Age of Realization

Post Reply New Topic

At what age did you start to realize that you were different or that there was some sort of problem/issue?

Although I have had unusual behavior all my life, for all of my childhood and adolescence I just simply did not think about it or pay any attention to my difference. I also did not think about what other people thought of me. It just simply did not occur to me to ponder that issue. Or maybe I did once or twice, but without paying any real attention to it. Peer pressure was utterly non-existent for me because I just naturally paid little or no attention to the thoughts of my peers.

Only as an adult did I very slowly start to think about my difference. I am probably quite lucky in this regard because it meant I did not start questioning my difference until older and more mature and obviously it is easier to deal with problems when you are older / more mature / more experienced. I guess being hit with the realization in the middle of your teens is the worst time. So thanks to my ignorance and delayed realization, I probably avoided psychological scarring.

So I am just wondering what the average age of realization is for aspies.

i relized fully about a week or two ago. i am 16

I have just recently realized that I have Asperger's syndrome. Although I'm only 15, it really came as some sort of relief. Reading about Asperger's put things in perspective and explained a lot of "un-answered questions". My parents have been loving and supporting all through my childhood, and they have put up with a lot of anger and difficulties. As a child I was very picky with food ( as I still am), I used to get in huge fights when I had to get dressed (sometimes to where I would injure myself) (and so on), and so theyhave always fed me what I wanted to be fed, left me alone when I was having temper tantrums... I am an only child, and my parents didn't really reckon that my behaviour was different from other children's.

I believe it was when I was first diagnosed.

It may sound weird, but it seems like I knew something was different from when I was little, I just didn't know why. I was a very fussy baby and wouldn't eat anything and that continued as I got older - I was an extremely picky eater or I just would not eat at all. So, that was something very different about me that caused others distress. But I can remember kids just being mean to me and not understanding why so by the time I was in elementary school I was depressed. As far as finding a name for this - I collected a few labels from about when I was 11 like depression, chronic depression, severe anxiety, OCD, sensory overloads but I did not find out about AS until I was in my 30's and my son was diagnosed with HFA. I do not have a formal diagnosis for AS as I REALLY dislike psychiatrists.

I'm with you, Emp. I didn't realize I was different until I was 20. I was severely lacking in the realization department up until that point. It never occurred to me that I needed a job, that I didn't have friends, that there are other things besides my own world I had been living in. Most of the time I'm still oblivious to it, but sometimes I'm not. I think it's somehow coincidental with depression. The swift change from obliviousness to awareness, it's always accompanied by that sort of mood change, but thankfully they're brief and infrequent. I love my world, and I hate that I leave it.

I went to sped schools and stuff, off and on, but never really thought that I had a named condition- I was just different from everybody else. Then 3 years ago one of my friends gave me a pamphlet about Aspergers and I said, "Hey, sounds just like me".

For some reason it made me feel better about myself.

I didn't realize it until a year ago. If you look at my avatar, you'll see it says: "Joined on: March 8, 2005." That day, I googled "Asperger's Syndrome" and found this site. I read through a bunch of posts, and had a lightbulb moment, if you will. I thought to myself: "Holy sh*t, that's me!" And I knew I has AS ever since.

I never would've figured it out on my own ever, propably. Somebody had to tell me.

I think I was all of 6 or 7 before I realized that I wasn't like other people, didn't look like other people (at least gesturally), intuitively felt what was going on in terms of what the problems were, but my parents and relatives did a great job of arguing with me about it. As a matter of fact, it took my mom until I was 22 or 23 to actually talk frankly about things rather than just deny anything I said about myself. As for my AS diagnosis I was 11 when I got that and felt *really* insulted, mostly because the way it came off and the way it was being explained to me it was like the adult world was now trying to drop the ultimate insult on me as well (being told that having AS is just another way of saying such a loser that its on the medical books and that you have no hope for changing tends not to give you a very positive spin on it).

I realized it by kindergarten, but had no idea what it could possibly be until I was at least fifteen. I considered myself certain about what it was by the time I was twenty.

I was three years old when I first began to notice things about myself that differed from other people.

I was seven when I began to openly question myself about it.

It took another 17 years before I finally found out the truth about my life.

I still dont know if I have AS 100% for sure or not...and given the discrimination people with diagnoses face in the workplace, I'd like to keep it that way for now. I had a REALLY aspieish childhood and many of the traits nowadays, but also have had a lot of things in recent years in college which completely fly in the face of the AS characteristics.

But I DO know I am DIFFERENT than most. I think I realized this in first grade, when I realized I was the only one really into trains and buses and transit and what not, and that others weren't. It's weird, because I only half realized it--I could tell they werent interested but didnt know how to tailor conversation to more NT subjects than my interests. This kinda progressed through K-12 schooling, when I began to realize I just seemed to not have what it took to make friends and keep friends, and that I was not interested in what everyone else was into (pogs, Mortal Kombat, etc.) at my age, but rather, into my own subject areas of interest.

As for the possibility of AS, I learned that in college. A friend of mine was in a CAN walk, and so I figured I'd look up info on Autism in general, and saw some similarities. Then, a little over a year later, I read an article in the New York Times about someone who had AS, and realized that the characteristics of AS listed in there specifically matched up with the exact ways in which I have been different throughout life.

When i first started hanging around people other than my parents. So like, kindergarten. (I figured the kids I knew before were just dumb and unobservant through luck of the draw.)

I realized I was a bit odd during my sixth grade parent teacher conferences. The teacher kept looking in my eyes when she was talking to me and I kept having to look away, over and over. And for the first few minutes I was like, "what is she doing? Doesn't she realize people aren't supposed to look at each other in the eyes?" Then I noticed whenever she would talk to my mom they were just locked on each other and I realized I was the odd man out. But I thought that was the only thing that was different about me until a few months ago, when my parents told me they suspected I had asperger's, and here I am.

When I was 14. I was teased and bullied so much that year, that I thought it can't be right. I thought about my behaviour and knew it wasn't like the majority of behaviour I saw from other people but I didn't know how to change it or who to talk to about it.