Ways you tried making friends being a child

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Ann2011
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07 Dec 2011, 5:12 pm

I didn't have friends until I was in my late teens. As a child I was hiding and terrified. It wasn't until I learned to mimic other people that I started making friends. Now (in my fourties) I have a few really good ones.



The_Wanderer
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07 Dec 2011, 5:16 pm

Todesking wrote:
Burnbridge wrote:
Only way I tried to make "friends" was via BBSes and D&D. Eventually the D&D kids would kick me out because I was too nerdy even for D&D, although they liked the pictures I drew of their characters.


I have to agree about D&D as a great way to meet new friends. If it was not for my Dungeons and Dragons games I ran I would not have half the friends I have had over the years. I was good as a gamemaster people sought me out to run games. But I suck as a player I cannot consentrate long enough to stay focused on the game.

If you are looking for friends I suggest looking for a Dungeons and Dragons game being run at local universitys or at meetup.com. All it would cost you is a the cost of polyhedral dice and maybe a players handbook. Most gaming groups are in need of new players so they might take in a newbe. The rules are pretty easy to pick up on. Stay away from LARP games (Live Action Role Playing) these groups seem to attract an obscene amount of troubled people.


I have a couple friends that keep trying me to play with them. I really don't have the kind of imagination needed to enjoy that kind of game, so I'm constantly turning them down. Are these types of role playing games popular among aspies?



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07 Dec 2011, 6:45 pm

I don't remember ever trying to make friends, they made friends with me. I had to learn the hard way to be more selective about my friends. A bad friend is worse than an enemy.



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09 Dec 2011, 2:21 am

The_Wanderer wrote:
I have a couple friends that keep trying me to play with them. I really don't have the kind of imagination needed to enjoy that kind of game, so I'm constantly turning them down. Are these types of role playing games popular among aspies?


The games I played in we used a plastic mat with a grid printed on it. We drew on the mat with a wet/dry earase markers. We then moved metal and plastic figures around on the mat fighting monsters and interacting with non-player characters. I always loved the problem solving and the lists of spells and the use of tactics. It really does not take much imagination. You listen to the game master and react to what is going on. You roll the dice against your enemy's ability scores and your to hit ability or whatever. It's not that hard. You will never know if you do not try it. The worst outcome is you get out of the house and waste an hour or two with some friemds. :wink:


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09 Dec 2011, 3:36 am

The only friends I ever had were the kid I was assigned to sit next to at the beginning of the school year. Always been this way. Even though I can only remember one particular girl (at age 7) that I didn't even really like, the rest is a blur, but I remember THINKING about it as a kid. The only person that will speak to me is the one who is forced to sit near me in class...
Although I was friends with the little neighbour boys at 6, I remember that. My mother would throw me out of the house to play with them when she saw them, and i'd put down my book and do as told, I guess, but I liked those boys.
Oh that reminds me, one of them had a big sister, and while biking with the boys' bikes, she jumped down on the middle bar (ouch) because it didn't brake, and hurt her private parts. I told her she HAD to tell her mother, in case it was bad. She didn't know how to say it.... I told her it was called a vagina lol, she said omg, my mother would kill me for saying that, so we settled on the word "flower".
She told her mother she had hurt her "flower", and recieved the biggest slap I had ever seen.....
Weird people they were....
That was VERY off topic. Sorry.



grendel
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09 Dec 2011, 4:05 am

I was extremely shy as a kid, and I don't think I successfully made any friends by trying. Even when I got into my late teenage years and got some sort of friends it was generally just sort of initiated out of the blue by the other person, from what I could tell. When I tried to initiate it, it generally did not work out very well (which continues to this day, frankly, and it's so unsuccessful and defeating that unless the other person already seems to be interested in being friends, I pretty much don't bother because it's a losing battle and takes a huge amount of energy which is then wasted and I'm miserable. And I REALLY try to hold on to ones I've got. I lose them anyway).

