What was school like?

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Hey people, what was school like as someone on the spectrum.

For me it was an interesting and sometimes really tough experience. I went to a small private school full of autistic people and other misfits from ages 11-15, run by a conservative. I think that came across in how he ran the school as it was basically laissez faire, tones of bullying, fighting and screaming.

Often in the middle of class. I can remember their was a maths teacher I am pretty sure Autism, she spoke perpetually quiet monotonic and struggled to convey concepts. She struggled as a result to maintain order in the class. Allot of the time these two people tormented a disabled person in the class and she could do nothing about it.

But at times the experiences were quite bad. Their were so many people whom had it worse.

Their are also many interesting people you met there. I saw many autistic people. One was a girl. She was 14 but had been placed down in a year two years below her. Shen was intelligent and knew much about zoology and world issues but the thing is she could not handle the pressure of being in a class or could articulate herself at all in real words as a result people simply dismissed her as being ret*d calling her that behind her back recently she even admitted to being depressed.

Their was once an Indian boy I knew in school who had a significant learning disability. People saw him as a joke who they could make fun of and mock. Eventually this really got to him he talked to me about how no one was friendly to him and how his dad wanted to put him in a mental institution. Just about every class I was in he cried in distress. At a time when I was feeling low this reminded me I could have it worse. He has done well since and has since become more cheerful.

Another was an autistic boy who when he came spoke every word as a movie quote. He did some crazy quite bad stuff. I regrettably thought this person was not smart at the time but I have since gone back on that. He did quite well in his exams.

And I can go all day with this. How about you?

Despite always feeling different, I was surprisingly popular at school until about the age of 16. I was the funny and subservient guy in my class because I made unintelligible sounds during lessons, misunderstood certain types of language, used self-deprecating and dry humour, had an apathetic attitude towards my studies and always obeyed those close to me.

In many respects I feel let down by the system as my life could have been profoundly different if I had been diagnosed at a much earlier age.

I was scorned by many teachers and students. I was physically and emotionally bullied. I was told to shut up constantly. My mother thought it was all my fault.

School was obligatory. I had no choice.

There were a few teachers and counselors who cared about me, though.

I attended a primary+middle school in a public school where the classes were really crowded (up to 50 people). I cried often, had many angry outbursts and did not fit in with any group. But I was kinda 'famous' as I took part in almost every artistic activity as possible. Especially because of my drawings and poetry reading (performed in big theaters and events not only in school). Also my mother was a teacher in my school so the teachers were partly aware of my capabilities and sensitivities, so they didn't push my buttons too much and I was anyway very good academically. The problem was the kids and the groups in my classroom and my mom's attitude about my social skills. She really 'encouraged' me too much to socialize that it became a burden on me. (I don't blame her, she was trying to be a good mother.) I wanted to have friends terribly but it was just not working, it was not meant to be. I got verbally bullied and I knew that I was gossiped about a lot. People I thought were my friends all back-stabbed me. So I started to have depression around the age of 11 and it lasted until the age of 15 when I was in my second year in the high school. My first year at high school was really so destructive that I don't even wanna talk about it. In my country in your second year at high school you select one out of the 4 departments. I chose 'foreign language' dep. and it was not a very popular one. We were only 7 people in the classroom and everybody was in a way weird so it was close to special ed. maybe Although I still hated the school it was my best 3 years with great people around me. Open-minded, nonjudgmental, free spirited... I was the artist, one of us was a writer, one of us was a chef, one of us traveled all the continents, one of us was really into in psychology... Also the teachers were like our friends as it was a lot easier and less stressful for them to perform a class with so few people. I remember our English teacher saying our class really left a mark in her heart.

University was just horrible. I needed to move out of my parent's home, and have my own apartment as my school was in a far, far city. The idea of this change made me cry for weeks but then I got used to it. I had flatmates and all of them were horrible and they also couldn't stand leaving with me. It was so easy to live alone for me but I couldn't afford it.
I got really excited to be in the country's best art school and wanted to learn everything so I took sooooo many classes all at once. But even the regular curriculum was already horribly packed and very very hard so it tired me soo much. I needed a rest in the end otherwise I was losing my mind, however, not exactly because of the academical hardship but because of the social aspect of university and a very badly functioning relationship that I'd had for four years in my second year at the university. Then I saw doing exchange studies as an answer, an exit from that relationship and the social environment. So I went for it. I did my last two years of studies here in Czech Rep., had terrible mental health problems and almost never attended the school (they didn't care about your absence if you did the tasks and projects). I met my current boyfriend online and moved together with him after the first semester in CZ. I had 'no' social life at all. I was all day home. My ex boyfriend when he learned I had a new relationship committed suicide and died and I was blamed by his parents. But I was successful, a straight A student. So I guess this is also something.

