What age did you realize that you were "different"

Post Reply New Topic

I think I might have started realizing how different I was at around 14 years old. I just knew something was really different about me, then. I did ~ (fairly ok) socially, but kept more to myself. (I did have one good friend, then, who has told me recently he thought he might be slightly Autistic, himself...)

I can't definitively state an EXACT age as I've faced issues and situations that contributed to my "uniqueness" since birth. Until I was about five or six, I had severe (and at times quite frequent) grand mal seizures. My elementary school at the time had no other children attending who had seizures so in pre-K and kindergarten I was not only shunned by my peers, they were frightened by me. So began my inferiority complex... I recall (somewhat vaguely) my visits to the hospital having my brain examined, the Q-tips with the goo in my hair, but while epilepsy was ruled out, my seizures remained undiagnosed. This occurred in 1985, before the diagnosis of Asperger's was introduced in America. Obviously I showed enough normality to not be considered autistic at that time. As I progressed through elementary my grand mals faded away but I would get "twitchy" when subjected to stressful environments. I recall frequent visits with the school guidance councilor, Ms. Gesch, who became one of my few good friends. She always told me I was a "tough cookie", "super-smart", and I was "special and I don't mean special-ed".... While the concept of "it's good to be different" was consistently drilled into my head, I didn't understand the logic. I understood that EVERYONE was different-- appearance and personality-- but I never could grasp as to why I so so exponentially different. Being the "little guy" I was never a choice team player. To this day I have practically zero interest in team sports, save for baseball, which is barely a fleeting interest (I obsessed on baseball cards from age 6 or so until I turned 17).

The day I started Nursery. I was three.

Around 5 or 6, when I started school. I went to daycare, but the daycare only had 5 or 6 kids in it and only one of them was around my age. In preschool, I just assumed that the kids who had played together had met somewhere else. (I had met the only kid I knew at daycare).

However, when I got to school, about a week into another kid called me a "crybaby". That's when I figured it out.

Until, about Grade 2 or 3, I thought that the OTHERS kids were the "strange" ones. I thought they had special abilities.

I just remembered going through a period as a child where I wondered if everyone but me could read minds.

That seems a bit to the point. But I mean, I wondered if people were literally telepathic. Comic books taught me they were not.

From the time when I started infant school at the age of nearly 5 I knew I wasn't like the other children, I just wasn't one of them. I was scared of the other children and didn't have a clue how to play with them. I also had what I now realise is selective mutism and didn't speak at school for about the first 2 years I was there. That made me stand out too, it also made me a target for bullies. They knew they could do whatever they liked to me and I wouldn't hit back or tell anyone.

That feeling that I was different and that I was just not normal in any way grew stronger as I grew older, especially by the age of around 9 or 10 when I started to really want to have friends and to fit in but wasn't able to. I was physically awkward, couldn't throw or catch a ball and the other children used to say I 'ran funny'. This made PE lessons absolute torture for me, and it was yet another barrier to social integration at playtimes because a lot of playground games involve running, throwing, catching, the very things that I couldn't do.

Some time shortly before 4 years old, and starting school just made it easier to see. (and easier for other school kids to see too, unfortunately )
Quite the picky, difficult little professor; always have been.
My parents never knew - they did their best, bless 'em, but it was mostly criticism and lecturing. No other adults seemed to care.
Just one teacher, through all my schooldays, understood at least part of what was going on (there were no descriptions for any of this stuff back then) and she actively encouraged my 'information hoovering' and fed it.
Best. Teacher. Ever.
Thank you, Miss Clissold!

Around 4 or 5

I was having issues with socially interacting in grammar school, looking back it was dependent on who was in charge and I did not understand a lot of it at the time.

I was 5 years old and had started going to school when I realized just how different I really was from others. I was either labelled as an underachieving slacker or someone who had some kind of antisocial behavioral problems. Funny thing was that when I transferred schools when I was about 7, that's when the maltreatment by others started and it didn't really let up for until I was in my 2nd year at community college. Living in a rural hamlet town in a predominately "redneck" county meant that I already had a scarlet letter on me because of how "different" I was.

my mom was a bit of a curebie and took me to all these specailists and doctors and big hospitals...all kinds of tests were run on me some were painful and invasive others were just boring...this began when I was about 6-7 years old and I started to realize that other girls did not like me and often told me to go away. I started really feeling "off" when I was 8-9 years old....of course I was chasing other kids on all fours and barking at them and chasing boys with a willow branch to whip them into being my boyfriend (like that would work ) I really had no idea how to socailize with other kids and this became really obvious in jr high cause the other kids started gathering around in groups to talk...(why the hell do they want to do that for?!?) I then retreated into myself wearing all black and hiding in the bathroom during breaks because of total shutdowns as to how to handle "talking".
Being isolated, I was an easy target for bullies and so nieve I had no idea what they were saying to me.
One guy asked me..."are you a virgin?" I shouted....NO I AM NOT! because I thought it was a bad word. So then they called me all these other names like h*re, sl*t etc etc...I had no idea what that meant either but I did notice that no one wanted anything to do with me.

Once I got in high school, I learned to be a bad@ss to protect myself but that kept me in trouble most of the time
at 19 years old, I gave up the bad routine to go find who I really was because I spent so much time being someone else that I had no idea who I was. Then inbetween colleges, I discovered temple grandin on tv and what she said about how her thought processes were uncannily fit mine and I realized that I had autism. So I tell my mom....and she said, I knew that...you were diagnosed when you were 8 years old but I did not want to label you. However it would have made other things make alot more sense...if I was "labeled" expecially to know that I was not the world's one and only "weirdo".

i started pondering and wondering at age 4 and i was certain i was different at age 5.