Its hard to pretend!

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Hi all!
I thought I'd ask you guys as you are all older than my 9 year old so maybe you can explain it better. I think I know what he means, however I am going into his first ever school meeting to talk about his AS on Thursday and I want to be 100% clear.

My son J told me when asked how he felt about school and what we could do to help him he said "mum it's so hard pretending, I just want to be me and I can't".

I know he is tired after school and has maybe 1 kid that will play regulary with him, but thats it. He will tell me if he thinks he has done something wrong, but he wont talk about his day any further, he shuts down.

Can you guys explain it any better, whats going on in his head whilst at school. He is already showing signs of being a worrier, what can I do to help explain his situation to a very un understanding vice principle.

Sorry if I'm not making sense.

How is he pretending?

I'm usually very exausted when I get home. This usually involves headaches from sensory problems...etc.
It's probably exactly as you think.
A child who is different wants to be like the others to either -
A. Stay Neutral
B. Get more friends
Everyday is almost unbearable...I feel as if I can collapse after school. Take it froma high school freshman.

That was me 2 days ago and I'm 22. Those were my exact words, after years of keeping everything to myself. I know how he feels.

Pretending to be "normal" is my guess.

That's also me right there, and I'm 21.

I pretended for my whole damn life, but I found that pretending to be normal really sucks.

We have to basically force ourselves in social situations and learn manually what to say what when and how basically. It's as if you are learning French and you suddenly got thrust in Paris and are forced to speak in French and act in the appropriate customs and manners, to put it one way.

I accepted that I've been lying to myself. Throughout my middle/high school years I tried very much to fit in, speaking to different groups, believing we had some sort of relationship. When I would get home I would wonder why others didn't think, feel, or reacted as I did. I wouldn't get excited over things, wouldn't show emotions, and just felt outside, felt alien from the rest of my "peers" despite the fact that I hung out with them.

I was told "You fit in where you get in" but I found that a stupid thing to say because even if I do get accepted somewhere I still feel like I'm lying to myself, like I have to react a certain way to not offend or come across as different.

Now, like I mentioned, I'm accepting the fact that I didn't know who I was and am going through the process of "discovering" myself. The only negative is that I still don't talk to people, and my symptoms are coming out in public which was something that didn't happen much. I'm not sure if your child is experiencing this but it is something that I've felt since elementary. It wouldn't make sense to say "Just be yourself" because, as in my case, I didn't know who exactly I was. I knew who I wasn't but who I was was different from who I wanted to be, or how I wanted people to see me.

I hope this made sense. I sometimes give more than meaning and confuse people by it.

I pretended to be normal for some time. Didn't work. The problem for me and probably lots of other people is that society attempts to stereotype you so that you 'fit in' with their comfort zone, so to speak. If you don't fit into a stereotype then society ignores you until you pretend you do.

Yes pretending to be normal puts such a strain on my brain as well. I just wish society was more aware of autism and will accept me for who i am, rather then judging me due to my behaviors! What bothers me the most, is that I don't judge at all, literally, i never look a persons flaw, rather look at the good side of them, but my nt bf judges everything about everybody. If this world would stop and think before just judging a book by its cover, then people with ASDs especially can live a happier life!

Pretending is exhausting. People always think I'm pretending when I'm not.

Hmm, I don't know where I fall. I am constantly judging people, but I am thinking that it may be due to the fact that I like logistics/taxonomy. I put everything in groups, assign class and labels to see where everything falls into place, and I mean everything. I point out subtleties, I give criticism, but it is not like I do it out of hate. I just do it because it is the first thing I notice.

I am accepting despite my prejudice. I just accept the fact that everyone is different and I don't hide the fact that people are different.

I remember a 'friend' I had when I was at school asking me why I 'couldn't just act normal'. You make one friend, but then they get embarrassed about you in front of their other friends. Your people reading skills may not be the best, but one thing you can read in everybodys faces is that something about you is fundamentally wrong and unlikeable.

Does your son do anything outside of school? You could try getting him to go to a club where he can meet people outside of a school setting. I found I had a lot more luck making friends this way, and it made me a lot more confident.

What is going in his head at school would be somewhere along the lines of "why are they doing that?" "why did they react that way when i did this?" "I wish i was an astronaut and i would go to the moon and jump so high that..."

It's a survival instinct. If you are not accepted by the rest of the "herd",in nature, you usually will not survive. We sometimes have to take on a false identity, to not be singled out as different. My wish, AS is understood and accepted by everyone.


I just got back from a job interview, and had to use some "pretending" of my own.

Between bad hearing and possible AS (if not AS, then something close to it, from what I'm seeing here), I found other kids too exhausting to deal with.
All I wanted to know just what the hey I could do in order to get on the bus and not have 50 kids all chanting mean songs at me. I was about eight when that started and generally all I wanted in life was to read my books, obsess over vampires (which was awful, it was considered a symptom of some pervasive emotional disturbance - why couldn't it be unicorns?!), and be left alone. Then I'd come home and my mother would say that there is no way ll the kids bully me if there wasn't something Wrong with me.
All the signals when you're a kid are clear. If you can't 'pass,' you're going to be miserable. Learning to pass is painstaking, can take years, and still they might never pass. They might get close enough that fewer people notice, but then all day long it's about holding up an act that isn't you in order to make other people more comfortable so that they won't single you out, and maybe, just maybe, you could make a friend.
Often, though, the friends which require 'passing' are not the ones you really want to have around. Because then even when you're at home you have to pass, because they'll come over for play dates. And if you can pass a little, then world demands you do it 24/7.
I used to rehearse any kind of conversation I thought might come up, and hope that if it went in one of the scripted directions, my delivery would be correct. I still do, but only in work situations. I now have friends and a boyfriend who are all very helpful.
Kids have no attention span, though, so what works today might not work tomorrow.

The best school situation of all the ones I tried was a school that had a program within a high school, where I could mainstream as much or as minimally as I wanted, and where many rules would be relaxed in order to help us feel comfortable and substantially less freakish. One of the more severe classmates I had was dx'd with AS. He would bang his head on the walls if he heard certain sounds or words. So our room was, very quickly, a 'safe' zone. He knew he could come into that room and no one would hit any of his triggers. Turns out he was a really, really funny guy.
I was allowed, if I had no work during self-contained study hall, to take a short nap. I could also listen to music while doing seat work so that noises and people wouldn't distract me.
Before then, I went to boarding schools for delinquents, school for the hearing impaired, prep school (way back, and that was a mess). A modified program like the one I was in really made all the difference. Going to mainstream classes, I had enough energy to at least get through an hour or however long it was. And it led to me still having to deal with the regular kids, so I wasn't completely isolated from 'normal' behavior. The world isn't going to be a safe zone.

I might be on a soapbox here, but this sort of program is the best compromise I've seen yet.