Did anyone else ever have an incident like this as a child?

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I was never an intentionally mischievous child but sometimes I couldn’t help but do things people didn't like because I was a bit hyperactive. Yet I was always extremely sensitive when teachers scolded me and accused me of intentionally acting out when I couldn't figure out what I did wrong. I remember always getting really hurt and bitter about it and holding long grudges.

I remember having this 65 year old teacher in kindergarten who was somewhat more strict than usual. One day she scolded me and told me to go stand by the light switch. At the time I didn’t know what I did wrong but I suppose I was talking when I was supposed to be quiet. I often wasn't aware of when the time to talk was over. Anyways, when she told me to go stand by the light switch I misheard her (she had an odd voice to me) and proceeded to turn off the lights. Then she screamed at me and I stormed out of the room screaming and crying. When she came after me I kicked her and told her that I hated her and wished she would die.

Anyways, after this huge incident my mom had to come and pick me up and I refused to go to school the next day. I kept telling my mom that I wouldn't go back to her class until we went to the principal's office and I got to tell the principal how much of a jerk this teacher was.

The next day a meeting got set up with the school social worker. After the meeting the teacher came in and apologized to me and I apologized to her. She didn’t understand why I would turn off the lights in the room when the class was still in session. I told her that I thought she had told me to turn them off. I rarely questioned the demands of adults since they always seemed rather confusing and imprecise. Being randomly asked to turn off the lights while the other students were still in the room didn't seem like an unusual request to me and it never occurred to me that I had misheard her. I simply did what I thought she told me to do.

Last edited by marshall on 31 Dec 2008, 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not sure, but I do remember some incidents of accidentally doing wrong things.
One time a teacher told us to be quiet and (I think) read. I did not hear and I walked up to the teacher to ask something. Next thing, I get shouted at and told off.
Another time, after reading time a student left a book open. I had to sit at that desk, I did not want to close the book as the reader may lose the page. I occasionally had a glimpse of the page, but I got accused of reading a book when I wasn't really.

I've had trouble with teachers before, but none I can remember so clearly.

I can remember this clearly.
Once this girl in my kindergarten class got in an argument with me, and she said "bite me", which is a stupid phrase people use, and I don't know why. So I bit her. When asked why I did it, I said it was because she told me to.

I remember getting in trouble once in Kindergarten for telling the teacher when someone was breaking the rules. When someone broke the rules I thought you were supposed to tell the teacher, so I kept going up to the teacher and telling her when someone was breaking the rules. The teacher eventually got annoyed with me I believe, so she yelled at me to stop being a "tattle tail" and made me sit in the "time out chair". I was confused as to what I did wrong and cried and screamed and about a minute later she let me go back and join the rest of the class.

In preschool I remember getting in trouble for running in circles and screaming because we were playing a game and someone bumped into me, who was pretending to be a robot-- I believe. The teacher was angry and brought me into a backroom and I cried because I didn't understand what was so wrong about it.

In elementary school I remember getting in trouble for "playing" in the library. Apparently it was popular for the students to duck behind the shelves and run around. Well, I wanted to avoid a particular librarian (I don't remember why) so I was ducking down and walking quickly through one isle of books. Another librarian caught me and yelled at me, and I cried and cried because I didn't get to get a book (she took that privilege away from me). So I told my teacher when she picked us up from the library and she let me get a book, and everything was okay again.

Yes!

When I was a very young child at school I was bewildered by everyone chatting all the time and the kids somehow knowing exactly what to do when I didn't.

Because everyone seemed to be chatting in grouped tables all the time and there was no clear code of conduct, I assumed that there were no rules on how to behave because we hadn't been told any!

I ran around the room and danced on the tables. No specific rules had been spelled out, so I assumed that there weren't any!

There was no clear ethos or motivation for any of our studying. It all seemed pretty pointless and boring to me at that young age. I hated the fact that I had no personal space or room to think.

Needless to say I was very bored, confused and disruptive. I studied the intricate patterns in the table and the carpet. I yelled out my own personal opinions on things and took everything literally.

My focus was in the "wrong" place: I was focussing on tasks and the physical environment/objects, not the other kids' emotions or facial expressions.