I had one friend when I was a kid thankfully, it happened that my mother met and became friends with her mother and she had kids close to my age and my brothers age, so we started doing things together and we became "best friends". But then she moved away several years later. I did not go to school before college, but I was in a lot of "extracurricular" activities so I saw the same kids repeatedly year after year in some activities and there were some I wanted to be friends with but generally I couldn't figure out how to move past creepily lurking near by and sometimes giggling to being friends outside of the class, etc. where I was already interacting with them. Some of them talked to me occasionally or even regularly and I would really fixate on these occasions. Eventually I realized that these people had "real friends" that they hung around with and the occasional conversations they had with me probably meant very little to them in comparison to what they meant to me. Other than that I mainly did stuff with my cousins and their friends, or hung around annoyingly if my sister had friends around :P.

I really wanted to have a pen pal when I when I was a kid, and I remember trying on more than one occasion. One time that I remember clearly I found this ad in a kids' magazine or something (they used to have pages of sections where kids would want to be penpals with other kids in distant places and there would be a small description of how old the kid was and what they liked... pre-internet days). I would read them and dream of being friends with these people. Anyway, I finally worked up the courage to write to one and I was working on this like 15 -20 page letter (handwritten) which was something like the history of my entire life and times and everything I could think of about myself, when my father discovered this. He looked it over and put his foot down that absolutely no way was I sending this revealing all this personal info about myself, what creeps could be out there pretending to be pen pals, etc etc. It was a crushing blow to that dream. Later, my mother arranged for me to be a pen pal with one of her friend's daughters who lived some distance away, but the girl only replied once or twice, briefly.



Last edited by grendel on 09 Dec 2011, 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mego
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09 Dec 2011, 5:04 am

hyperlexian wrote:
i used to play something alone (like playing with a harmonica, skipping, bouncing a ball, swinging on the monkey bars) and try to look like i was having a lot of fun so that other children would be lured over. like kid traps. it worked.

i utilised a similar strategy when i was a teenager - i would sketch in the hallways at school, or do a crossword puzzles at parties.


This sounds like someone I know....he always has to "do things" because he cant actually communicate well with people. As long as he is moving around people love being around him....says he is charismatic, fun, life of the party....but in reality not so much. He cant keep a gf at all because he cant actually hold a conversation (its not because he is stupid) and he can never remember what he does. He responds "exactly" to what you say, but doesnt seem to know that you dont always know what he is saying. Its like he can only answer the question exactly how it is presented to him. I am not sure if he does this to be an ass or he simply cant think like that.



anneurysm
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09 Dec 2011, 3:09 pm

From age 4-6:
Sitting near people and trying to get into their space. Inserting myself into social situations that were already taking place. Kids would usually scream "you're not playing!"

From age 6-9:
Barging in and immediately talking about detailed stuff about my special interests without saying hi...with less occurrances of the situation above. ^

From age 9-17
I avoided people altogether and did not initate any interactions.


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This misdiagnosis caused me significant stress, which lessened upon finding out the truth about myself from my current and past long-term psychiatrists - that I am a highly sensitive person but do not have an autism spectrum disorder

My diagnoses - anxiety disorder, depression and traits of obsessive-compulsive disorder (all in remission).

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Last edited by anneurysm on 09 Dec 2011, 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OliveOilMom
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09 Dec 2011, 3:31 pm

I did two different and embarrassing things that I remember off the top of my head when I was a kid, trying to make a friend or get someone to like me.

The first was when I was in 5th grade. I got a whole roll of quarters and brought them to school. At lunch we had to be seated by class in a group, so I was right there with the other kids. I pulled out the roll of quarters from my purse and said "Who wants some quarters?" Everybody of course stuck out their hands and said "I do, I do!" and I told them "You will have to be my friend and be nice to me" they all agreed to this, then when I had given away all the quarters, nobody did. They thought it was funny.

