What kind of kid were you?

Post Reply New Topic

To people with AS:
What kind of kid were you in school? How did you behave etc?

I was always the shy, quiet, and awkward girl. Everybody assumed that I was really smart, but then they were surprised to learn that I didn't get straight A's. I was also the girl that stayed home from school often.

Very shy, very awkward. Zero socialization. Unsuccessful participation in sports at the Junior Varsity level. Unremarkable grades. No girlfriends.

Hell. Did I even exist in school?

I was terribly shy but I found out that shyness made girls think I was mysterious, Several girlfriends never lasted long due to AS aspects. I recognize that with hindsight now.

^This. I took out girl and put in boy because I'm a guy.
I think it was probably because I answered a lot of questions well out loud in class. I am sponge-like in a learning environment. My grades were not too good though. I generally didn't do homework, because I didn't do that stuff at home. I tried to get most of it done during school, or after-school, while still in the building... Thank goodness for the Learning Center.

Also I was very polite and helpful.

I felt sad during graduation though. At the school they did a video yearbook for the senior class. I was not in it. I was in tears watching it. All I could think was who'll remember me? It was my own fault I guess. The people who filmed it got group skits of friends, I didn't have any, and I wasn't just gonna stand there and wave.

Needy and clingy. That was when my dissociative personality disorder was at it's height, and my other personality took control most of the time. I'm the more mature and more capable one, so that's why I'm dominent now. Though when I was young, I didn't know that I had two personalities, so I had a lot of trouble. Didn't know how to work with it. As a result, I was an angry and arrogant little bastard. I hit people and snapped at people instead of socializing.

When I was a kid, I was homeschooled. I was around other kids but not at school. I think if I had been put in school at a young age I would have had a lot of anxiety problems.

I was quiet and almost never talked with my peers. Then in class, I wouldn't shut up with questions and answering questions with the teacher. I was always boggled by how all the other kids seemed to easily and joyfully clump together socially.

I was very interested in everything in lessons and always wanted to do things my own way without help from anyone. I asked lots of 'what if' questions ('too many questions') and corrected the teachers. I got very bored in things like English because we were stuck on the same book for aggges, but I loved writing. The teachers gave me things to write in my spare time. With the other kids I was just strange. I became arrogant and much quieter after a certain age (just like what Tony Attwood describes in his book). In year 6 I had quite a good year, peers-wise, but I got in trouble with the teachers more than ever. I became friends with the 'class clown' and started being loud and playing around in class, making the others laugh, which meant that I was popular for once without being 'weird and odd, but we'll have her anyway'. Punishments didn't do much to me. There was this boy who I thought was my friend, turned out he wasn't, the teacher came outside to see me pushing him over, so I got a 'red card' for two weeks, which was the school's punishment scheme. When the teacher came to take the card off me at the end of the two weeks I begged her to keep it, because it was in a lovely glass photo frame. Plus I had grown attached to it
In the playground I have some memories of playing with the other children, but mostly I was on my own. I remembering wandering around near the trees and watching everyone else and wishing the bell would go so I could escape from the noise. I used to make friends with the younger kids. In reception I used to conduct ladybird hunts and collect them
Very very immature, very bossy with the other kids, but I talked with 'big words' all the time. The archetypal stiff, careful language of a little professor. Nobody understood what I meant, so I started to just use simple language. Also I took up a habit which I still have now- to act much slower than I was, give silly answers to questions, just generally act average.

Last edited by daedal on 16 Feb 2011, 3:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

- I was very shy, awkward, quiet, confused, anxious, spaced out, almost invisible.
- Most of my primary school reports say "your child has excellent grades, but does not interact with the other children. Is there something wrong?"
- I moved from one failed friendship to another throughout school.
- I didn't wear trendy clothes and make up and was not interested in boys like the other girls. I wanted to fit in, but everything felt so alien.
- I got bullied, especially for blushing easily, being almost mute and not being able to make eye contact.
- I spent a lot of time staring into space, not processing what the teachers were talking about.

School was a very dark, overwhelming and confusing period for me. I'm not officially diagnosed with AS though, so maybe my story doesn't count.

I was the quiet polite one. Y'know, the one that once people remembered that I was there they couldn't decide I'd become some genius scientist or a serial killer. I think both seemed equally likely to them at times considering how I'd very quietly paint nice pictures meeting the art requirement of painting a fruitbowl... next to a cleaver stuck in the table. Never any blood or anything, I just liked the juxtaposition of the conflicting imagery for serenity and violence. Which I gather is 'creepy'. But I also got good grades and could be counted on to not make trouble so I was generally not regarded poorly when noticed.

