When did you learn to tie your shoes?

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I know this is a peculiar question but I heard somewhere that autistic people have trouble learning to tie their shoes. Now I don’t know if this is true but I was wounding about it because I never learned how to tie my shoes until about the age of 13. Before then all the other kids on the playground had to tie them for me.

Before I was a teen, but still later than what is considered normal. And I'm still a little spotty at it.

What makes this a valid question is that most people take
for granted the simpliest things and put down those who
don't grasp it at a "what is considered normal pace".

In the autism spectrum many things aren't taken for granted
and might develop in a progressive skill level, or coping level.

For example your shoelaces are my reading a type of contract
with someone and a simple statement is made that most would
understand and yet I require at 40 a fine-toothed paper and
go line by line and find that some of the easy to grasp statements
that are implied aren't clear and require clarity.

Thanks for this reminder, Aspiegurl!

Hmmmmmm? What made it difficult to tie your shoes?

Sincerely,
Ghosthunter

I don’t know why I had a problem with this “sheer skill of common sense” as an NT would see it. I mean it took me years to figure out the whole loop to loop thing. Even now strangers are constantly informing me of my undone laces but quite frankly I don’t see the point in tying them.

thanks Ghosthunter for understanding

Last edited by AspieGurl on 25 Feb 2006, 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hmmmm? I will ask you as a second opinion about what made
it difficult to tie your shoes?

was it a sensory issue?
was perceptional issue?
Or describe unknown issue that doesn't cross my mind.

Sincerely,
Ghosthunter

When I was about 2 or 3 I suppose. my first bow wasn't a full one, but I was very proud.

I never had trouble tying shoe laces, in fact i actualy learned to tie them slightly earlierthan most NT's.
But i could not work bike gears untill age 12, untill then i just spun my legs round and round very fast in first gear, and cluelessly changing gears up and down. Then one day i got on my bike and it all came to me.

before I was 10 but was never very good at it even now I leave them tied but loose enough to slip on so I don't have to tie them much

I still haven't figured out the normal way of tying shoes. At some point late in childhood I eventually invented my own way of tying shoelaces. I make a knot by tying two loops together, rather than the over under sort of loop thing that other people seem able to do quite easily. Also, the knot I invented is permanent so I never have to tie my shoes other than that first time. I don't have to bother with shoelaces, I just slip my shoes on and off.

My thoughts exactly.

Ditto for me.

Of course, now I wear clogs or sandals all the time because I've developed a hatred of footwear I can't slip out of (sensory issue). I can't wait for warmer weather when I can wear sandals; socks are beginning to bother me.

Exactly what I did.

I can't even comprehend the "normal" way of doing it, lol.

A few months after my sixth birthday.

I think I was four or five when I learned how to tie my shoes. The caretakers at the daycare center I went to as a kid got on to me for not being able to tie my shoes and just criss-crossing them over and over into a knot instead or just leaving them untied. For a while, I wore shoes with Zelcro to avoid the issue. I think the problem was mirroring the actions of what I observed when another person tied his or her shoes and also following the steps fluidly and automatically.

I learnt to tie laces when I was 10. My twin sister had to teach me as she got sick of me coming up to her at school and asking her to tie them for me. She didn't like having to do this in front of all her friends, maybe because they would start asking questions about me or something.
I always find it hard to learn something if I'm just shown, I have to DO it to fully grasp the concept. I guess that may be why I did not learn to ride a bike until I was 12.

I don't remember, but I may have been 4 or 5 at the oldest when I learned to tie my shoes.