When and how did you first notice that you were different?

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This is a very interesting question about how we with Asperger's/autism first realized we were different. I cannot say for sure when on my behalf, but I can relate the best I can. I would estimate I was around 2nd to 3rd grade when I realized I was different. I am thinking back to a Cub Scout Halloween party where we were to dress up. While I didn't have an aversion to dressing up in a Halloween costume, I can remember on this specific occasion realizing I felt very awkward going into this social setting---while realizing the other boys didn't seem to feel awkward. I realized I was different.

pre-school

In first grade the teacher found out I was different. She had to tell me to come back to class all the time, because I was staring off into the distance. Also had some problems with acting out.

I was three and it was just a feeling I had. I am not sure how I knew. I just felt different. I could have been older but I was in preschool. I didn't play at my friends houses and they were always at mine. I didn't talk and they did. they all seemed to relate better and I didn't. Plus I was always getting into trouble and making people yell at me. I just thought I was a bad kid then.

I didn't understand it. I understood it was difficult for me doing things that for other children seemed to be easy, but I actually thought I was the only one who was normal and all the others were weird.

Before I was 5, I had a sense of being different but it was kind of an "old soul" feeling. Which is hilarious because in my adult years right up to this moment, I feel like a child. I spoke freakishly early - both of my parents swear up and down it was two words at 5 1/2 months and they tell me about all the worry it caused a neighbor with her first child of the same age. But I always preferred to be with adults (or on my own) and particularly those like my Nan who had unending word games to share.

Anyways, I never went to kindergarten but a couple ladies from my village started a small play group. That was where it became glaringly obvious to me I was different. In fact, and this is not the only reason, there was an incident during that group that still bothers me concerning a rule I "learned the hard way" about not drawing a mustache on a woman's portrait even if she has one, but the FACT is she had one. Adults really miss the point. I think I did what a little kid would do in as far as drawing what I see, but I think the degree of despair (and hard headed insistence in my trying to get this across to everyone at the time) I felt about people missing a fact and the injustice in faulting me for depicting it with good intentions that still resonates with me decades later is possibly not usually the case.

Has anyone done a "you might be an Aspie if ...?" thread like Jeff Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck ...?" That would be fun - I'll check after I do some homework and if not, I'll get one going - unless anyone else feels the urge to go for it

I don't think I was aware that I was different until the fifth grade or so. I was just too oblivious to other people before that.

i always thought that my mindset was correct when i was small. i did not see myself as different. i saw everyone else as different.
i presumed that they were laboring under energy sapping misapprehensions, and i felt little desire to integrate with other people.

then i was forced to recognize that the real world is much bigger and more powerful than my own private world, and i was directed into an institutional schooling process when i was 12.

it was then that i saw that the world was much bigger than me, but i still strived to not be a part of it.

i am to this day divorced from the mindsets of people from whom i can not fathom the architecture of their pleasures..

When I was 15 I felt like the only person on the planet who thought and felt like I did. The other kids seemed a million miles away.

I'm suspecting that the parents and other adults surrounding the autistic/aspie child are the first to see the "difference" and start treating the child differently to accommodate this- partially on purpose and partially just unconsciously.

I think there are a couple of different ways for NT or "typically developed" people to deal with autistic children-

1) by going along with whatever they're doing, which probably doesn't let the kid know he or she is different (I doubt other kids ever do this, I think it's just adults treating autistic/aspie kids this way)

2) by reacting negatively or ignoring the kid, which sends a clear message that something is "wrong" with the kid (a common reaction for other kids and for mean/ignorant adults)

I'm suspecting that the #2 reaction is what kicks off the awareness of social difference, but I'll have to do a study to show it academically. I also still have no idea why some people seem to have this awareness so early and others so late.

It COULD have something to do with verbal fluency, or theory of mind, or exposure...I just don't know. Thanks again for everyone posting. This is really helpful stuff.

I think that 1) probably happens very seldom. Mostly people are like "stop acting weird, what is wrong with you". Actually, other children often were kinder to me than adults, as sad as that sounds.

Also, when I figured out I was different, it wasn't even so much because of how people treated me. It was more the fact that what other people did or said often made no sense to me at all and I just couldn't get behind why they acted like that. Or I noticed that I was interested in things that no one else thought about, or vice versa.

Everyone seems to accommodate me. When I come home and lay facedown on the floor, no one seems to care. My parents have told me that they got fed up and yelled at me a lot when I was younger for acting up but I don't remember that. My friends (when I have them) say that it's part of my charm until they leave, hating me.

I was called an old soul as a child, too! It was like I was simultaneously more mature and more immature than my peers.

Weird fact: As a baby, I was too quiet. I didn't speak a word until I was two and when I did start speaking it was in full sentences.

I've never (personally anyway) known #1 to occur. I agree though that #2 is the likely reason why most of us are not aware until sometime after school age. However, here are some possible reason why some autistics are self-aware or parents are unaware before school and other are not:

1. Children with near-age siblings make it more obvious that there is a difference. If one sibliing is interecting with the others inappropriately or tends to solitary play, then there is an early tip-off. Those of use who are only children are more difficult to spot as there is less interaction with other children to observe. I fall in the second category and no one really noticed anything until I was about ten. If I had had siblings, I would have probably terrorized them and would have stressed me out.

2. The basic parenting issues can get in the way: Parents who are dealing with divorce, substance abuse, mental illness, etc., are less- aware of their child's behavior, and if they are aware, they are more likely to brush it aside as a phase or merely nothing to worry about. I fall in this category also, as my parents separated when I was only two and my mother had bipolar diorder.

3. Highly intelligent autistic children are likely to be overlooked. Autistic children with high IQs are better at hiding their differences, even to themselves. Teachers are trained to look for disruptive behavior or poor grades as a red flag before anything else. If the child is smart and gets straight As, and quickly undersatnds the rules, then other difficulties, such as executive functioning problems, hyper-sensitivity, or social deficits are often ignored. Also bright or gifted children can more easily mimic the bhavior of their peers in order to fit in. I fall into this category as well. I was in the gifted classes in elementary school and no one noticed a thing was wrong (except me).

Last edited by dyingofpoetry on 25 Nov 2012, 6:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would say around 8 to 10 years old that i was different from other people as i was pretty much in my own world also quite awkward and didn't do the usual things that most people do.

When I was 8 I realised that I was different. I spent my time at school alone or following the teacher around. It was the first time (that I can remember) that I noticed that I was infact a separate, individual person from everyone else around me. Up until that point I could not identify myself separate of everyone else because when I am around others (and alone) my filters are so low that the other people (or the environment) feel like they are "in" me. Like I am the whole world.

It was not until I was 13 that I could clearly understand that I was an individual person. It was very sudden that I realised how separate and different I was. Nothing in particular happened that triggered it, I just knew. I have read that it is common for people with ASDs to be able to "get by" until an age where the demands placed on them exceed their ability. My childhood was difficult, but I was just labelled as shy and perfectly well behaved. From when I was 13 I was aware that I was constantly trying to cope with just living. Always overwhelmed, confused, extreme emotions. My behaviour became extremely different from those around me as I was trying to cope. I could see that I was living in a completely different world to those around me.

VAGraduateStudent's #1 is right in my case and in my culture.
dyingofpoetry's #3 is also a good observation. True in my case. (I'm not yet diagnosed).