There were too many kids and I couldn't figure out why they were all being so nasty to me after I'd told them several stories I'd made up for their entertainment. I thought that those kids were jolly ungrateful actually. I was trying to be friendly and fun, but they weren't having any of it. They wouldn't play with me or include me, which was pretty silly because I always imagined that I was a nice person so they should really have liked me.

I never intentionally meant to upset anyone. I wanted to be funny and tell jokes/stories like members of my family did. I wanted to help people, do tasks alone and make friends, it was just that sometimes I didn't always know go the "right" way about it!

I also thought it was strange and unfair that little boys could get away with being more misbehaved than little girls. I wanted to have fun like the boys did.

Since then I've had to train myself out of these disruptive behaviours or make my focussing behaviours more socially appropriate. I can read people better now, but that's only because I've put in years of practice.

Last edited by AmberEyes on 31 Dec 2008, 5:04 pm, edited 4 times in total.

I was a little bit of a trouble maker in my first few years of school...I never meant to be. It always just happened.
One day in kindergarten, we all were supposed to wear red shirts. My teacher argued with me saying my shirt was pink-not red (It was magenta so she was right, but I was five, I couldn't tell a difference) so we argued about the color of my shirt in front of the entire class for some time. That was my favorite shirt that she wasn't calling red. She made me so mad!!

And when I was in 1st grade, I was apparently not feeling good, so I went to the school nurse who told me I could go home. So when I went back to my classroom to collect my things, I yelled out 'GUESS WHAT?! I'M LEAVING! HAHA!!' My teacher got mad at me.

I had a teacher in grade 7 who I loathed because she was so boring (and drove a brown corvetter bleh!) I refused to learn from her. I would put my head down on my desk and stop doing the work because it gave me such anxiety. It didn't help she was also the guidance councilor as well as my history & geography teacher. I would get in trouble for talking or clowning around or something and wind up at the principals office so I would see her even more.

I ended up failing both history & geography that year (only time I failed anything all through grade/highschool). Lucky for me you could fail 2 classes and still advance to the next grade or that may have crushed my confidence more being more sensitive than the typicals. I was also lucky to have better teachers in those subjects the next few years and I actually grew to like those subjects and went from failing one year, to a C the next and a B the year after that. (Math was always more of my thing).

Actually, I do remember another story.
When I was in early primary school, we got a bumped head letter if we bumped our heads. I used to count every little head knock as a head bump, so I always used to tell the teacher I bumped my head. Eventually she got annoyed and yelled at me, telling me to stop saying that I bumped my head.

It was at the very first recess of the first day of the first grade that it appeared to me that I might be different than my classmates.
Over the previous summer the playground had been resurfaced with finely crushed gravel that in those regions was referred to as ‘chat’. Looking back I think it was just finely ground blue shale.
Just before the first break our teacher, Mrs. Pridgon, had specifically told us about the resurfacing and that we were not to play in or throw the as yet un-compacted loose chat during recess.
The first thing I did during recess after going through the exterior door from the classroom was to grab up two big handfuls of the gravel and toss them into the air.
I can relive that moment in my mind almost in slow motion even today as it made such an impression on my mind. As the separate grains of gravel were leaving my hands on the upward swing I was already wondering to myself “what am I doing”?
I knew full well what she had said earlier and I was sure that I understood what she had said earlier but for some strange reason I just wasn’t able to relate her words to my behavior at that particular point in time.
I have relived that episode about a million times in my minds eye over the years as I’m sure I recognized even way back then that good little Capitan Gary needed to get in touch with Houston Control.

In kindergarten I didn't have any paper so I drew on the table with my pencil. The teacher noticed it during playtime and told me to scrub it off. She gave me a sponge with some soap I think, but it wasn't coming off. Probably I wasn't scrubbing very hard, one, because I was fairly weak, and two, because I didn't think I did anything wrong. I had no paper, and I had to draw somewhere. She yelled at me to "use more elbow grease!" Naturally, I assumed that some bodily oils that had magical cleaning powers were excreted through the elbow, so I rubbed my elbow on it. The teacher said, " Don't be smart with me!". This was even more confusing because I thought being smart was a good thing. It's very strange the things she said, because I think most 5 and 6 year olds might be confused by those sayings, not just autistic ones.

