I was so autistic when I was a teenager

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Why did my Asperger's peak when I was aged between 11 and 14? When I was a small child I wasn't a 'typical' Aspie, and I'm not a 'typical' Aspie as an adult, but during these few years of my youth I was so autistic.

Although I wasn't geeky really, I was still a poofy weirdo. No wonder the other girls rejected me and some of the boys made fun of me.

Things that made me so autistic between the ages of 11-14:-

- I seemed to have the mental age of an 8-9-year-old.

- I was disinterested in beauty

- I came to school with greasy hair and unshaved legs

- My best friend basically was my learning support worker

- I always had my shirt tucked in too high and my tie too long (although I did undo the top button)

- I had a habit of constantly fiddling with my fingers (like wringing my hands), so I probably looked nervous and stupid

- I was often embarrassing to my peers

- I was frequently socially rejected from my peers


One time when I was walking to school with my older brother and his friends, he caught sight of two girls from my class and encouraged me to walk with them, so I did but I could tell they didn't want me walking with them. But I still tagged along with them because I didn't want my brother and his friends to think I was the unliked loner I really was.

Then another time I was with my little cousin at the park one Sunday, we saw 3 girls from my class and one of them had her little brother with them, who was in my little cousin's class. He called him and they played together on the swings. I went up to my friends because I thought this would be a good chance to hang out, but I could tell they didn't want me with them. In fact they looked annoyed with me for hanging around them, so one of them said "weren't you with your cousin?" I knew that meant "go off with your cousin, we don't want you here". So I had to just play with my cousin and his friend. I felt jealous of my cousin, because his friend wanted to be with him, but my friends didn't want to know me outside of school.

I was very good at reading these social cues, I just didn't obey them because I hated being alone. I wanted so desperately to be an insider.
I know I shouldn't think about the past but it still has an effect on how I feel now and if I face any social rejection in adulthood it just brings me back to these horrible experiences I had when I was younger. I don't think some people realise how much it hurts.

I think its quite understandable that you've learned to know what the people around you expect, and use the bad experiences you had to adjust certain things e.g your indifference to your appearance. Also, at school age our peers aren't mature enough to understand the potential negative effects of teasing or bullying, but as they grow older they change too, as I found when I attended mt first high school reunion 30 years after leaving school and just after my very late diagnosis.

I also wince when I think of some of the things I said and did as a preteen and teenager. I had a very poor self image too, and expected to be made fun of virtually every day.

It is generally less noticeable as adults, since we can adapt and learn how to reduce some of our "weird" traits. I managed to pass off as somewhat normal most of my adult life, with a few noticeable lapses of judgement...

I just feel frustrated about it because I read so much about girls on the spectrum being misdiagnosed and I hold on to the hope that I was misdiagnosed, but then when I think of my puberty years it's obvious evidence that I wasn't misdiagnosed, because you can't get much more Aspie than that.

I just feel embarrassed about having Asperger's.

No need to feel embarrassed at all. Whether correctly diagnosed or not! Not even in the slightest There's nothing inferior about you or your past. Just different. There are a few actions I feel embarrassed about but they mostly happened so long ago that they've been forgotten by whoever else was involved, and aren't referred to again.

Many among us have this very introspective way of looking at things, show our emotions very easily whether anxiety, sadness, anger or mirth, and constantly analyse our actions.

I was only diagnosed pretty late and am happy with it, as it answered so many questions and ticked so many boxes. It meant that my folks, my BF and many other people had the key to finally understand me, and I was able to understand myself!

I was diagnosed at 8 years of age and I didn't take it too well, and to this day I hate it. I think it's because I'm the only one out of my cousins with it. I feel like they should have it too, because two of my cousins have Aspie cousins on both their sides of the family (on their dad's side it's me and a cousin on their mum's side has been diagnosed with it too, but I'm not related). And my aunt is getting assessed for a diagnosis but her daughter doesn't seem to be on the spectrum, she just has mild learning difficulties and any social awkwardness she exhibited as a child was just part of her learning difficulties, not as 'severe' as an AS child. She still managed to keep friendships going and had normal self-awareness that I ended up learning off of her.