School was extremely difficult for me. I was bullied from the age of 6 upwards.

In my first school, I could cope fine as it was very mild and I was very young. When I moved to my second school, I excelled academically but the bullying became so much worse. I wasn't coping at all. I liked the teachers and I was treated well by them, but it was extremely difficult to be bullied.

Eventually I moved to another school, because the teachers were worried that the reason I wasn't coping was because I was 'bored' because they couldn't provide me with enough academic challenge. At this school, I was expected to be more organised and I failed completely - I couldn't remember any of the things I needed. And the bullying was more subtle, but I was excluded by my classmates and it was clear that they all considered me to be very weird. I think this (around ages 9-10) was where things fell apart socially. I was no longer just the teacher's pet and easy victim - I now stood out as strange.

Once I moved up to secondary school (11+) it was absolute torture. Daily bullying, no friends, terrified of everyone, failing academically because I was disorganised and my special interest was taking over as my method of coping. But, I got through it and I know that, as a result of my experiences, I'll be a better advocate for my daughter's happiness.

Break and lunch times were okay until P6 - I spent a lot of time under a huge tree in the playground. I also had a couple of friends in the two years below me and so spent time with them. During class time it was different, I had no friends.

No one would sit next to me in class or on the bus on school trips unless the teacher made them and I was the butt of their jokes. I vividly remember one boy pulling my chair away from underneath me as I went to sit down, and the whole class in hysterics as I screamed in pain, having landed badly on my tail-bone.

In P6 and P7 three of the boys in my class decided to bully me. I was beaten up a few times and once I remember the playground supervisor seeing what was happening and walking away as they closed in on me. Because I had eczema they told everyone I had Aids. They threw ice at me in winter and often chased me home with stolen maths compasses (and in October/November, Remembrance Day poppy pins). My parents went to the school to complain and the head teacher told them that because the three bullies were from deprived homes and I wasn't, there was nothing he was able to do about it. I often wonder if he'd have done something about it if he'd known I was autistic.

I think that because I was so disliked by everyone, some people - teachers, other staff - felt I deserved what I got.

I lived for music and drama back then, and it was my dream in P7 to win the female lead in the school musical. They gave it to another girl who wasn't as good a singer as I was. It wasn't until I was an adult that it dawned on me that you don't give a lead role to the school freak, no matter how good she is.

High school was better but then we moved house and I had to change schools. At the new one the bullying started up again. By that point I'd decided I wasn't going to try and fit in anymore, it never worked. Instead I made sure I was different from everybody else - I wore weird clothes and did my own thing. Eventually I made a few friends and I still know them today, so it's not all bad.

Remember the beginning of Lean On Me? Maybe not quite that bad but close enough. Very crowded, next to no special education, lots of violence, lots of drugs, gangs, if you just showed up then they'd pass you along in all likelihood but despite this like half my peers didn't graduate. I had about 3 teachers just walk out and quit in the middle of a couple of my classes, just a hellhole and not even the worst one.

My public school threw me out after 2nd grade in 1965 because they could and I was failing every class despite a supposidly high IQ. It was perfectly legal at the time, there was little special education, no accommodations and no legal right to an education. A private school took me in and my public school took me back for fifth grade. I can not prove anything but I believe I was not institutionalized for life as most "mental defectives" as we were called at the time were because my parents were teachers. 5th through 9th grade was a lot bullying verbal and some physical. Bullying was considered a rite of passage or boys being boys. 10th through 12th grades was less bullying but I always sat alone. I did not fit at all with the stoner youth culture predominant in the 1970's. My grades were what they referred to as "Gentlemen C's" despite lax standards. That meant I could not get into a decent college. The first two years of college the bullying returned with a vengeance, a lot of gaslighting. On two consecutive nights a car speeded at me veering away at the last second. When I reported everybody laughed and said if I keep on making stuff up they would throw out of school. My grades still sucked until the last semester of my sophomore year when I got a 3.6 out of a possible 4. That was enough to be accepted at the State University of New York at Oneonta. These two years there were the best two years of my life. I lived away in a dorm. Yep it was noisy and the stoner culture was still going strong but it was to use a popular phrase of the time "mellow" and a lot less destructive than the other places I was at. People were genuinely nice and the dorm life really was like family. I got my B.A.from there in 1979.

