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MagicMeerkat
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Joined: 11 Jun 2011
Age: 37
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,846
Location: Mel's Hole

14 minutes ago

I'm wondering if other people were isolated by choice as a children. I never had the desire to socialize with other kids or even adults of that matter. If someone wanted to talk about my special interests, I'd want to interact; but people who shared my special interests were so far few in between.

I was homeschooled since the 5th grade. My mother was paranoid someone was going to report her for neglect or abuse because I was "isolated". I remember her lying to my pediatrician about random kids I interacted with. "Oh yes, she's always out and about with the neighbor girl who's a little older" in reality, I rarely talked to "neighbor girl who's a little older". I asked her on the way home, "Why did you lie to her?" and she basically told me she didn't want a visit from CPS because I wasn't being "socialized".

She was always paranoid about CPS taking me away for the slightest thing. She wanted to homeschool me from preschool but was gaslighted by therapists and doctors about how I needed to go to a traditional school to "learn how to be around other children". I always wondered if CPS really will take a child away because the parent isn't making them socialize when they have no interest.

Anyway, various "professional" type people were always telling my parents to put me into this weekly "social skills group" or that one. They were thinking about one...until they learned it would cost over $5K and insurance wouldn't cover it. We didn't have that kind of money. I don't think it would have worked either. I can just see some therapist telling me to stop talking about my special interests. I was taught basic manners, but never to the point of masking. I was always told: "If people can't accept you for you or bully you for anything, they are not your friends and you need to stay away from them." This was the early 90's before neurodiversity was a thing and when Hans Asperger's was still seen as some kind of hero.

So probably a good thing my parents never forced me into any "social skills group". But anyhow, I'm wondering if anyone else was a self isolator when still a child. I preferred to run around by myself in the woods. Kind of like this poem: "‘She sat at the back and they said she was shy,
She led from the front and they hated her pride,
They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance,
They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad,
So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad,
They told her they'd listen, then covered their ears,
And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should,
Be the girl they told her to be best as she could,
But one day she asked what was best for herself,
Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees,
She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves,
She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine,
And she told them what she'd been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough,
She was either too little or far far too much,
Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak,
Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,
And she stopped...and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe."


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