When I was really young, I remember being in the house and my father asking me why I wasn't outside with the other kids. For real, the idea didn't occur to me that that was something I needed to do; I was happy being inside playing on my own.

I allowed myself to believe that crap because I felt like it made me superior. But the later on I started telling people that this wasn't true because it just wasn't - my strengths were in reading and writing but math was a weakness. Second was the fact that I was causing myself to feel a part from by placing myself on a pedestal as something I was not. Plus the fact that people tended to resent me for the idea that I was supersmart and I would get bullied and picked on.



This is the same thing my elementary teachers said on my report cards. What didn't help was that I went from being the new kid who was picked on to being the outcast with the other African-American kids. Then when I started making some friends with the white kids, they got even madder!

I still made some friends among the black kids. But many times, I was the one other kids would pick on because I was quiet and shy; I didn't have the coordination for sports.

In junior high I was depressed all the time because I felt completely lost and alone. When I got to high school, though, I began making more friends and socializing more. I really had a blast! Still, I didn't go to dances because I didn't (and DON'T) dance. I did become sort of a class clown of sorts in some of my classes. In the end, I took up weightlifting in gym when it became clear that I would NOT participate in things like basketball or football. Still, it was like I shared some athleticism with them. When it was time for me to leave that class before the Christmas holiday, one of them asked if I would consider staying. I told him that I was taking study hall so that I could skip out and take an extra-long lunch with my friends. That seemed like the cool thing to do back then.

Then when I graduated and started going to college, I felt lost again. It was just as if I had regressed! This can go on for too long so I'll stop here!

First few years in school I was a quiet, awkward, shy child that had a hard time understanding jokes and took everything very seriously. Sensitive, they called it. Got bullied a lot because of this. Also, I have an early history of being made to do things I would not normally do.
I had no problems at school whatsoever at that time as I knew how to read and write since age 4.I hated sports, especially team sports. Clumsiness dates from very early age.

After, say, 4th grade, I was more like the 'active but odd' type of ASD. Learned to stand for myself, answer back when called names and enter the fray if it couldn't be helped any other way.
Just about that time I learned that people are scared of weirdos so it pays to be weird. Madness cooties, I suppose.
School trouble started about that time too, mainly related to lack of motivation and reading everything apart from school books. Managed to keep on track but with significant effort. Graduated with almost straight - A diploma apart from a pitiful Es in mathematics and - surprise, surprise - PhysEd. Though, to be honest, I should have failed History and Geography. Memory like a sieve when it comes to time sequences (who did what when) and where is manufactured what.

Now it seems I am getting slowly back from active but odd to quiet and withdrawn.

Last edited by Severus on 16 Feb 2011, 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In elementary school- TOO talkative, always asking questions that people didn't wanna answer, butting into other peoples' conversations, taking control of play, attempting to be the "teacher" of the other kids my age.

Very, very shy was the usual label. Unathletic but fast. I wasnt bullied at that age. Kids were comfortable enough with me being seperate that I could just be.

There was a brief time around 2cd grade where kids would ask me to do things and I would do it (pinch the teacher, call one the n-word, etc). At some point I learned not to listen. My clumsiness at that age was legendary. For milk time I would routinely spill my milk. There came a point where the teacher would put me in the corner and spread papers around me, yes seriously, before giving me the milk. I seem to remember some kids encouraging me with smiles to spill it as well. So both effects were in play I think.

With families gatherings, as a boy, I would often sit behind the couch, or under a table. In general I would tend to stick very closely to one person that I knew well. Once I was old enough, I stopped attending them.

Throughout junior high and high school I was basically mute. I would never step in the lunchroom, never take my jacket off. Though in HS I had friends I would rarely speak to them in school itself and my interest in conversation with them tended to revolve entirely around special interests.

But with those few friends I knew well, I was not at all shy and often in a kind of leadership position.

I was shy, quiet, withdrawn and sensitive. My social skills were way behind my peers. I was bullied a lot and usually had only one friend at a time, at most, and was excluded and/or bullied by everyone else. I tried to follow all rules and didn't like it if others broke the rules. I really hated injustice and didn't understand why people were sometimes so unfair and mean. I did well academically for the most part. I rarely misbehaved, but sometimes I had meltdowns (I cried a lot during meltdowns and couldn't talk or function at all). My motor coordination was poor, and the other kids preyed on me for that. I had sensory issues and for example couldn't keep my eyes open on really bright days and I vomited when forced to use a mouthwash that all kids in school were supposed to use once per week.

My AS wasn't diagnosed until adulthood, so nobody really understood my situation and my symptoms when I was a kid and therefore the adults (both my parents and my teachers/school staff) usually handled things completely the wrong way with me.