What age did you realize that you were "different"

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It's amazing how many people are saying they realized they were different in the 4 to 6-year-old range. It's the same for me. I was around 6 when I realized none of the other kids liked me, and began having feelings of never fitting in anywhere. I was uncoordinated, and non-athletic, couldn't throw a ball or ride a bicycle, couldn't run fast. But strong with intellectual matters, always knowing the right answer when the teacher called on me, and always being told by the adults how smart I was. Brains but no coordination is deadly on the playground. It took me many years of struggle to figure out the reason.

Last edited by LovebirdsFlying on 29 Apr 2011, 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"You're weird!" was a common refrain during my growing up and it was often stated negatively (As in "get the f**k away from me!"). How early was this mentioned or implied? Meh. I don't know, probably sometime when I was 6 or 7.

As far as being 'different', that was pretty obvious early on when I was learning 6th grade math in 1st grade. However, does a higher math ability imply a different thinking ability and a relatively predictable social impairment?

No, I don't really think so. I think the particular problem in my case was probably just expressive verbal deficits, although being called "weird" during grade school implies there was a body language component, as well, as most grade school kids don't care how you word things.

I was told I was weird too. Back then I hated being called that.

I got that "you're weird" thing too. And the "Ewwww, don't sit next to ME!" in the school cafeteria or on the bus. I remember also that the question came up as to whether I should skip a grade in school. It was decided that I should not, because even though I was bored to pieces in the classroom, I had "undeveloped social skills." In other words, they didn't care how easy the work was for me, they wouldn't skip me because I had no friends. Like that was a good reason.

Really? Wow, me too! I actually have only recently heard of it within the past 3 years as I'm assuming they didn't want to crush my fragile ego in sixth grade, but I was considered for skipping 3 grades in sixth grade but apparently they decided not to because I was "emotionally immature.". They might have been right, but I don't really think holding me back really helped out with emotionally immaturity. I didn't "have no friends", though. Maybe some people who are considered "too socially weird" are held back, regardless of their actual readiness or friendships.

But, personally, I'm thinking I probably have verbal memory deficits, so skipping 3 grades wouldn't have necessarily helped in all subjects (Especially History and English, though High-school English is a joke.). However, maybe these these are recently acquired impairments? Hmmm... no, probably not.

I can also understand the concern that skipping me ahead might have made my classmates even MORE likely to exclude me. For example, when I was in the first grade, the arrangement was made to send me to the second-grade classroom when it was time for reading class. I was the only one in my class who did that, it was a unique set-up, so it singled me out among my first-grade classmates. Then in the second-grade classroom, I was by far the best reader, and the second-graders hated me for it. They didn't like being outdone by a first-grader, and they missed no opportunity to bully me or put me down. Adults would say, "Oh, they're just jealous." But nobody ever told me, jealous of what. And I honestly didn't know.

So, skipping me might have only made things worse, but holding me back didn't help matters either. I really needed some kind of special education--but that would have branded me as ret*d, back then.

When I was about 9 I realized I was different because I just wanted to sit by myself at lunch time. I could see no one else did that.

But it wasn't until I was 14 that I really became aware of myself, the differences in the way that I thought, and that I was really alone with it.

I can't remember not knowing.

The "special education" that the local district has are gifted auxiliary classes that meet once a week, and then a gifted magnet middle-school, and then the obligatory AP classes in high school. However, maybe subject-specific grade levels would be more ideal? I could imagine it now -- There's a subject class for every grade level, from 1st to 12th grade, and then everybody follows a 6-period schedule from 1st to 12th grade. The subjects and their grade level for each student is determined solely by their achievement in that particular subject, so that nobody is ostracized on the basis of ability alone within a given subject, while each individual's achievement mirrors their actual subject-specific capability profile. However, there'll always be the "best" within a given class that people will be jealous of, lol. Just, hopefully, not too exceedingly so.

Last edited by swbluto on 30 Apr 2011, 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting observation. I wonder how much it has to do with starting to go to school and thus be in contact with a lot more kids for a lot more time.

Indeed. My one to four year old "social life" was my family, and the "social circle" beyond that wasn't quite large enough to make social comparisons against "the herd" (As "the norm" didn't quite exist in my mind, yet.). School just widened my social exposure enough to know what "the norm" was and subsequently realize those differences.

Even if public education had been able to serve my needs, my family life would have sabotaged it. We moved around so much I went to 20 different schools before graduating from high school, so even if we had managed to find a good program for me, we would have moved again, and I would have had to leave it. My childhood sucked.

I once attended a school that followed the system you describe. A child could be in third grade but working on first grade reading and fourth grade math, with each student progressing among the levels at his/her own pace. Each student had took a pre-test to determine level placement in the individual subjects, and then according to the pre-test scores, they had a "contract" with assignments to complete before advancing to the next level. Teachers taught, but it was up to the student to do the work. I wish more schools did it that way.

I went there for two solid years (an abberation in my history) and as far as I am concerned, they only made one mistake with me. Instead of structured classrooms, this school had "units" that were named by color. Although the staff of the school would swear to the moon and stars that Yellow Unit did NOT rank higher than Purple, every kid in the Yellow Unit "knew" it did--and so did the kids in Purple. Witness the fact that there were fourth-graders in the Purple Unit, but none in the Yellow. So that second year, when they put my fifth-grade brother in Yellow, and my sixth-grade self in Purple.... gah, I never heard the end of his superior attitude.

Last edited by LovebirdsFlying on 30 Apr 2011, 1:09 am, edited 2 times in total.

I always knew I was different. I remember being in elementary school and wondering why I couldn't bring myself to play the way the other kids did. As I got older and learned to read, I began to ignore others in favor of my fantasy worlds.

*shrug*

I don't think it ever bothered me as much as it seems to have bothered some of y'all.

True that most kids start school between 4 and 6 and so did I but back then I was in my own little world and didn't even notice the other kids, let alone care about how I compared to them. It wasn't until I was around 9 that it hit me that the other kids don't like me because I'm different from them and it wasn't until I was around 13 that it hit me that other people perceive my behavior differently than I do. I remember when I was between 8 and 12, my mom kept talking about how she was "embarrassed" but I had no concept of what that meant until I made that realization at age 13 and I don't even think I personally felt embarrassed until around 15.
From my observation, NT kids can start feeling embarrassment as young as 7 or 8.

http://www.myaspergerslifestory.com/kin ... aster.html is about me from ages of 4-6
http://www.myaspergerslifestory.com/my_ ... years.html is me from ages 6-11
http://www.myaspergerslifestory.com/my_ ... years.html is me from ages 11-14

Notice how I was always playing a never ending game of social catch up?

Didn't we all? Some of us still do.

I never thought I was weird - it was always everyone around me who kept displaying such odd and confusing behaviour. At some point I began to think of myself as being surrounded by people who were just overly emotional and incomprehensible, and I remember thinking as a child that there must be people who were normal, like me - who I could understand - somewhere out there. I just hadn't met them yet.

Then I was pushed out of my shell and into college, and my world started tilting. A few months back I was officially diagnosed with AS, and my world tilted all the way around. Now I'm part-way through the process of trying to re-establish who I am and what the world and the people around me are really like. A very exciting time, to say the least.