Making up for lost childhood years in adulthood

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I was wondering about the rest of you, have u guys had a childhood that was extremely shut off from the world that you had to make up for so many things in adulthood? I was selectively mute for 9 and half years from ages 8 till 17. Theres so much I didn’t live that many NTs did. I find being a young adult, that I have to still grow and learn things in ways that many people learned when they were kids in a much more complex setting and at a much more accelerated rate. Its frustrating sometimes to know that my peers have so many years of experience on me. I rarely tell people I was selectively mute for 9 and half years, I do sometimes tell people I have Aspergers.

Cause in the end, I want to be accountable for my own actions and be treated like any other young adult. But its so hard at times, when I just wanna be a baby but I don’t wanna be treated like 1. I hate the feeling of being inferior to my peers or being naïve. I don’t need my friends treating me like a baby. I feel like Im constantly taking on difficult challenges in life considering my lack of social background, but I always gotta be like, ok Im just as competent as anyone else or else I wouldn’t be here and have what I have. It really doesn’t help that I have the anxiety from hell and worry about practically everything. Considering that this is a board for older people, did u guys have a similar experience or going thru something similar?

I am not really considered older, but I feel ya. In my experience of young adults this has not been unusual; for many life is a continuation of childhood. The question here lies: if my childhood was rather cold and lonely, how do I plan out my life to facilitate a change in the established pattern? Think about it: if you feel you've lost something in childhood, will you not continue to lose into adulthood? It stands that many people who were peppy, energetic, or whatever you'd consider 'happy' to mean, in childhood also come to life with a similar attitude in adulthood.

For example, as a kid, I had a friendly if slight rapport in my small, interactive school environment, but was always detached. Closeness to others was maintained through shared school activities. I was friendly with teachers, peers and students much younger than I (by means of tutoring and working in the school library, and also because I was polite /respectful), though usually maintained only a few close friendships. I circled through a few small groups of friends at school, most of my good friends were somewhat 'alternative' in either attitude or appearance, and all were accepting, loving with a playful attitude, and they expressed it in diverse ways. Also they were people I had inevitably been knowing my entire life. As adults, it seems that the playful stay playful. Alternative people retain a very outgoing assertive attitude. Those that showed love freely as children continue to build nurturing relationships. They unfold into adulthood much as they were as children, with the exception of maybe expanded waistlines.

I have also stayed much the same in adulthood. I have cycled through groups of friends, had maybe three 'best friends' as an adult, and none of them I am in frequent contact with now. I have dropped out of college and jumped from one dead end job to another. I do not see my friends from school because I'm kind of embarrassed about my life. I can be warm with people but it is rare. I have obscure interests, and obtuse interest in my obscure interests. I only feed my talent into work, though my job does little to challenge me. Just like being at school, not being challenged by the work given to me, and not motivating myself to do anything other than just survive, really. Not really putting that much energy and effort into expanding. Except my waistline.

So I am starting to notice the patterns.

Hmm for me that really wasnt the case. 1 thing that still holds, Ive had anxeity problems for most of my life. So for a long time I was really lost about who I was cause I had so much anxiety crippling me. As a kid, I was extremely shy, very obediant, very inhibited. I allowed my mom to control my identity because I didnt really have 1. She basically dictated to me who she thought I was and I simply followed until I was 18. Then things drastically started changing. I found sides to me I didnt know existed once I started interacting with my peers. There are still many things that do remain of me since I was a kid. I asked my prof who knows me well how I come off. He said I come off rebellious. Im like "Are you serious", he said yes. 99% of my teachers thruout K-12 probably thought I was extremly well behaved shy kid. I was so well behaved before I was 18.

Im slowly establishing what my identity is, and its very different then what I thought I was as a kid. But my original post was just mostly about social development and stuff. I feel like a young teen at times facing a much more complex world. I really havent had the experiances that many people have.

I think that's where I was going with my first thought about a cold,lonely childhood = cold,lonely adulthood.. because someone who is said to be cold could be mean or anxious or reserved or whatever, and they may stay that way.

I hope I did not kill your thread

Feeling lacking in social experiences as an adult is trying in so many ways: you may not have experiences that others have and therefore, less resources to draw on in contact with others; you may feel inept for not having these experiences already and, if you ARE going to make up for them in adulthood, you might feel like you are 'regressing' back to childhood. this is how it is for me anyways.. whenever I act happy yet childish I always feel like the behavior is ridiculous and confusing (even though others have said it is cute, but cute seems to be a word I use when I can't think of anything else nice to say) because I should have DONE that already and be able to express those emotions without losing my brains. But I just don't. If I'm gonna be happy, I'm also gonna be giddy, giggly, maybe speechless.

