Do Kids Seem To Notice You Are Different?

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They do but usually in a good way. I was told that special ed students but also regular students tend to quickly take a liking to me and favour me over other adults when they require help or when they are unhappy because they appreciate that I treat them (the special ed students) as if their differences are normal and that I take them seriously. Children are human beings too so I wouldn't know how else to treat them if not the same way that I want to be treated. By now, I figured out that brushing younger or smaller people off can sometimes be perfectly acceptable in social situations but that so disrespecting towards a person.

As for staring and stuff...

Babies stared at me a lot when I was still in school. I thought it was totally creepy how they'd fix their stare on me from out of their buggy and refused to be distracted/entertained by their parent. The parents would sometimes pick up on it and look at me too, try to catch my eyes and smile, then falter - likely because I did not look them in the eye or smile back. I didn't know why they suddenly started pulling their kid towards them in hasty motions as if they were annoyed because I didn't know about eye-contact and the social smile.

At kindergarten age, I would start crying and would run away from other children's younger siblings! Oftentimes, the siblings followed me around and tried to grab my clothes or hands at which I reacted with a combination of a shutdown and meltdown (feeling sick, crying and disorientation).

It didn't take long until I was really bothered when I noticed them entering the room in kindergarten and I did my best to hide or I simply tried to run away from the room. They tried to talk to me, of course, and I hardly understand them or children my age but being the "older" kid, their parents expected of me to react to them.

Show them to the bathroom when they say they need to go, hand them a plush toy they ask for, answer their question... that kind of thing. I got yelled at a couple of times and my mom was probably treated mean because she tried to help me avoiding younger siblings when she happened to be around for most of kindergarten.

I don't know if babies still stare at me nowadays. I stopped paying attention to it. I no longer care about polite eye-contact with complete strangers being a big deal for them.

Also, I usually avoid dealing with children under the age of four (who are in the company of their parents) if I can get away with it. I rather not deal with overprotecting parents who might get freaked out and pull their kid away from me because they notice something "strange" about me.

This has never posed a problem for me.

I have 3 God kids, their siblings, a nephew etc in my life.

My youngest God daughter has adored me since she was born - or perhaps before, as I suspect she recognized my voice even in the womb. She's 5 and still very close to me. On a recent visit where I spent the night on her parents' couch, she woke up in the middle of the night and came and flopped down on me with her head on my chest and slept there the rest of the night (just as she did as an infant/toddler) and I was OK with that. *shrug* I'm good with kids, it's just part of who I am. It doesn't bother me any or cause me problems.

I've never picked up some random kid or done any socially inappropriate thing for their parents to be bothered by. I'll just make eye contact with a baby (or they, me) & maybe smile or make a funny face for them to laugh at. If the parents notice their kid sort of enchanted by me, staring, smiling.. they tend to just watch their kid being happy & like the fact that they're seeing their baby in such an obviously entertained and positive mood. I sometimes get a bit of a bewildered look from parents that seems to say "huh? how? whatever, I don't care - I just think it's cool to see my kid all smiles like that!" but never a look like "wtf buddy? why are you staring at my kid? piss off, creep." because I don't do creepy s**t, so it's all good.

Children around here tend to be very inquistive and like me. I also ride bmx bikes (i have top of the line ones) so a lot of them like to talk about the bikes.
My friends children love me. It's due to their horrible parenting or lack thereof rather.
I actually show their 2 year old and 9 year old attention and play with them. In the past i had a friend with a 5 year old son. In both cases, the 5 year old and 2 year old breaks down into tears when i leave.

One time the 2 yr old (really 1 1/2) was so excited to see me (hes very active and they don't let him out much) that he literally climbed me, scaled me like a mountain i was shocked that he could physically do that i barely had the time to put an arm to steady him he was already on my hip!

We live in a poorer area. A lot of the kids don't have good home lives, they are neglected, their parents are junkies or just don't care.
It's horrible. We help them out with their bikes if they break or if they need a bicycle we will fix them one up for free.

I had almost forgotten about the animal connection. I have always been a dog lover and always assumed that dogs were attracted to me because they recognized that I liked them. The thought never occurred to me that this attraction might simply be because they recognized me as being different from others. I can think of three good examples of this from my own recent experiences in my apartment complex.

A year or two ago one young woman had tiny pug puppy. She was rather friendly and we occasionally spoke when we saw each other at the mail room. The first time I saw her and the dog, I paused to introduce myself to the dog as I always do, bending down to let the dog sniff the back of my hand (always the back of the hand held down low which is a submissive gesture and never with the palm facing or above the dog which is a dominant and aggressive gesture). That dog really did love me and the next time I saw the two of them at the mail room, the dog began following me when I walked away to get into my car. I had to repeatedly tell the dog that it should go with its "mom" instead of with me. The woman could only shake her head telling me, "that dog REALLY does like you".

About the same time, I was taking walks for exercise to the far end of the complex (half mile each way) until the weather improved enough so that I could do my usual walks on a nearby college campus. During one of these walks, I came across a woman who was walking two dogs, including one medium sized black dog. That dog was looking at me with interest, so I stopped to let him sniff my hand and scratch his ears as described before. A week or so later, i was doing the same walk when the same woman came along walking those two dogs. That black dog I had previously "met" immediately recognized me and was straining at his leash really strongly to try to get closer to me. I simply said to the woman, "he still remembers me".

Another time, one cold hearted young woman moved into my building. The first time I saw her, I spoke to her in a friendly way asking if she had just moved into my building. But she ignored me completely and continued talking to another woman she was with. She was also ignoring her tiny, tiny white chihuahua that was no more than about nine inches long. That dog was apparently starved for love and when it heard my voice, it came running around the car to me where I "introduced myself" to the dog as always. I never did see that dog again. Maybe that woman was only a visitor to someone else.