The second time was the next year, in 6th grade. It was right before I started actually making friends with some of the girls in my class. It was right at the beginning of the year and we had the coolest teacher ever! Miss H. She was about 24, pretty and had the Farrah Fawcett Charlie's Angels hair, very nice and sweet and would actually take students places in a group outside of school on weekends and afternoons. Some had even been to her apartment. I wanted her to like me so bad, but I couldn't figure out what to do to get her to. I tried doing extra well in my work, until she accused me of copying something out of a book because we hadn't "learned about writing that way yet" in class. So, I decided that I would sew her something. I could not sew at all, but I remembered that when my grandmother made me clothes I love it, so I got out all my grandmothers patterns and fabric and I attempted to make her a dress.

I worked on that dress a whole week. Needless to say it was horrible, but I wrapped it up in Christmas paper, in September and took it to school anyway. Everybody was laughing when I told her I had a present for her and gave her the big smushy thing wrapped up in Christmas paper. They all laughed for days over that, but she told them to hush and hugged me and said thank you. I supposed thats when she recognized that I was a bit behind the other kids. She was nice to me after that, but I never got to go places with her. Although we are friends now on facebook and message back and forth some, and chat like peers. We joke around. She sent me some books she was getting rid of, and I sent her some glass elephants someone had given me that I didn't like. It's a normal give and take now.

I have never mentioned the dress to her to see if she remembers though. I'm hoping she doesn't, or if she does she won't remember it was me!

Although I did mention to her "Remember that time you gave me detention for throwing that spitball and I told you I didn't throw it?" She said no, of course. I said "Well I do, and I didn't throw it but I knew who did and I wasn't going to tell you. But it's ok now" and we laughed about it.

Frances



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09 Dec 2011, 3:36 pm

When I was younger, I would talk about whatever special interest I had, and those who showed the same interests befriended me over time.


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09 Dec 2011, 3:49 pm

for the most part, i didn't try to make friends. i was perfectly comfortable on my own. but on the very, very few occasions i did try to make friends i had to idea how.
i was about eleven and a half and wanted to make friends with a classmate because i thought she was very nice and gentle. so when she turned her back to me i ran my finger down her spin and said, hey, there is an ant crawling on you...
it didn't work, just in case you're wondering, and i have no idea, up to that day, if she was angry. she was too polite to scream blue murder.
there were a few others i wanted to befriend but had no idea for the life of me how, so i just didn't. and i've long since lost the desire to make 'friends'. i wouldnt know what to do with them if i had them.



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10 Dec 2011, 9:32 am

I remember being friends with the other smartest kids in my class when in elementary school... we would normally roleplay during recess (also with other kids, if they liked what we were roleplaying about). Friendships were mainly about common interests - videogames, tv, history, or having the same toys at home.
In junior high, I would usually interact with younger kids or those who were loners/bullied. I remember spending quite a lot of time playing videogames or drawing on the blackboard during recess there.
In high school it was quite easy because I was in an exceptionally quiet and mature class, so I managed to befriend my classmates after a while. I didn't have a stable group to hang out with regularly though, and I never had afterwards. Same for college. I just can't make friends outside "institutional" settings like the class, student organizations, sports groups, etc. When these "institutional settings" come to an end, I might keep hearing from/seeing one or two people, but then either they or I lose all interest. I like staying alone, I just need someone to rely upon in case of need, and I am more than willing to reciprocate.


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10 Dec 2011, 1:00 pm

ediself wrote:
Oh that reminds me, one of them had a big sister, and while biking with the boys' bikes, she jumped down on the middle bar (ouch) because it didn't brake, and hurt her private parts. I told her she HAD to tell her mother, in case it was bad. She didn't know how to say it.... I told her it was called a vagina lol, she said omg, my mother would kill me for saying that, so we settled on the word "flower".
She told her mother she had hurt her "flower", and recieved the biggest slap I had ever seen.....
Weird people they were....
That was VERY off topic. Sorry.