I have to remind myself that it is not a 'reaction' to an emotion, but an expression, and we as humans can express similar emotions in very different ways, and be happy that I am expressing 'happy' at some points in my life because there was a point when that was not something that happened.

I'd been avoiding this on the risk of oversharing but I've had a couple epiphanies today that changed the context of things.

My childhood wasn't a paradise, either. I feel robbed in many respects. My mom was probably most likely bipolar and quite "fixable" if she'd ever gone to a doctor but there was simply no way she'd admit she wasn't perfect. If she ever felt that she had to prove she was perfect, she had a working system of putting me down. So, no need for a psychiatrist for her, then. Although my dad was one of my best friends when he passed away, it was only for the past ten years. He was very difficult to live with before that. I won't get into it but when the workaholic was actually home, you really preferred that he wasn't.

So, I've spent most of my life establishing something new for myself. My friends gave me a nickname that was based on my name but sounded much different so I used that religiously for everything to avoid using my real first name. I used to lie about my family - what they were like, who they were, what my childhood was like.... I gave myself the history and family that I wanted to have, that I felt I deserved to have. It really tore me up that I knew no matter how much lying I did and how many people believed me, it would never be true. I never had a loving family. I never had a secure and supportive childhood. My dad was only cool after he'd healed from all his crap, then we could be close, but only as close as my mother would let us. She physically and verbally abused him. After he retired, we only talked when he managed to get out of the house without her. I had no contact with my mother.

When my dad died, things started changing inside me. I couldn't stand myself any longer. It's been like that for months. I started making outward changes and somehow the inside followed suit.

A lot of people still know me by my nickname, but I am using my real first name more. I have more things public on the internet instead of hidden away in filters. I just no longer care. That missing childhood no longer bothers me. I can have my name back. It isn't associated with the same hurt. I can tell people my mother was a loonball until the day she died and that she abused my father until the day he died, and he was one of my best friends and I miss him. I know this isn't associated with who I am. I am a woman, a good wife and a good mother. I have interests and hobbies. I like certain television shows and I listen to a certain type of music. This is all who I am and I like that. I'm not running anymore. I'm not ashamed and I'm not wishing for something I never had. All the family that I'm still estranged from... I don't care if they know how my kids are doing in school or what I'm up to these days. They can know, they can not know. It's the same. I'm just fine with them not being in my life.

It's remarkable to have realized that this is where I'm at. It's where I always wanted to be... but instead of trying to force it by making myself into someone new, it just happened naturally and I could use what IS mine. For the first time, I really feel prepared to tackle the world. I'm just as shocked as anyone. I wonder if this is how normal people feel.

I never consciously wanted to make up for lost childhood things, but you'd expect something of the sort to be rattling around after my upbringing - Mum was angry so much of the time that there was very little love. Dad compensated to some extent, being fairly demonstrative and supportive with his style of caring, but mothers are supposed to be supremely important.

It might explain why I was so quick to feel neglected in my first serious relationship. But like I say, I didn't notice much more than that. I've read that it's a serious mistake to try to get compensation for past deprivation in the here and now. But I don't know how it functions. Sounds like the kind of thing that would be largely unconscious if it was going on.

My childhood wasn't all that great but I won't go into that.

I used to wish certain things as a kid and now I can do them!

I can stay up as late as I want!
I can eat cake and ice cream any time I want.
I don't have to clean up my room!
I don't have to take a bath unless I want to.
I don't have to do any stinking homework!

Three cheers for being a grown up!

I want to add more thoughts to this later, but I am pretty exhausted.

Why should you feel that experiencing things for the first time is a negative thing? Experiencing things for the first time is amazing. I came to this realization after my friend told me about a really well known song, and I was embarrassed that I never heard it before. He said something like, 'no but that's amazing, it's the first time you heard this!!'

Ignore what path other people are on. It's easy for me to say, but its really difficult to do. Its not impossible though. I had a lot of things taken away from me, that I'm working on now. On top of a lot of really severe anxiety problems that just make it more difficult. I'm slowly getting there.

I think my love of the 70's help me realize...there is no one path...I don't have to make up for anything...I didn't lose anything. I just experienced it differen't than other people...and other people have had it worse or better than me. But in my perspective, it was just different.

