Your early childhood experiences

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I chose that age because six is the age at which you start first grade--the age when formal schooling, and the social skills required, get "serious". It's also the age when the cases of autism that didn't show themselves by their speech delay tend to become obvious by the social and communication deficits (again, because of the increased demands), though they may not be actually diagnosed until a little later. My question isn't, "Are we abused?", but, "Does it start early, or does it escalate only once we are acknowledged to be unusual?"

No abuse that I'm aware of prior to age 6 but multiple head injuries by then from my clutziness i.e. falling down stairs, concussion from fall backwards when skating.

No major abuse, just one parent with an anger management problem and another who'd pretend that was normal. Maybe having an crazy-angry adult yelling in your face at 4 is worse with hyperacuasis and hypersensitivity? Never got beaten up, though.

As far as ASD kids having a "kick me" sign -- I do wonder if there can be issues of parents feeling rejected due to non-standard non-verbal (and verbal) communication, and consciously or unconsciously taking it out on the kid. And maybe also assumptions that the kid doesn't need as much comforting, for similar reasons. Add in a parent with ASD traits themselves and I can see some unintentional neglect happening, especially if no one knows what's going on.

+1

Does getting slapped around and getting put in the bathroom as a time out count? I had that happen to me when I was five and it was done when my uncle was around and my dad was at home working in his office. My uncle knew nothing about raising kids so he didn't know what my nanny was doing was wrong. My dad was too busy with his work to even know what was going on. I didn't have the language skills to say my time out was the bathroom when Agnis is there. My little brother wasn't advanced enough in words to say it too.

I used to come home from school and hide in my parents closet. I also used to run out of the dining room when I see her car pull up our street. I don't know what else she did to my brother and I because I blocked lot of it out.

When I was almost two I was at daycare and it was a house the lady ran in her home. One day the lady just put me upstairs in a crib in a bedroom that was hot and she left no fans blowing or no window open and she left me nothing to drink. I got over heated and she ignored my crying and I was lucky my mom came in time to pick me up and she walked in the house when no one answered and she heard me crying upstairs and couldn't believe what she saw. I was sick for a week and my parents put me in another daycare which was ran by a church this time.

And I don't know if this counts as abuse from when I was four. I used to go to a daycare when I was three and four and the teacher there who ran my age group didn't like me because she didn't want to deal with me. I wasn't like the other kids and couldn't talk so I was always getting into trouble and hurting other kids and then I finally got kicked out. My parents were pissed about it but what I don't get is why they kept bringing me there when the teacher was bad. My mom said everything there was fine for me until that teacher came along and my teacher I had wanted to do an older age group and this new teacher wanted to do mine and bam that was when the trouble started. Other times she be mean and other times she be nice which my mom describes her as wishy washy. Since then I hated daycares and thought they were all bad so I used to feel sorry for every kid that had to go to daycare. Luckily I was never put in one again because my mom got a nanny who turned out to be mean so she fired her and she decided to be a stay at home mom.

For me, the abuse started long before I was out of diapers. I experienced bullying/abuse from my adoptive parents, their family members, their friends & friends kids, & then I started school, & the abuse just kept coming. I got it from adults & kids a like, & sometimes adults even encouraged kids to physically hurt me. Not normal for a little kid to experience things like that.

From my earliest memories, abuse was just a part of my growing up. Bullying followed me through out my life, & I still get bullied even though I'm nearly 50. Sucks. I am trying to change things but it's a lot harder than it ought to be. It's like I have a sign pointing at me that says bully magnet, & they flock to me. If only I could get rid of that stupid sign!

She's looking for abuse that happened before that age, specifically because of the premise of the argument she's considering:

"And I'm wondering whether my friend's right, and whether we're vulnerable to abuse even as early as a few months old--whether the autistic "Kick Me" sign is there from the star..."

She is wondering more than that, like about later years, but it's pretty hard to set up a poll that complicated on these forums.

Polls on WP don't really tell anyone much other than what those who are here, and who bother to respond to them experience anyway. You can't really get any reliable results from them. Not in comparison to a properly constructed study anyway. But I don't think anybody really expects that. It's really, I think, just a curiosity.

Yeah, I tried to get a little more accuracy by not putting "abuse" in the title of the topic. I figured I'd get mostly people who could remember their early childhoods, which wasn't as bad a selection bias as catching a bunch of the people who remember being abused.

This is a little of what I'm expecting, though: Abuse often starts early, and tends to be more common in the younger age group; but it also escalates later on just like it does in NTs.

As for me, I wasn't abused before the age of six; the worst that ever happened was that I got yelled at by an exasperated mom, and that's not abuse because it never got personal and hurtful a la emotional abuse. The only stuff that happened to me started when I was about eight years old, and went on through the age of seventeen.

Most of my abuse came from peers.

As a kid:
1) Multiple beatings through out each school year until 10th grade
2) Spit at several times a month 7th - 9th grade
3) Talked into doing "bad" things from 1st - 9th grade
4) Had my shirt set on fire in studyhall in the 9th grade I think by a kid sitting behind me.
5) Called a ret*d daily from 1st - 10th grade.
6) Beaten severly then forced to kiss a girl with down syndrome in the fouth grade
7) People would run up and hug me because I do not like to be touched from 1st - 6th grade
8 ) People would mimic my cross bite to harrass me.
9) My younger brother was harrassed because he was related to me
10) People who would beat me would tell people who stopped the beatings that it was alright ret*ds do not feel pain like normal people. That was said at leat three times with different variations.

My parents could not figure out why I did not want to go outside or attend after school functions.

Last edited by Todesking on 18 Aug 2010, 5:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Nope, things were OK when I was that age. However things didn't stay that way.

In a lot of countries, yes. But in Norway in 1984 the compulsory school age was from 7 years. So I began school when I was 7.
First in 1997 was it lowered to 6.