Emerging social awareness

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When did you first become aware that you were different?

When I was in preschool, I did not interact with the other children unless approached. I was perfectly content to play by myself. However, I do not remember noticing that this made me different from the other children.
When I began school at the age of 6, I began to notice things. The other children played together. I played alone. The other children would approach each other to play. I didn't speak to anyone unless they approached me. The other children spoke a foreign language that seemed to be in some way tied in with their games and the way they played with each other. I spoke my own language that I learned from the books that I'd been reading for the past 3+ years.

I noticed these differences, but I didn't see them as a problem. Everyone is different, after all. I thought that they were the sort of children who talked all the time and played with each other, and I was the sort who... read books and spent her lunchtimes walking around the edges of the playground. I was content. I was not lonely. The only thing I would have changed would have been to stop the other children from bullying me.

Sometime through high school, my attitude changed. My uninterest in social chit-chat, parties and so forth changed to fear, and I developed full-blown social phobia. This wasn't helped by my sensory sensitivities and hatred of small talk, which led me to become both bored and exhausted by social situations. (It still does, to a great extent.)

Now, I am returning more to the attitude of my six-year-old self. Social interactions no longer terrify me. They can make me nervous, but not so much that it is detrimental to the quality of my life. They still don't interest me too much, but that doesn't bother me like it once did,

Er, in Kindergarten.

Wasn't into math or anything normal. Was into states and countries. Didn't have any friends, but everyone was impressed with my knowledge.

I always, from preschool, knew that sometimes people were more strict with me than with others, and wondered why, and was a bit bitter about it. I understood later, like in grade 2 or 3 or 4, that this wasn't the case; there were reasons, like I had done it more times than the other person who did the same thing but was just told nicely to stop because it was their first time.


I realized I was wierd when I was about 10, 11, maybe 12, 13. I actually talked about it when I was 13.

Funnily enough, I always thought I was good with social interaction (I laugh at my ignorance). Awareness came a month or so before I joined this forum.

Whilst I've never wanted to know vast amounts of people (I don't really like many people, bluntly), I've always wanted to know some or someone who is similar to me (introverted, quiet and stuff), I just kinda suppressed that my whole life and hid behind my autistic walls.

I've always felt "different", and I've always felt that others aren't real (lack of empathy I'm assuming); I haven't really changed much since I was 6, my thoughts and whatnot are the same, I just know some bigger words.

Ever since I had self awarness, which was around two.

I KNEW that I was being raised differently than my older siblings. I didn't realise I was different from my peers when I was that young, more like I knew I was different from my older sisters who were basically the same.

It was very painful for me everr since I was aware of anything.

The clincher for me was that when I was 3 I found out I was going to "SPICE" the special ed preschool and not the preschool the older two went to. It was devastating.

Then in the summer I went to "SCAMP" a special ed summer camp. The older two never went to SCAMP, that was another clincher.

Always, I guess. looking back i remember looking for fossils in the ball diamond.. not sure if anyone was trying to play! Another time i walked right through the middle of the field and got hit in the head with a ball and kept walking. it didnt hurt much and there didnt seem to be anypoint to complaining.. and who was i to complain to?

It really sunk in in my 20s. I was hanging around with my friend and his group, at a sports bar. we would get 2 dollar burgers every tuesday. They were all talking complete nonsense, and i had no idea what they were talking about.

I realized later that they were speaking almost in code, using popular phrases to convey some other meaning. It was years later that I realized they hit a maturity level where communication became deeper. Most were 3-10 years younger than I, and shortly after, I was alienated, probably because of that. They realized that I didnt fit.. i wasnt a part of the conversation.

I have very few memories of my childhood, and none of before I went to school, but for as long as I do remember I've known that I was different. Any friends I did have -usually one at a time or none at all sometimes- approached me or I was placed in that situation deliberately by adults. I never, ever saw any need to go out and talk to people, even during my most depressive times; Besides, my peers clearly did not like me and I did not want to be friends with callous people, lest they "rub off" onto me. I couldn't understand their cliques and behaviours either, and saw no reason why I should learn how to be social with others, though I was still polite to everyone who wasn't making life difficult for me.

