Ever feel like you were raised by wolves?

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Some of my family used to joke that I was raised by my first dog, and as an adult my Best friend used to ask if I was raised by wolves...so she decided to try raising my social skills by teaching me to show and train dogs. That has been good for me because I did and do still have social deficits. Canines are very social, and they rarely "lie". Lying seems to be too complex for me to do like an NT and I did not want to learn it. Canines use body language more consistently than humans. So do cats.
Humans call social living "civilization", and give it an automatically positive meaning. Being "uncivilized" implies a negative meaning...but it is a simpler way of being, not necessarily a bad way of being. "Civilization" is killing this planet, so I often find myself disgusted with the NT liars (when I catch them). Most of them live unbalanced high consuming lifestyles with the delusion that their actions (or efforts to keep up with the Jones') harm nothing, and are not cruel. They eat food from concentration camps for self aware animals. They put the coal power plants in China with the sweatshop industries, and allow the cruelty and an estimated 300 billion tons of greenhouse gasses over the life of those coal power plants. To me, they are like very social ignorant serial killers of the Earth in general. Do I want to be like NT's? No.

I can be very wordlessly bitter about that (and the "lying game" most NT's play) so I have given up on society and I hang out with my dog more.
I no longer *want* to "fix" my remaining social deficits. I am glad lying is too complex for me to do like NT's do it. I am not so happy I am too slow at processing communication needed to hold an argument. But when I try, my systemized perspective either falls on deaf ears or it scares people.

Both my parents have different autistic traits.

I can relate. I had a better relationship with my dog, between the ages of 6 to 12 than I had with any child or adult. Good old Skipper; half Collie and half Alaskan Malamute; saved from going in the river with the rest of his litter mates (the rest were saved also).
What kind of dog was your first dog?

My first dog was a pekinese poodle cross, a sweet dog. We would hang out behind the couch and share cookies.
Oh, and the first word mom coaxed out of me was "dog".

I have always read and heard that it is somewhere in normal human linguistic brain "pre-programming" that it's much easier to learn languages before the age of five.

I had minimum parental supervision when I was growing up. I think that's partly the reason why I'm socially inept.

" It can be gut wrenching and saddening to think how things would have been different had I known much earlier."

I try not to dwell on things that can't be changed but the revelations still come.....this one most recently.

When we moved to a rural area most kids were about 6 like me. We played ball in a vacant lot and everyone did more-or-less as poorly as the next. But as we grew up the other kids got much better and I didn't and they went on to Little League, and I failed to qualify and went on to loneliness. I never knew why, but 2+2+Asperger= a new revelation (not that I especially wanted it) so now, finally, I know. I'm not sure though knowing would have gotten me into Little League, or made me feel better.

And, of course, one revelation will sometimes easily lead to another.

Me too. If you don't learn young you never learn the correct action to match the (complex for us) social situation you happen to be in at the time. I'm pretty sure I get it wrong 100% of the time (allowing the requisite amount of time to "get to know each other").

my parents wer extremely abusive and negligentt, i mostly only survived childhood at all because of my sister being my parent. didnt have much to socialise other than siblings so i spent lot of time socialising with our farm animals and ive always preferred being near animals since, i actually understand them and not people. probably why i have almost no social skills.

I totally get that, my best friend Redford (a dachsund, a.k.a. weiner dog) is right here with me and he says that socializing with people is "ruff"!

I still wish I had stayed with my "wolves."

My dad was an Aspie. Outside of work and family he had few social contacts. He understood me and treated me well. We argued often but we also had many stimulating conversations.

My aunt and uncle lived right over the hill. Their world pretty much revolved around his PTSD. I used to think we were all trapped in Hell. I have been out in the world and now I realize that we were remarkably sane.

I got lonely and went out looking for kindred spirits. I did not find many.

I regret my decision to leave and to seek. I wish I could go home. Unfortunately all that is left is two toothless old wolves (my aunt and uncle) and an empty den.

I wish you would join us in building an Autistic community in pueblo.

I wish I could.

I wish I could help buy a house, and move there, and help build this thing from the ground up, and live among my own kind. Our own private Liberia, only hopefully without the current Ebola outbreak.

I can't. I can't leave my grandmother while she's living-- if I could, I'd still be in Arkansas (much more Aspie-friendly than Pennsylvania). I can't demand that my husband uproot his career and move it to Pueblo so he can be stuck with more people like me-- that's not fair, at least I had something to gain from following him to Arkansas. I can't demand that my kids leave their family that they've just gotten close to again, and their friends that they have finally made, behind so I can go to Pueblo and live among my own.

I can't do that. It is not fair to the people I love, and I try very hard to be fair to the people I love.

When I learned about feral children I became fascinated by Victor of Aveyron and Genie, and how isolation impacted their holistic development. Their learning periods passed without having needs met. Does isolation experienced by the socially challenged child also impact their development? I think it does. I don?t feel like I was raised by wolves, although childhood companions were pets, so perhaps I learned some social skills from the wrong species. As for learning, I love it.

I agree with your evaluation of being raised in what amounts to social isolation while also being "within" society, the same as being raised by wolves.

And now that you have all of the incorrect social values "down pat" and sort-of sufficing for you to survive, it's vary hard (almost impossible for a small kid) to generate the "desire" to change to something else.

And without "desire" nothing much will change.