Being raised in the middle of nowhere, without peers

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Irulan
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15 May 2014, 6:22 pm

Was there anyone else besides me, who was raised in the proverbial middle of nowhere and for a long time used to boil down their AS traits to this fact? You know, as a child and teen I always thought that my social ineptness, inability to relate to others emotionally, had their source in the fact that I wasn't used to spending time with peers when I was little (I was raised with adults) and this experience left me a little old lady rather than a real child I should be. Is there anyone else that shares this experience with me?



Raptor
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15 May 2014, 7:57 pm

Well, we usually didn't live in the middle of nowhere but we but by the time I was 10 we had moved about that many (10) times. For reasons we still can't fathom, my old man just loved to move. We'd no sooner get moved into one house and he'd be looking another one to buy. Most of these moves (except the 2 moves to/from Florida) were within about a 10 mile radius of each other. It is not good to uproot kids all the time like that, especially if they have developmental disorders. They never have enough of a chance to fit in and establish long term relationships with peers. By the time I left the nest we had moved about 18 times, give or take. I would NEVER do that to kids.


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kraftiekortie
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15 May 2014, 9:09 pm

I like the "middle of nowhere"

Where were you raised?



Irulan
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16 May 2014, 9:23 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
I like the "middle of nowhere"

Where were you raised?


In a small Polish village - our farm was quite far from the rest of the village and we had just two neighboring families living near us, consisting of adults (and one baby later on) and not kids like me. I was 3-6 then. We very rarely visited other people - maybe like thrice a year - and rarely got visited by others but for my uncle and another uncle and his wife and daughter who was a bit older than me. She was my only companion then, we played with each other every weekend but for winters when they didn't arrive (they had an orchard near our farm). My life then looked like this: I woke up, I got dressed by mom (my fine motor skills were too crappy to let me do this on my own until I was about ten), I went to play on my own, which I was doing for the whole day, and then the evening came and I came back to bed and it was like this for all those three years. At winters I spent a lot of time at home reading - at 3 I read the same as at 30 and mom was so proud - only that back then she didn't know it's hyperlexia and it isn't a good sign but something that is a norm in pervasive developmental disorders.



kraftiekortie
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16 May 2014, 10:33 am

Sounds like it would be nice for me.

It doesn't sound like it was great for an Aspie kid, though. I was hyperlexic as well. I grew up in a massive city , New York City, (that didn't benefit me, really).

You have an excellent command of English. Were you educated at a University?

You've seen to have done okay educationally, despite your isolation. If you're going to university, what are you majoring in?

There's another person on Wrong Planet who is a university student and is Polish. Her screen name is Kiriae. It doesn't seem as if she would mind it if you introduce yourself. But do it gently LOL She seems pretty reasonable.



Irulan
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16 May 2014, 11:20 am

It was boring though back then I really enjoyed this sort of life - I was surrounded by nature, we kept farm animals and had many domestic pets - cats and dogs. I didn't know anything else, although when I was really young, I used to live in a medium-sized city, too, before (though I almost don't remember this). I always wanted to live in NYC or LA, cities of great possibilities, to leave my country. I studied English philology in a teacher training college. I left that village when I was 6, so it wasn't like I spent there like my whole life, of course. There was no school - actually there was just nothing more than just farms - no post office, no store etc. The only interesting object in there is the "House of Memory" of some relatively well known in here regional writer and my distant cousin (deceased for years) at the same time, who was born in it and lived there for years when he was young, filled with souvenirs from his youth. It's a museum. I didn't know Kiriae is Polis, too but there are some Poles on here, I saw.