Were you always 'different' ?

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Can't remember much before the age of 8. Certainly no recollection of friends. From age of 8 to 18 I had one friend that I lost at 13 when I changed schools. Was very much a loner and heavily into solitary activities.Was physically and socially awkward for which I got verbally bullied a lot at public school.
Found it difficult to relate to and fit in with the other children.

I have known I was "different" since at least the age of six.

For me,as my memory before the age of 8 is extremely patchy, I would say it would be the age of 8.

I had one "best friend" from about the age of 6 to 11. He was my only friend. I was frequently "banned" from his house because it was thought that I was "ret*d" or something. That certainly made me feel 'different" LOL

Yup, since the age of 5 when ''socializing'' kinda started... Alien feelings started rather young... Spent more time walking the fields like Huckleberry Finn, with a stick and my picnic tied to the end in a tea towel... Sitting in fields and watching the bees collecting pollen from the daisies and imagining the molecular structure of grass... you know the usual stuff kids do at that age! ha

Memories as far back to at least 1 and a half.

Either I had poor insight or was just blissfully unaware that I'm different.

My earliest memory is around less than age of 3. From memory, I couldn't recall anything different about myself. Not even apart from neighbors and relatives.

At 4, it's a bit obvious since I first started going to school. Why would a 4 year old kindergarten girl prefer to hang out with 7-10 year old street boys instead of bugging other children in the daycare?
They all assumed that I'm just a bit tomboyish (for having certain preferences) and moody (disruptive, angry, etc..).
In actuality, I'm just very clueless. I only see what's in front of me and what I want.


Then I only realized that I'm different from others when I was 8...

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An emphatic yes

I have been having difficulties making friends all my life, and I got bullied all the way through Primary, Secondary school and Polytechnic (a level of study where the end point is a Diploma, equivalent to one year in university). I was also bullied during national service in Singapore where I lived in.

I was told by a school clinical psychologist that I was observed for ADHD when I was 8 or 9, and during my childhood I threw a lot of tantrums when things didn't go my way when I played with other kids. It was around 11 or 12 when I started to realise after all the bullying and lack of friends, that life for me was clearly different from the other kids.

It was just difficult for me to understand complex social interactions between friends, and knowing the things which upset them and stopping myself from saying them or behaving in the way I would irritate them. Because of this, I always got onto my classmates' bad books, and I just get increasingly hated by the others around me. This has been a regular thing all the way through Polytechnic, when I was 18-20 years old.

I recognized from a young age I was different before I was even in kindergarten. By age eight I thought it was because I just couldn't talk and kids didn't like it so they didn't want me around and I thought that was the reason for my social problems and why I didn't understand things. Then by age ten I figured out I had more going on than language. There were other kids in my school who talked funny and were also in speech therapy and they still managed to be likable and normal and not be treated different. It seemed like a double standard they would be mean to me if the talked funny themselves and why others would like them but not like me. My only blame was because I was Beth so that was why I was different. That was my irrational conclusion that made me different was because my name was Beth and all the Beths in the world got picked on. I also thought I was a naughty child too and couldn't understand why I couldn't stay out of trouble. I sometimes wonder if it was just the adults than me because it's possible I was just being a normal child and they were getting mad at me about it. When my mom was yelling at my son, she told me she had to get out of the house because my son was just being a boy and it's not fair to him she is yelling at him just for being a normal boy and she doesn't want him thinking he is doing something wrong and then I added "Like there is something wrong with him?" and she said "correct." That made me wonder about me as a child. Is it possible? Though I am a girl but is it possible my grandparents and other adults just wanted me to be a mini adult and were getting mad at me for being a child? But I also think lot of people just didn't have patience for me and I was kept in my room a lot by a couple of baby sitters we had. I now think they just didn't want to deal with me so they kept me in my room until my parents came home. I was also banned from peoples homes as well and other parents not wanting their kids to play with me. I was never aware of other parents not wanting me around until my mom told me when I was a teenager and she said it was because I didn't know when to stop teasing. I also recognized I got more upset than others and things just bothered me more than it did for others. Like if someone was in my room and took something, that would upset me so I would start crying and that didn't seem to upset other kids if something was taken from their room as well or if someone was in there playing and left a mess.

To an extent, yes. But I think I was never noticeably different, even back in elementary which was about the worst time when it came to my AS.

I only realised I was different at about age 19. A friend let me read through her birthday book and I remember feeling surprised when I got to my page's birth date and it didn't describe the people born on that day as utter monsters. Up until that age I just took it for granted that I was a bad person, as my earliest memories of school are my teacher repeatedly calling me nasty.

Then when I was in teacher training, I heard two teachers discussing their practicum school placements and they were dropping the word Aspergers. One of them was talking about a female student and she was saying, "Oh, I just wanted to tell her to stop talking so badly; it was cringeworthy!" because apparently this student didn't understand how to have a socially viable conversation and just talked non-stop. Though I'd never heard the word Aspergers before, I knew at that moment that that's what I had, without being told by anyone or diagnosed by any medical professional.

It's sad that teachers can sometimes be blind to the needs of Aspie kids, but I blame the fact that they have way-too-big classes and don't have enough time to focus on each child the way they'd like. But the unfortunate result is that a lot of us grow up believing we should just be locked away forever.

In some ways. When I was very young, about 2 years old, I went to a kindergarten. The people who worked there said to my parents that I was a weird kid. Their reason for saying that was that I preferred playing by myself instead of with others. I wasn't even curious about other kids, really.

Later on I went to a different kindergarten and I tried playing with the other kids, but I can't say I had any friends. I only really had one person I occasionally played with, but I had so little insight into what was considered normal that I didn't even think about it. Back then I still preferred solitary activities such as drawing.

I only started noticing that I might be a little different around late elementary to middle school because people outright said that I was weird behind my back. I even had a friend tell me that I needed social skills training. I was also bullied all the way since kindergarten, so that should probably have been a sign.

I was a classically-autistic person as a toddler and young preschool child. No speech. Considered a "vegetable." It was recommended that I get institutionalized. My mother "saw something in me," fortunately.

I went to a special "nursery school" for "brain-injured" kids in my Kindergarten year. I was finally talking by then. I don't think I went to any sort of nursery school before then.