When did you first notice you were different from NTs?

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I started noticing when I was 3 or 4. But it really kicked in in 1st grade. I’ve been swimming since I was a baby, I remember walking/running on my toes, I lined up toys. But the social awkwardness really kicked in lower school.

How about you?

I was in elementary school, I was around 8, I started school late, cuz of my Psoriasis. I graduated high school when I was 19, that was in June, I was almost 20 in 1990, boy that is old. Anyway, back then I didn’t know I had Aspergers, that was the 70s. I knew I had Cerebral Pasly & Psoriasis, my classmates in elementary school were handicap too, some of them were in wheelchairs. Although they were handicap too, I didn’t talk to them very much, I didn’t know how to talk very good so I kept my mouth shut, at playtime, I played by myself most of the time, I love the swings, I was always there. I felt very bad, I thought it was my fault that I wasn’t talking & making friends, I thought something was very wrong with me. I was more comfortable at home playing with my toys & being with my mom.

Excuse my phone’s dyslexia! It changed stimming to swimming on my OP! I just now saw it and somehow it’s not letting me edit the post. Anyway...

Kitty, something at that school age just makes the difference seem bigger? Social requirements are more demanding or expected to be more complex?

I don't recall any specific moment or anything. I can't remember ever not knowing I was different.

Kindergarten. I was age five.

Around the time I became conscious of my actual existence. Around age 5 1/2.

Before then, I was so oblivious......that I had absolutely no awareness that I was a "person."

Well, I Knew from probably 3 that I was different. I spoke better, could read etc... But none of that was in a bad way. I DO remember having friends(At least people that smiled when they saw me, spoke with me in a nice way, etc....) I didn't realize how things were until I mentioned one day to a teacher that I did every assignment for the whole semester, and knew it all earlier. She asked me to erase everything and follow the class 8(. Also, there was a first grade class where people would get up and read parts of stories. I was the only one that was fluid. I read the whole sentence straight through, and everyone else seemed to be reading word by word. And I was usually 2-3 sentences ahead of them.

I guess about 8 was where a social disconnect really hit me. I also started to lose faith in school. Frankly, there are a few simple tweaks they could have done to school to help EVERYONE and they even make stations, that are probably VERY cheap, when a kid can read more advanced material if they want. And classes that use such things ALSO have the more advanced kids help out like tutors, so kids that don't pick that stuff up can get lots of help. I am talking about stuff that can be essentially FREE! As in no cost to ANYONE! THEY WOULDN'T EVEN TAX TAX PAYERS!

SO, by the time I was 9, I figured school was a FARCE, and just went along as I could. I got decent grades, but I no longer strove to get straight As.

I knew I was different, in both good and bad ways, for as long as I can remember. My memories go back to age 4.

On the good side, I was the only kid I knew who had figured out how to play the piano by ear.

On the bad side, I knew that most other kids my age didn't like me and thought I was "crazy," for reasons not clear to me.

Almost everyone appears neurotypical

Asperger's got into the diagnostic statistical manual when I was 11

So whatever

And I never interacted with a large group

Representative sample size

But I knew I was "wierd"

Classmates correctly told me

Sixth grade

I became aware of my differences in fourth grade.

When I realised I was being bullied at about 7 or 8. I just thought I was different, didn't suspect it was anything to do with autism or anything like that.

I always knew I was not neurotypical from the get go. My mum was always telling everyone that she knew that there was something different about me. That started when I was a baby with that delusion or gaslighting that I had 'suffered brain damage as a baby' and she said a doctor told her so and was on it was about 1966-67 that was taken place and I knew I wasn't NT from about 2 years old and I had to go into a special needs nursery school from 1969-71 and was put on intellectual suppressants for 2 years it was that the doctor falsely claimed I had 'lack of awareness and severe mental retardation' of course I didn't (It appeared that way because of the central nervous system depressants given to me like smarties) but that didn't stop my family singling me out for bullying and hate since just to prop up their and the doctors egos. After 1971 I had to go into a school for children with severe learning disabilities because of discrimination and hate. After all my medical records from my time as a small child reads like it was written by someone so full of hate like a lot of kids who are later diagnosed with autism. Doctors would write their medical records or falisify them to save face and protect their egos. Of course my mum saw the doctors then like some sort of demigod and after that was proven wrong continued to gaslight me into thinking I had 'brain damage' I didn't I was just an undiagnosed aspie. I was in 1974 put into a school for children with borderline intellectual functioning or mild learning disabilities and was bullied there. After 3 in 1977 years I took an IQ test and scored an IQ of about 130-140. I had to be put a year behind when I was put into a so called mainstream school and had to do remedial stuff at school without proper assessment just assumptions based on prejudice and neurobigotry, it was so boring yet I proved to be good at general knowledge and I also came top in my class in spelling in 1978. I didn't interact with the neurotypical kids because they didn't like me and neither did the teachers. I was put into the secondary school and placed in the bottom set for everything so I wouldn't achieve anything I also had experienced a few epileptic seizures as well. Those IQ tests were not believed by anyone even though a clinical psychologist tested me then but I was forced to do more boring stuff and eventually left school without the necessary qualifications needed for work. All that based on discrimination, lies, gaslighting, discrimination and hate pure and simple hatred. I was an innocent victim of greed, hatred and of cunning. My exam results were fixed before I took the exams and often was sat about 20 minutes before the other finished their exam work because the qualifications were too simple they were the old CSEs which were not worth the paper they was written on. I was also after 1974 the family scapegoat and I was blamed for my family not emigrating to South Africa. I really started to use my what turned out to be Asperger syndrome when I taught myself organic chemistry even stuff that i done in university courses from 1983 but that was ignored. Likely because because of my mum's limited intelligence and to save face and protect neurotypicals egos. So from a baby I knew I was not like the others.

I remember when I was about 5 feeling as though I was on the outside looking in, but I just assumed everyone was like me.

Aspiewordsmith! What a story! Wow. Ignorance of the majority can have such a tremendous impact on innocent ones.

Due to poor autobiographical memory my recall of past events is poor , and with it whether I was particularly different from the other kids. I do know my school were concerned I might have what we now call cerebral palsy . I was tested at Gt Ormond street in 1962 or 63'. The result was negative. Other possible things that could have explained the school's concern weren't explored. For the 1st 2 years at prep school I wet the bed nearly every day. I didn't wet the bed at home. Luckily by the time I got to public school I'd stopped wetting the bed. I think the 1st time I had a feeling I was different was having a group of boys tell me I was the 'missing link' when I was 9 or 10.

At public school I came in for some heavy duty verbal bullying. I was very different from the average boy there ie much more introverted and sensitive . I was also bad at sports which pushed me right down the popularity scale . I must have had some odd mannerisms that made me different from the others, as I have fuzzy memories of having monkey chants directed at me while we waited for a teacher to take a class.

I first became aware of it in lower school, I guess about 6-7 years old, when I started attracting the attention of bullies. At the time, I didn't perceive this as bullying or even unfair, it was just people behaving in a way that I didn't comprehend yet again. However, it drew my attention to the fact that it was my movements and posture which seemed to attract their attention, and I realised from this that they were paying attention to things about the people around them which I had never considered meaningful, and I began to notice that everyone else was too.

I have memories which seem indicative of my autism from earlier than that, but don't recall any self-awareness of being different in them, so I think that is probably just hindsight.