Mothering

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I was bullied horribly through primary but in the later part of my secondary education to now as a college student I am experiencing the opposite, mothering. This is not from people older than me but my own age and significantly younger. It is weird and, as I don't understand it slightly disturbing. I don't even look young, I'm not ridiculously tall but I am tall as I am 5"10 and I am seen as fairly intelligent by my peers.

However I am treated like a child by many of them. For example, I study German and we were having an opening day where people should volunteer to talk about their subjects and persuade perspective students to join our course. I volunteered at the end of one lesson and the teacher mentioned it the next. I had one person go "Aww" and then my class began to clap?? The "aww"ing is a frequent thing for me, as is the weird congratulations for small things and it goes further than that, with people acting like I can't speak for myself when things go wrong. My mother get's the same thing and she's a fully grown woman so I guess this is my life now? We don't know if she is on the spectrum for certain but we were told that she probably was.

How do you feel about mothering if you experience it? What sort of traits do you think make it more likely, as many of us are certainly not mothered?

Do they know about your diagnosis?

What do you look like? I hate to ask that kind of a question but blending in helps a lot. If you're prone to standing out in public due to appearance or strongly held beliefs then they likely consider you one of the main characters of the classroom. You might be "the girl with blue hair" or "the bodybuilder" or the "climate scientist" or the "water quality nerd" or some other neat feature that they've picked to represent a trifling difference...and made you "famous" for it.

Do they mother other people too? If not, could it be a running joke? Ask them. If it's too annoying, ask them to stop pestering you with the "aww" and tell them that you'd like them to speak to you as a colleague and peer rather than a week-old baby kitten.

Any more info would help. I'm sorry you're stuck with that kind of people pulling stunts like that. Let us know; knowledge is power and perhaps the Aspie hive mind can help.

Some do, some don't. In that particular school I noticed the environment was a safe place to be more myself so I allowed myself to rest a little.

As for how I look, I tend to like to wear bright coloured clothes, a trench coat and platforms (which doesn't make much sense to people because they point out I'm already tall but I wear them because otherwise I trip on my clothes) and come to think of it, my back pack is fire engine red. I don't know if this helps but I tend to be complimented for what I wear. Some other people dress like that so the only other thing I can think of that would further make me stand out is people know that I tend to draw bruises on my knuckles etc. (it's a thing I picked up from a special interest and my therapist has told me it's fine to continue as it seems to help with my stress). I'm not really fat or thin so it's not like I would stand out body wise except for being tall, but there's also a lot of people way taller than me. Oh yeah I don't have the greatest posture. It takes me a lot of time to open up but apart from my close friends people people who do speak to me either get absolutely nothing out of me or know I have one of the following interests: anime, true crime, writing, psychology or body language. EDIT: it occurred to me that I do have a surreal and often dark sense of humour coupled with some over exaggerated gestures that tend to shock people but often leads to them talking to me more and as I have volume control problems a fair amount of people have probably heard them.

I don't really see them mothering others and that's been the case since it started at at both secondary schools I used to attend. I planned to ask about it on Friday but sadly, was cut off when I had a panic attack (again a standard thing in my college). I don't know if it's a joke but I'll ask about it. It's so frequent with me that I joke with my friends that in each class I have a class mum.

I don't know what else could be of interest/helpful but if you think anything I'll happily answer.

There was an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer was thought to be ret*d because of a dental visit which had slurred his speech and wearing unusual shoes which gave him a strange and hesitant gait.

It is not unusual for Asperger people to dress and act in an idiosyncratic fashion which can lead others to make erroneous conclusions.

It is hard to understand without a little better description. "Aww" isn't much of a description.

It they said "Aww, isn't that cute" or "Aww, isn't she wonderful", it might be a subtle way of bullying. They may be treating you as a child, that whatever you say or do is immature. Therefore if you say or do something right, they would say "Aww". It allows them to ignore anything you say and do, because you lack maturity.

I really have a hard time with sarcasm. Many Aspies do?

So anyways I may be far off on this interpretation.

Sorry to say that "aww" is all that was said but, while I'm not the best with sarcasm I don't have much reason to think it was bullying as the individual tends to be very friendly to me and others. However, maybe it was teasing if that was the case because I am subject to friendly teasing in class due to my weird want to fill in silences with random/slightly inappropriate topics. An example would be remarking on a classmate's eyesight when it became silence. I haven't been able to ask about it though because I've been too overwhelmed to go to German this week and have been absent.

I do definitely think I lack maturity in some ways though and while I may be intelligent and look older than my age, I am naive and have a childish, fast attachment to people as well as being overly eager/excitable. For example, I tend to bounce and jump when I'm happy or can't resist flapping my hands when overly excited. Pair that with me being awkward perhaps it was teasing but not bullying per se as I recognise that sort of meanness from being bullied for many years in both subtle and not so subtle ways.

It's better than being treated like crap.

But I can understand your feeling at your age; I didn't like to be "mothered" or whatever back when I was a teenager.

I still look like a teenager (at age 26), can't "mask" to save my life, and have selective mutism and an odd-sounding voice. I'm often treated like a child, and every sort of in-person friendship I've had has had at least some aspect of "mothering" to it.

I’m 58. And I would love to look like a teenager

But I would like to keep my tenor/baritone voice.

Oh yeah it's definitely better than being treated badly! I wouldn't like to go back to the days where I was treated badly but this is definitely preferable. Annoying and confusing but preferable. My mother who also experiences it, tries to frequently remind me of the upsides.

I look pretty young for my age so the most I get these days are people asking me if I go to the local high school. Can't say that I had folks "mothering" or what have you but I don't generally interact with people on a regular basis for this kinda thing to happen so my opportunity for socializing is very low.