There have been a lot of downtimes since school but because of those two years at Oneonta I know at lot is possible for me if I can find the right circumstances.

School was rather scary from ages 4-7 because I didn't have any diagnosis and one of the teachers often intimidated me and made me cry. But I was accepted by my classmates.

And school was rather isolating for me from ages 11-16 because although I had a diagnosis by then and I got a lot of support from teachers, my classmates rejected me and I felt lonely and longed for friends.

The years in between (ages 7-11) were the best years because I received a diagnosis at age 8 and I was accepted by classmates AND had support from teachers, so I didn't have much to be anxious about.

What ruined my school life the most was the bell. I had a fear of being near a bell when it was due to ring. Avoiding the bell looked to others like I was avoiding socialising and noise, so it made me look more Aspie than I actually was. But I was too embarrassed to tell anybody that I was afraid of the bell.

I'm just trying to forget secondary school ever happened if I'm honest.

I was always alone. I would have one friend at a time, but if that friend wasn't around, then I was silent. Mostly I didn't get picked on because I was pretty, and besides being quiet, I wasn't too weird. However, I was very depressed since elementary. I hated the lulls in school. I hated going and watching movies. I wanted to go, learn, and get it over with and come home. I did well in most subjects. I could easily memorize facts, but I didn't really understand them.

College was so so. I didn't really have any friends in college either, but then it didn't matter.

I went to a school in the middle of a rural, hard-core conservative "Bible Belt" type of town. The teachers weren't so bad in the early grades. My kindergarten teacher apparently had a mentally challenged brother and my first grade teacher had a brother with Asperger's. So both kinda had an idea what they were in for. I was also my first grade teacher's "pet". I think it might have been the first grade teacher who suggested Asperger's to my parents. Anyhow, things started going downhill in second grade. The teacher would tie hyperactive kids to their desks (and I heard another one at that same school did as well) and they parents were okay with it because "kids have to learn how to respect adults". My third grade teacher was a narcissist and I was the opposite of a teacher's pet. and my fourth grade teacher once left a bruise on my arm when I was trying to defend myself from a bully. Bullying by other kids was a an everyday thing, but the teachers encouraged it and I also had a school bus driver who was nothing more than an adult bully (he did rodeos on his time off and if he was like that to human children, it really makes me wonder how he was to his animals).

My parents let me finish fourth grade with my friend at the time but I was home-schooled since the fifth. I really think things might have been different if we didn't live in such a conservative little hick town. I was always told the bullying was my fault because I "wasn't very easy to get along with". That excuse never made sense to me. If I wasn't very easy to get along with, people would want to avoid me, not get up in my face and harass me. If I would have stayed there, I would have killed myself by the seventh grade. Homeschooling wasn't really so good either because my mother overworked me to the point of inducing a nervous breakdown. My brother who is in college, doing a pre-med major even admitted the amount of books I had to work from was a mountain compared to his...and he was a f*****g premed major! I should have never told my mother I wanted to be a veterinarian. Whenever I had trouble or asked for a break or complained that my neck was hurting, I was yelled at and told that I had to do this if I wanted to be a vet. I tried as hard as I could to please her but nothing worked. All I wanted was for my mother to approve of me wanting to be a vet and encourage me. (she claims she did but she didn't) No matter how hard I tried, she would tell me I needed to give up and focus on being a veterinary technician instead. My mother was against unschooling because she believed I would only read about things that interested me. As if forcing me was any better? Eventually she gave up and I unschooled myself. I probably should have been unschooled from the start.

I havn't been Dx but if you were to base my Dx on my school life , I definately wouldn't have ASD as I believe there were no signs of me being socialy awkward ( unless a girl was involved ) although I could of been in denial. Although I have always felt different school was not a problem for me in fact I enjoyed the social aspect , school was all about having a laugh & football for me.

