I still feel like a kid. I love video games, comic books, cartoons, and whatnot, although I don't consider any of those things childish (most video games and comic books are not for children), it's just that I would rather spend time with those things than doing "adult" stuff.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to what other people say they want to do. For a large group its about gaining status, seeking something to complete their identity. Marriage is a joke to me, two people who want to spend their life together shouldn't put a label on their relationship. Attaching it to a high divorce rate and lumping yourself in with every other joe, but i guess the grouping is what gives people comfort. Saying you are married is a much better tool for small talk then trying to explain your relationship without it.

True maturity is realizing that being childish is great. Children have so many awesome traits, why should we abandon them. I say take the best out of how a child sees the world and incorporate that with some traditional maturity.
Stretch out your youth as much as possible, there is plenty of time to get ''mature'' when you are withering away in an elderly home.

not to get to off the subject but I am a young 26 year old male and how come I am more uptight or conservative and can't really enjoy myself say the way of The Jersey Shore?? I always feel as if I have alot to take care of, is it just in our makeup??

I am not expert in this area. WARNING!

I did not get married until I was 29 years old and my wife was 31. Been married 22 years and decided to get married after only knowing each other a week. She puts up with me and all my Aspie traits. I never wanted to start a family and when I did at 45 we adopted (my idea). So while many rush to have kids it was not me. Not sure if it is an Aspie thing but I like to take things slow. Can't speak about living in the past, it is more common for me to live being obsessed in a very few interests. And focusing all my energy on them.

B

Jersey shore is a dumb show that is not REAL.

People with aspergers are generally more uptight in some ways.

I just could never understand even in high school all the guys partying and acting like idiots,for a young guy my
''nerves'' bothered me alot and at 26 still do,should a young guy be so stressed and have anxiety attacks??

I'm pretty much the same. I've always taken intellectual things seriously to an extent that would bore children and even most adults, but socially or emotionally (or whatever you call it) I still feel the same as I did when I was small, although with more of an understanding of how mundane life can be.

I don't know if wanting to get married and stuff is a goal exclusively for adults though. I had a head full of stupidly romantic ideas even before I hit puberty.

It seems like a lot of children want to grow up and a lot of adults want to grow down, but adults are supposed to pretend they don't, so that the slave drivers can keep up the tradition of raking in profits from the people farm.

Yeah, and a lot of the people who constantly call others immature are just childish themselves. They are insecure about it, so they try extra hard to show the world how "mature" they are, when they're really just playing pretend, and trying to get a pat on the head from the people they perceive as being really mature.

It's like they're all teenage girls trying to impress the teacher.

I feel both mature and immature for my age. In public, I am uptight a lot. In private, I can be childish and silly. I think both are probably Asperger's traits for me.

Yep that's me too.

Jason

I have exactly that, being mature and immature at the same time. I think its because we have such a skewed development that we just end up with underdeveloped and overdeveloped areas. Instead of being a rounded individual which is typical.

another thing that really was a emotional and self esteem blow was years ago when a doctor my dad brought me to told my father and another doctor that he was referring me to that I was on ''another planet'' since when is being highly intelligent,focused,meticilous and detailed a alien like thing??

I get told I do it, but I don't notice/don't care enough.

You have chosen the right name for it and I relate to what you write.

Total newbie here, sols if I give offence. Most Asperger's info seems to be about children, and often seems to be about wanting to declare a child to be Aspergic rather than Autistic. Asperger referred to "litle professors". He noticed that many of the children he identified as being autistic used their special talents in adulthood and had successful careers (quote from Wikipedia). Without the successful career, my understanding has been that it ain't Asperger's, it's Autism.

So where does that leave older Asperger's folk, like aged 80. One thing I can tell you: without the successful career now, all the other difficulties emerge again, and it gets worse. Of course age 80 means that I didn't know about Asperger's until his work got widely discussed, from maybe 1995, when I and family members started to hear about it. To me, it was beginning to sound eerily familiar. Temple Grandin in "The Woman who Thinks like a Cow" scored a hit (though I don't feel like a cow, and wouldn't want the crusher to calm me).

So I'm the baldest, wrinkliest 17-year old you could meet. Clumsy, poor at sports. But tell me, does Asperger's always imply arrested development too?