And my brother got a diagnosis of Asperger's last year, but if you read my OP here you'd probably assume he was NT. As a teenager (the most awkward time of an Aspie's life) he was naturally socially accepted by a lot of popular boys and girls in his grade. They often spent weekends and holidays at my house and he was always hanging out with them. He always had friends to walk to and from school with, never suffered any social rejection or bullying, and he wasn't the usual "nerdy" type that most Aspie teenage boys tend to be. I know you could argue that he masked a lot or his friends were false, but believe me that wasn't the case. I masked a lot too because I had more of a desire to fit in than he did, but I failed miserably. He wasn't an extrovert but he seemed like a natural at making and keeping friends, and this wasn't just one or two friends, he had a whole crowd that used to come knocking at our door for him to come out. I know my own brother and he doesn't seem Aspie to me at all so I don't know how he received a diagnosis. He has a lot of friends even now and spends a lot of time with them.
That's where I think Asperger's is being overdiagnosed these days.
Yet another cousin of mine exhibited a lot of Asperger's traits and still does now (although I said in this post I am the only one in my family with ASD but it still feels that way, probably because I was diagnosed so young). But he never got a diagnosis. I don't know if it's because his parents were the sort to brush stuff like that under the carpet, and as an adult I don't think he has the courage to get himself a diagnosis on his own. If he had of been diagnosed as a child I don't think I would feel so alone, or if my Aspie auntie's daughter was on the spectrum and found it hard to make friends then I might have also felt less alone.

I'm glad you get on well with him at any rate, even if you feel he doesn't display typical Aspie traits.

I see no reason to hate my Aspie diagnosis and am sorry you feel that way about yours. There's nothing really bad about it. After al Anne Hegerty, the Governess on the TV quiz show The Chase, is an Aspie and was also diagnosed late like me.

Her life changed for the better from the time she was diagnosed too.

Really??? Wow, I never knew that, and I watch the show every day.

I just wish I was diagnosed late too. Most female Aspies don't receive a diagnosis until adulthood, teenage years at the earliest. I was only 8 when I was diagnosed. Sometimes I wonder if my social life would have been better at school if I hadn't been diagnosed. The diagnosis was blabbed out to everyone in the class and beyond (by one kid who knew about it), and ever since then the kids were afraid of me. So I began being treated like "The Kid Who Has Something Wrong". Before my diagnosis I seemed to make friends easier even though sometimes I was a bit excluded but it was probably because I was shy in class.

Here are some links about Anne Hegerty for you to read, Joe. I'm a fellow Chase fan!

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... -celebrity

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-46272608

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/he ... s-symptoms

Anne Hegerty on Autism

I had a sort of similar experience in that my difficulties socialising became more apparent at that age. I'm not sure it was anything to do with me being more autistic at that age.

I think it seems that way because of two main factors.

Firstly, peers groups become more demanding. At 11ish kids become more self-aware and with that comes a desire to conform and to have others conform. Friendship groups become tighter-knit and social rules get embedded. The idiosyncrasies that us aspie kids may have been getting away with among younger children become very noticeable to older children and our 'difference' becomes more of a problem. The result is often isolation and bullying.

Secondly, this is before we learn to effectively mask. The rules make no sense to us, they're not intuitive and we have to learn them the hard way. This takes time and experimentation.

So I think there is a 'window' of time - at about the time you experienced, where our aspie traits make our social lives particularly difficult. It's where our peers begin to have expectations of us that we can't fulfil, and we haven't yet learned to effectively mask. And I think in that period, which unfortunately is a massively important one for the development of self-esteem, a lot of the damage is done, which is why you may perceive yourself as having been more autistic during that period.