Why is it/was it so hard being a teenager with AS?

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Surely it's not just 'hormones'? I went to a mainstream school, so I can honestly say that a lot of my problems were due to social relationships becoming more complicated, a greater sense of self-awareness, and bullying.

In my case it was difficult because Asperger's Syndrome hadn't been discovered yet. I was labelled 'quiet' and 'shy' by those who hadn't the faintest idea what was going on inside my head. Going to an all boys school didn't help of course and I didn't really discover those strange creatures known as 'girls' until I arrived at university.

I went to a regular school when I went through my teens in the early/mid 80s.

I am a loud person, even more so then.

I didn't realise that I had any real problems until puberty.

All of my school friends seemed to change ( during puberty ) whereas, I, didn't.

They all suddenly knew these different rules and behaviours, automatically - especially with regards to the opposite sex.

I didn't.

I had stood still.

Everything was different from then on, and I was confused.

Very weird time of my life.

I went from being seemingly equal to my peers, to being suddenly outside of the loop!

It's only in the last two years that I have come to make sense of those years. Since I realised that I had, and was then diagnosed with, Asperger's Syndrome.

As soon as the "penny dropped" with me, all of my previouse problems made more sense.

It's just a shame it took so long.

obvious reasons, teens are establishing groups at the time with certain cliqs. theyre trying to find out whos normal and whos not.

in my case i already had a cliq from middle school. (low on the popularity scale, and all sonic fans) , but they decided i was too weird and difficult to continue hanging out with, they all decided not to hang out with me anymore.

everything in high school is change, sex, and socializing. three things aspies arent good at.

in general being an teenage aspie is a bit harder than others as well, puberty is traumatizing, plus we get all these responsibilities and expectations we cant meet.

WOW! its like we lived the same life

1) It's hard to be a teenager

2) It's hard to be an aspie

So it's harder to ben an aspie teenager

Being a teenager is hard for anyone, so it will be hard being a teenager on the spectrum too.

But I'm actually finding it harder being in my 20's than I did being a teenager. Looking back, all those problems I had as a teenager weren't that important as what they are now. Who cares if you haven't got a boyfriend while you're still at school? You're still a kid for Christ sake, there is no rush. In my experience, only very few kids at school had serious relationships, otherwise the majority just fantasized over the opposite sex but couldn't be bothered to actually date anyone, instead they rather just hang out with their mates. It's when you get to your late teens and early 20's is when you start worrying if you haven't got a boyfriend, because that's the stage in life where you're old enough to go wherever you want to have fun, and if you've got nobody to date or no friends to do this stuff with, you're basically missing out on all the fun. So you've got to have your parents be your best mates, just to get out. And you look all around you and notice everybody of your age is moving out of their parent's house and driving and enjoying sex and vacations with their partners and doing other stuff with their friends. At least when you're still a teenager you don't have to worry about moving out because you're still legally a kid, so your main worry is just to do well in your exams.

But that's only my experience, I am not making a blanket generalization. Being a teenager is probably the most hardest time of most people's lives, especially Aspie's.

That's a good part of it for me. If I had a dollar for every time I was called "quiet" and "shy" by teachers I would have retired by now. More specifically, it sucked because I was intellectually at a High School level but emotionally still a child. Didn't help being 1.5 years younger than everyone in my class but looking older. I still dressed like a child and was into coloring books more than novels. As well, I had could not relate to the whole obsession with girls and illegal activities at all. I was told repeatedly that "if you think being a teenager is bad.... it gets far worse. Good thing I didn't pay attention to those false statements because I would have considered suicide. Being a teenager was downright horrific and I am still dealing with the fallout. I'm lonely but at least I have my own place and play by my own rules and don't have to worry about being an assault or crime victim.


Could not have possibly said it better than this! To add further, I could have had a "ten" girl offer to do anything for me and I would have politely declined even into my 20s. Probably where all the 'gay' rumours came from.

Probably because it's the time when the "social games" starts abruptly, and "everyone" becomes aware of these things more or less during the same time and it takes over their lives. As an aspie, you will never really come to understand these things in the same way as NTs even into adulthood, and thus you're very likely to become more isolated than ever during the teenage years. For me the change was very noticeable, from being part of social circles during childhood (even if a somewhat outsider), I seemed to just loose grip of it all during my teens and was left gradually more isolated.