.....um, yes, that is VERY off topic.....


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10 Dec 2011, 1:06 pm

Ganondox wrote:
ediself wrote:
Oh that reminds me, one of them had a big sister, and while biking with the boys' bikes, she jumped down on the middle bar (ouch) because it didn't brake, and hurt her private parts. I told her she HAD to tell her mother, in case it was bad. She didn't know how to say it.... I told her it was called a vagina lol, she said omg, my mother would kill me for saying that, so we settled on the word "flower".
She told her mother she had hurt her "flower", and recieved the biggest slap I had ever seen.....
Weird people they were....
That was VERY off topic. Sorry.


.....um, yes, that is VERY off topic.....


That was VERY funny, too. :lol:

Thanks for sharing, edi!



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10 Dec 2011, 1:16 pm

Mego wrote:
hyperlexian wrote:
i used to play something alone (like playing with a harmonica, skipping, bouncing a ball, swinging on the monkey bars) and try to look like i was having a lot of fun so that other children would be lured over. like kid traps. it worked.

i utilised a similar strategy when i was a teenager - i would sketch in the hallways at school, or do a crossword puzzles at parties.


This sounds like someone I know....he always has to "do things" because he cant actually communicate well with people. As long as he is moving around people love being around him....says he is charismatic, fun, life of the party....but in reality not so much. He cant keep a gf at all because he cant actually hold a conversation (its not because he is stupid) and he can never remember what he does. He responds "exactly" to what you say, but doesnt seem to know that you dont always know what he is saying. Its like he can only answer the question exactly how it is presented to him. I am not sure if he does this to be an ass or he simply cant think like that.

hahaha he's a bit like me. i am sorta good at conversation, but deeper topics are easier for me to talk about than surface-level prattle. i used to have tricks of asking groups of people really unusual questions at parties (i.e. "if you were a broken toaster, how could you communicate your needs to your owner in order to get fixed?"), and people would get onto these long philosophical conversations. it made me look like i was good at socialising, but it was really just a parlour trick. i have had fairly successful romantic relationships, but my friendships do not last.


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10 Dec 2011, 1:27 pm

Todesking wrote:
The_Wanderer wrote:
I have a couple friends that keep trying me to play with them. I really don't have the kind of imagination needed to enjoy that kind of game, so I'm constantly turning them down. Are these types of role playing games popular among aspies?


The games I played in we used a plastic mat with a grid printed on it. We drew on the mat with a wet/dry earase markers. We then moved metal and plastic figures around on the mat fighting monsters and interacting with non-player characters. I always loved the problem solving and the lists of spells and the use of tactics. It really does not take much imagination. You listen to the game master and react to what is going on. You roll the dice against your enemy's ability scores and your to hit ability or whatever. It's not that hard. You will never know if you do not try it. The worst outcome is you get out of the house and waste an hour or two with some friemds. :wink:


Yeah, we used the dry erase mat and miniatures, too. My favorite campaign, though, was a lot more like a mystery novel. Our second session, we got into a bar brawl and killed someone. Then the cops were after us. "Really? Cops in D&D?" we asked. We were expecting to go kill some goblins or something. "Yeah, cops. City guard. What, you think they didn't have cops way back when? You are now on the lamb..." the Dungeon Master said. We spent 6 months trying to sneak out of town, then another year and a half trying to cross the national border to get away. Hilarious. One of our guys made it to lvl 3, the rest lvl 2. After 2 years of playing.

It was fun problem solving, more so than just rolling dice and getting treasure and XP. The DM did all the creative stuff, though, like thinking up the situations and the world, and describing the rooms and stuff. He had the imagination, our decisions supplied the entertainment. The players just analyzed problems and tried to think our way out of them.

A couple of our players were visual thinkers, and the DM drew comics, so a lot of the times he had pictures drawn of the characters we met or the buildings we saw. It helped a lot.


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