At what age did you realize you were "different"?

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I was talking to a couple parents, and all their high functioning autistics, or aspergers children realized they were different between the ages of 6-8 or at the latest 10 years old. I honestly didnt knew i was "different" until i was in my teens, i remember asking my mother right after 16th birthday why everybody is so old and i'm not lol so thats when i knew then I wasn't like everybody else, but I think I was 13/14 or so when I first noticed nobody else seemed excited over rubber bands lol. The reason I'm asking is I dont know if it was because i was just so much in my own world i didnt notice or i just was that cognitively impaired i didnt know either way. So just wondering when other people realized they were different, at what age did you realize you were "different" as a child to be precise or as a teen or adult either way haha

Last edited by Age1600 on 17 Mar 2009, 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

5. Nobody at school would play with me and they called me weird.

Yes around 7 or 8 I knew for sure that others were different than me. I did not suspect that it was because I was different than others.

when i started school.

I didn't think I was different as much as I felt different. This started in Kindergarten at age 5. I had trouble in verbalizing and communicating. In fact I was called a mute for a while since I could hardly talk. I struggled and struggled to find the right words for objects and things so I'd make my own words up as I went along. But it caused a lot of teasing...

As I got older I learned not to say anything unless it sounded "normal". In my teens is when I realized I was a bit different. I found it odd that I couldn't catch up on the vernacular way of speaking like many of my peers. I also found myself alone and with no friends. Most the kids I'd see hung out in groups. I'd remember constantly sitting alone in the cafeteria with no one to talk to. I could never keep up with the gossip and conversations of what was going on and who was doing this to who...and so on. It was like looking from behind a window.

I think highschool was the most painful experience for feeling different.

I spent the first six months of my life crying all day, my mother noticed that as unusual (but not much else it seems). I was also told that I was "quiet" in primary school but kind of like garyww and Age I didn't particularly think it was about being different, just accepted it as whatever it was.

By age 10 I'm sure I would have known that I was different when I started going to intermediate and started instituting NT-camouflage rules en masse to see if I would have another/better life (it was stressful and didn't particularly improve anything).

I remember getting a strange self conciousness, when i was about eight or so.
I hated the way i got dressed, i hated my hair, i hated how people looked at me. Or how i thought they looked at me.
And i hated how i couldn't do anything about it to change my self image...

I felt the same way. Somewhere around 12 or so I really felt there was something wrong with how I looked, because people didn't seem to like me. Around 16 or so my differences and inability to relate on a normal level were part of my identity, although it did disturb me when someone said I couldn't seem to relate. It was only in the last few years that I suspected a form of autism. Asperger's it is if your intelligence is good and you could talk when you were a young child.

As a teenager I remember having major conflict with people who wanted to pull me away from video games and have me socialize. I remember relating to the character in "Nell", being like a wild animal, in my own world and wanting to stay there.

Early primary school I picked it up. However, I falsely attributed this to the fact I was miles ahead of the rest of the school in terms of intelligence so it didn't bother me. I decided I simply would grow up to identify with the 'mad scientist' stereotype a little bit.

It was when I started high school (year 7, 12 years old) and there are now other clever people in the world and they weren't facing the same problems I was that I truly knew I was different and that's when it hit fairly hard.

For me it was a gradual process.

From K through 2nd grade, I was taken out of classes and tested and sent to special classes, but I didn't think much of it.

In 4th grade I noticed that certain kids were always "mean" to me, but again I assumed that they were just mean kids.

It was the 5th grade where I became self aware of my differences, though it was years later before I had any clarity on what those differences were.

I had some sense of it when I was younger but I guess it really crystalized from 10-12 or so. At that point I was able to realize that I did not like the same things they did and they did not like the same things I did.

By the time I was 12 my life had totally fallen apart. (I have been piecing it together since then ... long and hard, I'm getting weary.) That right there made me different from anyone who appeared to be functioning....

Age 5.

When I was 5 I brought baby toys to school. Then throughout the years I got picked on for playing with little kid toys.
Still I never thought I was that different.
I never used to hang out with people until I was 22 when I had my first boyfriend. I felt very different because I could not join in on a conversation, cook, or have a job like everyone else.

I first realized that people were actually "alive" at the age of 25.

I've never felt "different" personally. I understand the concept of different, but I've never felt it.

I was about 7 years old, although back then I thought everyone else was nuts and I was the only normal one! It was when I was 13 that I realised that I was the weird one... Sigh... so lonely...

I was 14 when I started to realize it (I was diagnosed with AS before then, but I didn't think anything of it nor did I really understand it/know that it was a difference)...I guess before I was just too much in my own world. I actually preferred that though because I was happier then.