Preschool- Just activities, reading and singing and playing with toys and playing on the playground and we had snack time.

Elementary school-I spent the first two years in a self contained classroom and kids were all over the place from seeming normal to being severely impaired. The first year was fine but we had a lot of boys in my class who were eight and they were hyper and we had one boy in there who was a chronic liar and would pinch other kids or hit and lie about it and make excuses to justify it and his lies have gotten me into trouble several times and he did it to other kids too so I know I wasn't his target. It was just random. Then the following year we had more kids in there who were cognitive impaired and the older boys were no longer in our class and other kids who seemed normal were no longer in there because they were in another school and I was one of the few kids in that same class again and there were several kids in my class that year I knew in preschool. Also another thing about this class was the rules were inconsistent so one student was allowed to show off his penis and the year before one boy was allowed to yell the number nine in every number while counting and he was allowed his own basketball and didn't have to share it, when I was eight and only in that class for ten weeks, one girl was allowed to scream when touched on her back. I just thought our teacher gave out special rules to kids just because they were them so I would sometimes break rules on purpose to see what rules I was allowed to break and didn't apply to me and I started to shout in school because it was allowed. One boy did it in my class and it got attention so I did it too. Also what we did in our class was we did reading, went on lot of field trips, had our own Easter and thanksgiving, sang songs, played games, did lot of activities together, I went to homeroom for music, PE, and library and it was three times a week. I also did the same school work over and over and I already knew all of that because they treated me like I was slow but I didn't know any different.

Then from 2nd grade through 6th I was in another school and in a normal class this time with normal kids and we did not go on many field trips, I was picked on, had troubles making friends and fitting in while that was not a problem for me in my self contained class, I was singled out, teased, and harassed, called slow and ret*d and stupid and I had other negative labels like rude and mean and weird. Plus kids didn't always follow the rules so it was very confusing for me and I was the one who always had to be in trouble and they always got away with it. There was another boy in my school who was worse than me and he was picked on always on my bus and kids left me alone so he was like my bodyguard. His little sister would try defending him and they would ignore her but I knew if I did that, I would get teased about it. But yet there were other kids in my school who looked different because you could tell they had a disability and they got respect and had a circle of friends. I wondered what they did to be normal and to be accepted and be treated like everyone else. My school also saw me as a behavior and tried to throw me out in 6th grade claiming I had a behavior disorder and they did have League Girl rules and the rules they had for everyone only applied to me and not to everyone else. I was also expected to be perfect. My mom was on my side and thought it was all abuse and ridiculous and even my therapist had to come to my school and she had watched six hours footage of the video and said it was a problem with their system, not a League Girl problem.

Middle school-school was very small and kids didn't pick on me or harass me and I had a full aide and I was in the resource room for all my classes but choir and art and PE or Spanish or current events. Plus lot of kids went to the resource room and they all looked normal and acted normal so I didn't feel bad about myself anymore for needing help with school work or for being in there. But lot of them would refuse to do their school work so I always had to help fold letters and put them in envelopes for the teachers to send them home to their parents or guardians because they had missing assignments. I also had to help with psychical forms too when kids would sign up for sports, I also had to make eye cover things for head start for the little kids to use when they get their eyes checked and my teachers would have these kids come to the class from high school to do projects with me and I thought I made new friends but they weren't my friends because they were only volunteers to be there to help me build relationship skills.

High school-I went to most of my classes and was only in the resource room for two classes and I had my aide full time until my Junior year. I feel I wasted my time doing fun classes than doing career classes to explore what I am good at and what I can do so it's not a waste of money. Kids still left me alone and didn't harass me or bully me. It was a very small school so we shared the same band room, choir, room, gym, with the middle school and we shared the same building for certain classes and we shared the same Spanish teacher so we sometimes had middle school kids in our high school for that class. We shared the same cooking teacher too, shared the same band teacher and choir teacher. That was how small the school district was. We all shared the same ISS room so elementary kids went there too. Plus lot of kids in my high school acted goofy and some would shriek for fun and we had a lot of drop outs and lot of foster kids attending. But I was treated like I was incompetent by other kids and I wasn't really treated the same as everyone else and I had to fight to take drama. Then I went from being under estimated to being over estimated after I did the play.