It's a bit odd thinking back at it though, because it somehow just felt "natural" to me, and seemingly to others too, that I was simply not to be part of anything involving meeting girls or going to parties, even though I for a time still were friends with other guys who did. It was around the same time I really started getting the feeling that everyone else were holding "secret meetings" or something without me since they always talked about things that I had no knowledge (and perhaps understanding) of.

Ditto - nobody knew what autism was, much less High Functioning Autism (though technically, it was identified in 1947, Asperger Syndrome wasn't added to the APA Diagnostic Manual until 1994), so I was continually told that all my social issues and shortcomings, and the resulting chronic anxiety and depression were my own fault and I could change if I tried hard enough, which of course, wasn't true, because it was all hardwired into my brain.

I actually found high school better than junior school. Maybe because you only have a small class of 30 or so in junior school it is more difficult to find someone you relate to. At high school I managed to find a group of girls like me each in my year from different junior schools. We were not interested in the social things that went on and I think most of it just went over our heads. We didn't care if anyone else liked us because we had each other. Weirdly we never met up after school or at the weekend. We all lived in different towns and travelled to a central high school. I had a rural upbringing. So although my teenage years were not normal, they weren't too bad.

It was my 20s that things became more difficult. We all moved on, some went to university, I moved to another town further away and then I had to find new friends and realized how different I was to other people. This was the age when someone noticed that I might be autistic and spoke to my mother about it. They could see that I wasn't fitting in or being "normal".

The people my age started settling down, getting married, finding stable careers, having children, buying houses and their lives branched off in a totally different direction to my own. I have never fitted in, but I am now this odd quirkly singleton and people are a bit suspicious of me because I don't live a normal "grown up" life.

Can't deny my high school years had issues.

I remember specifically there was some school function, I got a ride home with a carload of kids like on Friday, then on Monday everybody was talking about the party that one of those kids in the car had over the weekend. That is to say, they didn't invite me.

I found that at some point it changed into everyone just wanting to have house parties and get drunk, maybe about 15. Now that everyone is about 18 it's changed from house parties to night clubs and bars now everyone is legal to drink. I have never wanted to do either of those things. Then there is shopping and aimlessly wandering around town, that I never got either.

I'll stick with the basics here. I felt like a minority under peer pressure to comply with the norms. School was a living hell, both public and private, and being singled out of all activities that your other peers where doing didn't feel any better ether.

It's hard to be an aspie teen, because you have all this pressure on you to fit in with the other kids and be "cool", and you also have all this pressure to grow up, learn to drive, finish high school, get a job, party, get laid, get a girlfriend, etc. It's a pain in the ass trying to conform to NT society, especially when almost no one else understands you or your problems, and they just think you're some misfit kid who needs guidance.

I'm 20 years old, and while I thought at first that this meant I blew my chance to be a "cool" teenager, I eventually came to the realization that the whole "cool rebellious teen" thing is f*****g lame and that it's just a form of conformity. I like being an individual, I like doing my own thing, and anyone who tells me what I should or should not do should just f**k off.

There are some teenagers out there who are legitimately cool, but that's because they do their own thing and be themselves, rather than falling into the typical stereotypes.

Another thing I'll touch on, it seems like NT teens nowadays are so addicted to socialization that they seemingly can't survive without having their cell phones within arm's reach. I don't like constantly texting people, I think social networking is stupid, and I almost never carry my cell phone with me anymore. As well, I don't own a gaming headset, and I'm almost never logged into Steam, despite the fact that I own a few dozen games on there. I like online forums however, as the pace of communication is much slower and easier to keep up with, I have relatively more anonymity, the people I meet online tend to be cooler than the people I meet in real life, and there's simply less interplay between my online life and my "real" life than there is on social networking sites.

For me being a pre-teen, middle school age was the worst for bullying and yes, it was worse than elementary school even though I was also horribly bullied there because of greater self awareness and awareness of what was going on around me. High school was a bit better and by the middle of high school everyone just ignored me, I was no longer bullied and I started doing well in school, in grade 11. Hormones roaring during puberty definitely contributes too. I think for all the reasons you listed being a teen with ASD can be hard.