Once I realised I definitely didn't want to be around peers (around the time I was in Primary School), I happily kept to myself and did everything on my own, even school projects meant for groups (wasn't good for my grades but it was better than trying to fit in with other kids). Knowing I also never developed a desire for romantic/reproductive-urge relationships also helped me feel content to be by myself, not a single crush to distract me from my world.

Hmm, I think that was a bit too much information.

I don't think I thought of myself as different or weird even until a long time after my diagnosis.
Not until recently have I started feeling that being me was imaginably not acceptable.

You know, I don't think I ever did realise I was different. Even now, it's difficult for me to accept how inept I can be in social situations. I think I externalised things, to a degree - it's not me, it's the other kids - and I did have a small (very small) group of friends so I never really felt like I was the only one. I was always a loner, bullied, but I tended to attribute that less to my being different in some deep sense, and more just to the idea that "most kids are stupid." That attitude was what got me through school. A seething sense of hatred and contempt for most of the other children. But I never really thought of it in terms of my being different. I just thought of myself at the top of the scale as far as people's intelligence went, and rationalised my disinterest in sports and other social activities in terms of my being above that, intelligence wise.

You were another walker? Yeah, I walked around my school, repetitively, every recess, every lunchbreak (except when I was hiding from the other kids). You have to wonder quite why I never realised that was odd.

Yeah, I knew that I was different in preschool, and I have very vivid memories of this realization.
But like mmaestro, I just always assumed that it was because I was more intelligent, and somehow more self aware than the other kids. This notion was consistently reinforced through school and iq tests, and because when I met people who I knew were more intelligent than me, they were more socially awkward as well.
It wasn't until college, that it really started to hit me hard.

My AS started to show when I was 3 & not yet speaking full sentences. It became more evident when I was 7...by then my father could no longer stand me. But when I was 12, it was so evident that my parents locked me away in the psychiatric hospital for evaluation. I was formally diagnosed with AS at the age of 12 by Dr. Brian McConville, MD neuropsychiatrist @ Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, OH, USA.

The other kids @ Cottonwood Elementary School could NOT pick up on it that I had a social impairment of any sort, but the teachers, administrators, and other adults there COULD & DID pick up on it. But once I transferred to Finneytown Middle School, EVERYONE figured I had a social impairment of some sort.

When I was about 3 as I was hyperlexic. At the time I was diagnosed as 'gifted' as it was the 70s.

yeah, thats funny. I guess i was a walker too. I best recall the outskirts of the playground.

I remember lying in bed at age 5, 6, or 7 wondering if I was ret*d and either no one told me or no one knew. I didn't think I was dumb; I knew i was very smart, its just that retardation was the only difference I knew of at that age. The thought of this didn't distress me at all; I just was curious thinking about if I had some secret special form of retardation. I wondered if I or anyone else would ever find out.

Its pretty funny to me now.

Not until after I went into psychriatic care around 2001-2002. I thought my growing up was as normal as everyone else. I had problems, but noone listened to me (so I had to solve everything myself). I had problems focusing when trying to talk to people, all my mother did was to send me to a ear specialist (I had perfect ear values, or, what it's called). I've always thought it was Social Phobia / Anxiety / Depression / OCD or something like that, until I found out about AS. (On a psychology class, someone had a lecture about autism... she drew on the whiteboard a guy with a circle around it, and said, 'this is autism'.... I went: "oh, that looks like my whole life")

I have almost no memories from my youth, apart from some weird snapshots. And what my mother has told me.
"do you know why you dont have so much friends?"
"no? why?"
"because you're too honest. if you think someone is bad, you say it."
"oh... well, what else should i say?"

i think that was kind of cute.