Ai-ling's talk about being selectively mute striked a cord with me
Since i was selectively mute from a young age till about 16 years old
when i found sudden freedom in college i just didnt realise what to do with it
i had gone mad, chasing people, strangers, talking to unknown people
i just wanted to talk, have company i could do anything
i went crazy and the result was horrible i flunked my f.y in college
i missed having any serious friends, i ended up looking like a looser
i lost on many things
it was painful and still is. since my parents controlled me and my speech
whom i could talk with, what i can talk, where i can talk
everything seemed so cliche
i have missed many years of my childhood and what others realised as a child in a competitive environment
i have to deal with it now and i dont know how to go about since they have mastered it.

Yes, in a few years time I will probably be trying to make up childhood time somehow, since I have spent most of my teenage years in my bedroom and not experiencing a lot. I don't even have a female friend. Oh boy is that a screw-up...

I can relate to a lot of feelings being expressed on this thread.

I was from a very quiet, isolated, single-Mother household ; never knew who my father was, never had any other relatives in the house (I learned in my 30's that they do exist and they lived with their father), and also found out in my 30's that actually they were only half-brothers & sisters. My mother then told me that she didn't think I needed to know about the rest of my family. How frigging arrogant is that.

With a life that was completely detached from the outside World for 18 years, I was definately 'conditioned' by my mother to become an intellectual robot. No wonder I was programming computers in 1978 when I was 8 years old. I then went to an all-boys school and was always depressed that everyone else had families at home and I didn't ; I just felt that I had a big chunk of my life taken away from me that prevented me from being able to socialise.

By the time I got to University I had no idea how to chat to people or deal with a completely new overwhelming experience: the sight of young women. I graduated from my BSc with mediocre grades, and more sexual frustration than ever ; all those young women were assumed to be way out of my league and reserved for normal people.

I gained two good friends who really cared about me and we could really talk about things. They think I was (unintentionally) mentally abused and my 'apparent aspergers' is actually a result of my life effectively starting 20 years later than my peers.

I learned a lot in my 30's. Now I am 40, I am a father of a beautiful daughter. I want to make sure nothing like this happens to her.
My wife of 8 years, got annoyed when I mentioned I might have AS or ASDs. For a bit of fun she took the AQ tests (her score 15/50, my score 43/50). She is convinced that I am neurotypical but have been mentally conditioned as a child that shaped me into being an 'academic robot', and according to her that explains why I appear so emotionally passive and not the chatty type.

Maybe she's right. Who knows.

Fascinating thread.

Looking back on my life, there was a definite developmental delay. I suspect I had to cognitively learn maturity skills the same as social skills.

@Ai Ling

I know exactly what you mean. I spent my twenties trying to catch up on my teens and my thirties trying to catch up on my twenties. Now I'm 58 and still a teenager inside somehow. When I meet people in their twenties they all seem older than me.

I'm not trying to catch up with but it happens occasionally.

Sure, I don't know a lot of things that are so normal to others my age that they are caught completely off guard when it turns out that I don't know them or have never done them. I can't tell identify and associate cars with their brands, I have been on very few amusement parks rides (though I absolutely adore that stuff), I haven't had all these friendships and can chatter about who was what kind of idiot because of how they behaved 5 or 10 years ago, I hardly recognise celebrities, I only learn of the most "in" new songs by complete accident,

It's not that I dislike or don't want to know about all that. The issue is that my life is so full of managing and being autistic but taking part in the "normal" activities that I like best with all those "normal" people that there's kind of no room for keeping up to date and catching up with such trivial modern daily topics.

I have a little over 10 years of experience with talking to people for reasons of socialising and it all started with simple conversations at my new school that went like "hallo. what's your name?" and was followed by walking-off-and-end-of-conversation. That's less experience than most other 24yo have.

I don't want to catch up in general. I want to do what I want to do and that's exactly what I am asking about and trying to experience. Some of it means I lean about things I've never known before but that others have known of for years. Other things that I am not interested in no matter how modern or "normal" they are thought of to be in the society that I live in I just leave alone. I missed out on lots of that because of I was grow up being autistic and as I will continue being autistic, I'll continue to develop atypically and continue to always miss out on the normal side of things that others consider "everyday matters for everyone".

I know this is one consequence of my autism and another reason besides the actual autistic impairments why I struggle on basic levels and every friggin day to communicate with others but this part I don't mind. For now, I am very comfortable in the world I live in (however naive or deprived or childlike some think it looks like) for as long as I get to try out those old and brand new things that look rather interesting and fun.

The one thing I definitely albeit accidentally (sort of) caught up with in a "typical" fashion was drinking until the world spun and spun and I was closely hugging an ugly-coloured bucket and retching. That was totally "catching up". I think I performed that sickening procedure in the middle of the night as well and as "normal" as any non-autistic person would; the only difference being that I wasn't in my teenage years. Ew, nothing much exciting about that bucket though.