How did you compensate social skills in grade school? now?

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I find myself doing the same things I did as a kid to fit in, even for those who already accept me and I do not need to impress. I don't really think about it as trying to impress others, and I don't know if that's really what I am trying to do. When I would have and still have difficulty socializing I would be a class clown and do a lot of jokes and pranks or just do extreme things....yelling loud, knocking a dead tree down, throwing stuff, driving eradicly, drinking a lot, breaking things, etc.

Did anyone else find themselvs being self destructive in order to fit in? Or currently find yourself doing so? I don't consiously do it, but then in the back of my mind I probably think I wont be accepted otherwise. Once the excitement/fun ends of a joke, prank, or other...I am left to be awkward again and unable to form words to say.

I can't seem to stop this cycle, so I avoid hanging out with anyone at all because of this pattern of behavior I seem to repeat.

Sorry this post is not well written....I am tired from being up all night last night.

Also I will add that I think those who were diagnosed at an earlier age vs later/adulthood would develop different social coping mechanisms though routines are another story and could be similar.

I didn't. People would invite me to hang out. I'd sit there and say nothing.
I more or less do the same thing. I can talk a bit more, one on one.
I hear a lot less though because of the sensory stimuli.

Oh wait, I did throw things at a guy I had a crush on. I would laugh when someone did something embarrassing. I would out of nowhere say these jokes that got a laugh. I barely spoke back then so people were surprised that I was speaking at all, let alone capable of making them laugh.
Other times I pretended I was a dog.

As a child I also didn't compensate....I cared more about pretending to be an octopus or counting by 7s and prime numbers (which I only knew by rote) than fitting in =)

I don't recall that I tried very hard to fit in, except in drama... which isn't quite the same thing. Many of us were kind of misfits there.

I had too much on my mind on a daily basis that I spent more time coping through escapism and eventually cutting school entirely (it was clear graduation wasn't going to happen). Once I could resolve some of the major stuff I couldn't let go of, it was a lot easier for me to try to blend in, at which point I think I primarily copied people. At some point I stopped really thinking about it and just continued doing it. I regularly recognize mannerisms, phrases, and inflections from friends of mine, characters I've seen on television, and in movies. I don't think it was perfect given how often I heard second hand that I was "too much" or "a bit off."

I didn't compensate at all. I had trouble understanding the horseplay and with knowing when people are joking and I still have trouble with this. For this reason, I may have missed opportunities to connect with people who might have liked me but I thought they didn't like me. I also had to have my own locker because I could never share a locker for very long with anyone. I never did figure out why that scenario kept going wrong.

I simply stopped talking. Up until grade 11.

When I was younger? I didn't do anything. I would sit and read or play on the playground by myself and have a good time. I didn't care that they didn't want to be friends with me, just if they said something nasty about me. Which they did frequently. It wasn't until I got older that I started to crave social connection and realize that I couldn't make it, and all the things I wanted to do instinctively were incorrect. I think having a big family helped me not be lonely when I was younger, though. When I was home one of my siblings would usually play with me.

Yea, same as a lot of other folks in this thread, I didn't really. When I was a kid I kinda did my own thing and if somebody wanted to be friends with me or play then cool and if not then that was fine then too. I tended to get along better with kids a little younger than me.

Since I was always, and am still, extremely sensitive about how people perceived me. When people would tell me I did something terribly wrong, I would fix it in my brain that I should never do that again, and I wouldn't do it. This created a running list of things I should and should not do. For many years, I was very conscious of this list, but now comes more like second nature than something I constantly have to think about. Sadly, this means that some of the more wonderful aspects (or at least I believe them to be wonderful) of my personality have been stuffed in a closet indefinitely.

I didn't really talk to anyone unless I had to. I used to go to the back hall during lunch (the administration wouldn't let me go to the library.) In twelfth grade my OCD got really severe and I couldn't even keep my head up and my grades suffered. I was *done* with high school after eleventh grade and felt sick of it. I wasn't into the Senior activities and Senior year was nothing but prolonged adolescence. I wish my school system would have let me get my diploma through distance learning and dual enrollment with a community college but the people in my town are especially closed minded. They believe high school is an essential experience so they ended the dual enrollment program a few years before I graduated which is a shame because, the high school experience is not for everyone, and some people who have to work during the day might find it more easier to attend classes at their own convenience.

Now my social skills are much better. The only problems I have are that sometimes I get the urge to pace around during conversations with people or I get preoccupied with my special interest that no one understands or cares about and start to bore people.

I didn't, I have very little memories of my childhood before I went mute when I was 8. Most of my childhood I was just mute. Depending on the enviorenment, sometimes the kids tried to include me other times they teased me. When the kids would try to talk to me, I just didnt say anything. I probably had very little understanding of what was going on around me.

As for now, Id say I dont really have to compensate for myself anymore. I have enough social skills to get by.

Who says I did?

I lived in a fantasy world. As a kid, my pets are my friends. My bearded dragon and cat are my best friends.

I kept to myself for most of my childhood and teenage years and simply would not socialize with anyone because I couldn't trust anyone. Later on, I socialized with younger kids, and kids with developmental delays, but even that took me a while. I spent my free time fantasizing about my imaginary worlds as a form of escape.

I think it was easier in grade school because you are forced to interact with your peers, so by default, I could find at least a few friends, who were usually nerdy misfits. I still spent a lot of time walking around alone during recess, though. In the workplace, I find that I don't have nearly that amount of socialization, so I am a lot more alone now.

In grade school I really didn't. I behaved the same way around other children that I did around my parents and family, and was confused when I got very different reactions. I didn't tend to seek out other children to play with and just sort of did my own thing. I only engaged in structured play with adults involved. As I got older, I got picked on and bullied more and it got harder and harder to just ignore people. I mostly learned to be more aggressive and mean so people would leave me be. I thought the stuff teenagers did was mostly stupid so I just didn't participate. I learned how to socialize with adults like teachers more than kids. It wasn't until college that I even interacted much with people my own age. I tended to talk very little and observe a lot so I could pick up on things people did, and I tended to stay away from discussing anything very personal.

Now, I'm something of a social chameleon in that I can see and understand lots of different viewpoints, so I can make most anyone, rural, urban, liberal, conservative, etc. think I'm "one of them". I find that being "one of us" eliminates a lot of difficulties so I pretty much just go with the flow at work and such. I still tend to observe a lot at first until I can get a read on what sort of person I'm dealing with. I still have issues with a few people that just irritate me by treating other people like crap and being dicks in general, but other than that, I can get along well enough to work with most people if they don't expect too much. I'm good at humor and making people laugh, so that's mostly what I do now with friends and such. I still don't feel a strong need to socialize much, and it makes me tired, but it's much better than it used to be.