Anyhow, dogs do seem to know that either I am different or that I like them. The only two exceptions I can think of were a friend's Weimaraner who bit me in the tail one time when I was in my teens and one brown and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that I nicknamed "Woofie" (because it never stops barking) who lives in my building now... cute dog. When I tried to introduce myself to that dog, it was terrified and backed away, barking non-stop at me. I also nicknamed the owner "The Bow-Wow Woman" because when I tried to speak to her, she turned away and started talking to the dog instead of to me.



This reminds me of a behavior of my mom that drove me up the wall when I was in my mid-teens. She used to mock me and talk baby talk to me in order to belittle me. It also reminds me of one line in a very good description of autism I found online several years ago. That good article has now been gutted by someone who has no interest in or knowledge about autism, but the link below takes you to the older archived version of that article. The applicable paragraph is the one about midway down the page beginning with the phrase, "Never talk down to someone with Asperger's Syndrome".

> http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title= ... id=5425285

Kids and animals, yup.

Little kids love me.

Kids seem to both like me and treat me as another child or a peer, even though I'm almost 30. They don't classify as an adult for whatever reason.

I think it is because I don't "condescend" to them.

Yes.

Either they absolutely love me, or sometimes they try to bully me. It's weird. I hate the fact I can be bullied by small children becasue I am so guileless.
How ridiculous.

But then, kids are more on the ball than they are given credit for.

But often, they love me.

Animals love me.

LOL yes. One time, I was in a long line waiting to use the restroom, and several kids who looked to be about 9 or 10 struck up a conversation with me, and I had the strange experience of feeling like I was also 10, desperately trying to fit in. I tried to time my responses to the conversation appropriately and felt like a peer rather than a much older person interacting with kids. It was a strange feeling that even then I was an outsider, but not because I was older but because they could sense I was different.

This is exactly what I mean. It feels like it could hang in the balance between Lord of the Flies type nastiness, and just a bit awkward.

Remember they don't know you're different. You can still play them.

I try to remember that.

It happened to me again recently in the showers at a swimming pool (this is a scenario that has repeated more than I care to remember, in swimming pool locker rooms and showers), where a gang of young girls were also using the shower. I felt very intimidated and also overwhelmed by their noise and movement.
I had to stop myself getting angry with them, and also simulatensouly remind myself not to be too worried as so long as I didn't do anything too strange, they'd have no real evidence that I was different.

Are you sure you weren't dressed like a comic book character at the time? Ha ha.

Yes. Very much so. Kids and dogs and cats (who are autistic themselves). I'm moving to another state soon. There's three family member kids there who are 2, 3 & 5. I knew their dads their entire childhood. I know me and those kids are going to automatically hit it off. It never fails. I don't interact with kids much, probably because I don't want chance anyone to thinking I'm a pedo. But since these kids are family and I was around their dads their entire childhood, I know I'm in really good standing along those lines. Looking forward to it.

One kid in particular, my niece, displayed that big time. The whole family moved out of state when she was only two months old. I arrived two months later. And every time she saw me, she'd get supper happy and excited. I remember overhearing her mom commenting about it to here mother-in-law as though really blown away by it. Even when she got older, she'd jump up and down and shout "Brian's here!!" when I'd show up. No one else ever got that level of attention.

I had my big break through when I realized IT WAS ALL BLUFF. And outside some statistically rare situations normals are not actually physically violent, but they like to project aggressiveness. At some point I vowed to stop analyzing and only respond if <actual> physical violence occurred and that has happened all of three times in 30 years all in crimes. I also usually just ignore verbal threats or escalation, oddly most normals seem to find this odd or disarming and it is enough to get them to back off.

Drunk guy"what if I punched your f*****g face?"
Me"I wouldn't like it" in monotone with no facial or body language.
Drunk guy"errrr" *wanders off

LOL! Great story about the drunk guy.

This happened to me in a shop recently;

I was hanging back becasue I'd had a bad day and was trying to keep to myself- as I always in fact do. This black woman who clearly had significant mental health problems was taking ages and ages to get all her money from her purse and kept dropping it, and was holding lots of people up who ended up dealing with their transactions above her head in the end. The shop keeper who obviously knew her and her ways kept saying ''Calm down Maria'' and so on.

She shot me a look all of a sudden. I was hanging back and holding onto my purchase, keeping away from her instinctively because I could sense she was in for a fight, but also just because I had had a bad day myself and was feeling beleaguered and meek.
Then when it was my time to pay she decided to have a go at me. ''You frightened of the black woman yeah?!''

This is so ridicuous. I grew up in the most culturally and racially diverse area of the UK. I grew up during my teens in institutional care where I was looked after by African nursing staff (in part), who were like parent figures for me in a sense. I am the opposite of racist, and am about as unphased by any cultural or racial difference as it is possible to be.

I decided to meet her challenge and said something like ''I'm not racist'' I think.
Being autistic it is hard for me to have a groundedness in myself when facing conflict, so I also panic and overdo it. I also said something like ''I had a black boyfriend''. This is not true, but I decided to use some poetic licence as I have had plenty of contact with people of all racial orientations all my life and do resent being accused of being some kind of precious white person.

Her: ''Oh, you like black do you?'' with a bit of a comical sneer.

I think I said: ''It has nothing to do with you, why do you think I am scared of you? I didn't do anything.''

''Body language!! !'' she shouts at me.

Me: ''It has nothing to do with you, you don't know what I've been going through today, I am not a racist.''

She warmed up a bit then, seeing as I had been so game with her, and said: ''Oh, what did they do to you, they did it to me as well. The government. I'm traumatised too.''

Then she dropped some money, and I picked it up for her and said ''Don't forget this.'' And she said:
''Oh, I like you.''


It was all rather absurd.