A question for those diagnosed in childhood

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Joe90
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26 Oct 2016, 1:02 pm

For those of you who were diagnosed with ASD as a child, did you used to think that your ASD defined you? Did you feel separated from the other children, no matter how equally you was treated?

For example, one time when the teacher had a box of all different sorts of sweets and gave out one to each child in the class, I thought "oh I've probably been given a [name of sweet] because I have Asperger's", and I'd look around to see if anyone else had the same sweet as me to reassure myself that what sweet I happened to receive was nothing to do with me having a label.
Or if we were given an individual time and date for a test, I would think "oh my exam time is 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon because I have Asperger's", even though it had nothing to do with that at all.

You see what I mean? Did you ever feel like that, or is it just me? I was so sensitive about my diagnosis, that I worried it had made me become separable from the other children.


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26 Oct 2016, 2:03 pm

I did feel separate from others, but I didn't really start to understand what Asperger's was or how it affected me until I was ~15. My parents also didn't talk to me about it much.



EzraS
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26 Oct 2016, 2:20 pm

Well since all the other kids in the school I went to had autism, I never experienced those thoughts. But I have always felt pretty separate from everyone nonetheless.



AnonymousAnonymous
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26 Oct 2016, 3:03 pm

I was diagnosed with "regular" Autism when I was 4, then re-diagnosed with AS when I was 13. This re-diagnosis was likely because I began blooming at the age of 10.

During my years in both grade school and MS, all I cared about was fitting in at school and avoiding being easy targets for bullies. Even though I was bullied in both grade school and MS, I was often sent to the principal's office just because faculty who witnessed me {and other students} being bullied was a just reason to ostracize the victim.


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TheSilentOne
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27 Oct 2016, 1:59 pm

Once I found out what Autism was (when I was about 13), I think I began to realize how different I was from everybody else. I began to avoid my peers because I felt like I had absolutely no chance of fitting in with them. I was embarrassed and didn't want anybody to know.


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MagicMeerkat
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27 Oct 2016, 2:59 pm

No. Other kids, teachers, people in general HATED me. I think my own family did to an extent too before I was diagnosed. Things at home improved a little after I was diagnosed, but it remained the same at school and got worse as I got older.


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