EXAMPLE ONE

my first day of school - teacher says "colour in the stencilled sheet of ducks using the crayons on your table."
Every kid except me uses crayons from every table. i use only the crayons at my table....as instructed. all the crayons are black because all the coloured crayons are taken by this strange pack of other children (later to become known as "my classmates") who are conversing and talking and taking crayons from other tables.

i colour in all my ducks with black crayons. My ducks are black.

I am hauled out the front of the class by my teacher, who ridicules me and my black ducks. i am a laughing stock.

this led me to realise early on in life that Hans Christian Andersen just may possibly have been referring to me in his story, THe Ugly Duckling.




EXAMPLE 2.

After much deliberation i cease piano lessons, given to me by the delightfully sadistic Sister Phillipine.
My mother makes her annual and very,very rare trip up to the school to be there when i tell the Head Mistress, Sister Monica.

Sister Monica says: It is such a shame you are stopping piano lessons. why are you doing so?

ME: I do not like Sister Philippine because she is bullying me and nasty and cruel and is hitting me over the knuckles with her big ruler.

Sister Monica: That is a very nasty thing to say Millie. That is not charitable or nice or christian to be saying things like that. Yo umay need to bring that nastiness up in confession next wednesday

ME: But I am being honest. you asked me to tell you why i was stopping piano lessons and I am telling you.

SIster Monica: You are being very nasty about Sister Philippne and that is very evil (or some such thing.)

Me: I am answering your question.

Sister Monica: you are a bad little girl who is very uncharitable.

Mum: Oh shutup, sister monica. you are a hypocrite. she was only telling you the bloody truth.

(yay to my undx'ed aspie mum. she was SO COOL that day. )
we drove home together in our ramshackle kombi and i felt loved.

Last edited by millie on 31 Dec 2008, 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly, things are said, that don't go through.

Then, so many things are said, that don't mean what they are supposed to mean.

I can figure out what people are really saying, then be completely wrong. Because they used the wrong words for what they were trying to say.

I'll need to work on that one probably for the rest of my life.

So as far as always doing what is exactly said, I have done that. It is just that people have no clue as to what they have said, or were trying to say. I being, ubber literal, see past the words to the intentions, just people usually are not aware that their intentions are different for the words they use, or that they are using the wrong words entirely.

Like with the teacher and the chat. Her intentions where that the children were going to play with the chat. So she said not to throw the chat around or just leave it alone.

Then Gary went outside and reacted directly to her intentions.

I do that so much, then see blank faces and know that their non responsiveness, means I didn't get what they were really trying to say. Or I think someone said something and they were talking about something entirely different, again the blank non-responsive faces clue me in.

Now I just say, oh, did I hear things wrong? It can be difficult to claim responsibility for wrongness, when all I did what see what they were really trying to say.

Nope.

I feel so boring. These stories are great, but I never did anything in school like this.

Then again, I didn't do anything period. I just watched everyone else and saw who was considered well-behaved and mimicked them. I never did anything before checking out what others were doing.

I was a bit of a chamelon. I think that's pretty common in Aspie girls.

I often got myself into situations where I had apparently done something wrong, and got into trouble, and of course, I held grudges against the people for doing this. I once got accused of showing myself off in class... I will never forgive that lying piece of...... for getting me into such deep s*** for something I had never done. That was grade 2. I got myself deeper into trouble by arguing that I hadn't done so, and wanted to be believed because I really didn't do it, only I got into trouble for arguing in my defense. I got told to write lines at recess, and was kicked out of class for the lessen.

There was another time that I once saw a toilet paper roll in the toliet, and bewildered by what it must have felt like to put it there, I decided I would try it out to find out what it must have felt like to put it there. Unfortunatly I found it to be fun, and got suspended for it a week later because a friend said something to a teacher after the second time I did it. At the time I didn't think it was wrong, and I thought I was helping the custodian have work, and to help give her something to do.

Well by about 5th grade I was similar. I just tried to blend in. My personality changed a lot over time.