'When did you first realise that you were 'different'?'

Don't know if it was an indication of ASD, but finishing an entire set of Encyclopedia's aged 5 and asking my parents about covalent bonds might have been an early one.  I read anything back then.  Fiction, fact, everything in between.  I never had dyspraxia.   In fact I was the kid they couldnt keep in nursery.  I went out of childproof gates, over 9ft walls, over a couple of wooden gates.  i was the nightmare kid that could manipulate a situation and then spring free from confinement.  If I didnt manage to escape i'd just hide out somewhere in the playground.  im sure they were all close to a nervous breakdown for the year I spent there. ;)

Special schools didn't really exist back then (70's) and my parents even to this day have a view that their is nothing wrong with me, so going to a school for gifted children was never going to be on the books.  What they did do was ensure my life was rich with experiences, like holidays abroad for a month, speaking languages abroad, trips to museums, etc.  So I cant really complain.  But in school it wasn't good.  Outside school I made do.

Yup, me too .... I used to sit and read the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the weekend. When at my father's house I was often found with my head buried in his dictionary of the origins of words, reading it like a novel.

I could read a short paperback novel by the time I started school (aged 5) and was an avid devourer of factual books on whatever my special interest happened to be at the time. I always supposed that my precocious reading abilities were simply the result of having an English teacher dad who took the trouble to  teach me, but maybe not!

Yup, me too .... I used to sit and read the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the weekend. When at my father's house I was often found with my head buried in his dictionary of the origins of words, reading it like a novel.

I could read a short paperback novel by the time I started school (aged 5) and was an avid devourer of factual books on whatever my special interest happened to be at the time. I always supposed that my precocious reading abilities were simply the result of having an English teacher dad who took the trouble to  teach me, but maybe not!

After reading through those I obviously had to read school books at school, but also the usual stuff, ie, Peter and Jane.  The schools problem was that I finished them all very quickly, also finished all Famous Five and Secret Seven books not long after. 

Beyond that I dont remember what i read.  I know my parents had three bookshelves rammed with books ranging from interesting to mundane (my father had a degree in economics so you can imagine what some of those books contained).   I remember reading through most of them.  Never had much of an interest in the economic ones though. ;) 

I read a book on knitting at some point and had my gran show me the practical side.  That was what I did when I went to her house.  Knitted line after line with no real interest in actually doing anything besides that.  She used to use the patches I made to make blankets for us.  They also had a set of Encyclopedias, lots of religious manuals and always magazines like Nat Geo, on their shelves.