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

You write very well. I look forward to further posts.  

I've just been reading your autobiography in the other section.  

We have a few things in common.

I also went to Sheffield Hallam.  Although it was still known by its old name of Sheffield city polytechnic.  I messed up my final year, partly by being emotionally unstable and the only female I could get along with was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.  Living with her took its toll.

I find it difficult to communicate with normal stable people.  It's the unusual personalities that I feel relaxed with.

The word 'special' has multiple meanings.  

In my case the 'special' school was an alternative school to conventional schools.  I was badly bullied in normal schools so I refused to attend school for several months.  So I was sent to a special school.  The word 'special' was actually used to describe this school.  It was in the grounds of a major hospital and most of the staff were nurses.  

I was only nine years old when I started there.  And some dodgy things went on in that place.  Although I was too young to understand it.   Overall I enjoyed my year there.

Was never any good at PE at school. Abysmal, in fact. Rugby was initially enjoyable because of the violence - but the inevitable long-lasting injury soon put paid to that.  

__Pathfinder__ said:

finishing an entire set of Encyclopedia's aged 5

It sounds as if you may have been hyperlexic.  I had the same kind of precocious reading ability too, and it fits with other things which I discovered from my Mum's contribution to my autism assessment. In adulthood, I still have a very strong compulsion to read any and all words that I see, to the point of it being an annoying distraction sometimes. Even when I already know what the words will say, I'm still inexorably drawn to them (e.g. back of toiletry bottles when I'm sat on the loo, all the details on bus tickets, beer-mats on a pub wall...)

PE? Hated it.

Sorry, I should have been more specific.  I was referring more to schools catering for children with above average IQ.

So was the point of your school psychotherapy?  Did it run alongside normal curricuum?

I will have to disagree about special schools not existing in the 70s.

I was sent to a 'special' school in 1972.  It was special in the sense that we were all emotionally damaged.  The head of the school was a psychiatrist ( he had his certificate behind glass in his office).  The school had no academic curriculum.

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.

nexus9 said:

PE lesson

Ouch!  What was that? Someone must have said one of the words that my brain won't let me hear!

The worst. I was the stereotypical wimpy geek; always picked last by the other boys to be in their team; always picked first by the teacher to be a "crash test dummy" to demonstrate rugby tackles on. I was always baffled by the logic that whoever was picked last always had to be goalie in football; so you want the most inept player on the pitch to take on the most unique position which is your final line of defence? Really? The one time I actually saved an attempt on goal, I was so flabbergasted that I stepped backwards over the goal line with the ball in my hands. My team mates were absolutely furious, but no-one had told me that there was more to it than just managing to catch the ball!

I did reasonably at some of the individual athletics, particularly sprinting, even though my physique is totally wrong for it (hmm, I wonder what kind of childhood experiences might lead to lots of practice at that!) But my situational awareness is too bad for team sports, and dyspraxia and poor proprioception make me useless at gymnastics (I couldn't even do a forward roll and come out of it facing the direction I started.) I didn't know any of that at the time, of course, but it seems obvious now with hindsight.

My proprioceptive/dyspraxic issues led to another stand-out childhood experience. I was a member of the Boys Brigade for a while; we weren't a religious family at all, and I knew already that I was agnostic, but a couple of my few good friends did it, as had my father when he was a lad. This meant having to do a lot of formation marching and parades. I had the drill instructor tearing his hair out; he simply could not teach me to march properly. I could follow the commands OK and could keep in step, but there was something wrong with the way that I held myself and moved that he could never explain to me. He would get other lads to demonstrate, and I would copy, feeling in my mind that I was doing exactly the same as what I'd just seen; but I never was. To be fair, the instructor was a lovely, very patient person; some of the other lads, less so!

It's only recently, with so many people having a video camera in their pocket, that I've had the opportunity to see how my posture and movements really look from the outside, and I have found that a very uncomfortable experience. It's not so much that I worry about other people's opinion, but the realisation that the image I have in my mind is so far removed from what my body is actually doing. My difficulties with PE and drill now make a lot more sense, though!

At about 5. I had started school and was not fitting in with other children. I saw a reflection of myself in a mirror during a PE lesson and noticed that my clothes were not like the other children's. Probably my family thought it was not worth getting me any uniform as we might be moving soon. But that seemed to underscore the sense of being 'different.'

Thank you all for your comments, input and encouragement.  Sorry I haven't replied individually.  I've been very interested to read what you all have to say.  Thanks. 

Often shouted at by teachers, humiliated, the kind ones just left me to my own devices, I spent a lot of time with the caretaker, cleaning out animal cages, delivering crates of quart pint bottles of milk to each class.

cannot remember being taught anything, vivid dreams, excelled at physical abilities, best climber, dirty child, mud was no problem for me, covered in scrapes and bruises,,,,

In infant school,,,I was kept back as my birthday was September, everyone I had joined with went up to the next school.

I only remember being aloud to sit under a table on my own, I did get a companion when I very sad crying boy was bought in by his mum, the teacher asked me if he could sit with me under the table. I said yes ok.

No memories of being included in anything, I do remember being at the other end of the class, creating pictures drawing around shapes, no free hand lines as they were wobbly and not accurate for my liking.

I remember vivid colours and smells that I still remember, 

I don't recall feeling particularly different at nursery school.  I'd say it was in infants school I started feeling I was different.

That teacher sounds like the type who can profess belief in "the one true way."  Probably if they changed the curriculum the next year that 3s were curly instead of flat-topped and their was a child who was taught to do flat-topped 3s by their older sibling, they'd then be subjected to the same pointless humiliation.

My experience with "one true wayers" is if they don't appear to have the mental flexibility to consider alternatives then they just aren't worth your time.

My very earliest memories are all of objects and places, never events or people. I can vividly remember things like the patterns on my childhood bedroom curtains, the exact construction of the toy cars in the sand-pit at nursery school, small architectural details of buildings on the journey to visit relatives, etc. I can't recall what any of my close family looked like back then, any group games I used to play, how I got on with my younger brother, etc. My biographical memory in general is like that; very objective and factual and not at all like "reliving" anything, if I understand what people mean by "reliving a memory" (I'm not sure that I do.)

Having to be present when guests were in the house was always a chore; if I could sneak off back to my room, my books, my drawing, the latest Lego creation that they were distracting me from, I always did. I had a few relatives who could engage me by having interesting things to teach me about history or science, or taught me practical skills, which was fortunate (I have a strong hunch that autism runs on one side of my family; I wonder now if they took me aside because they too found such gatherings onerous?)

I was different in many ways before I even started school.

I felt almost no desire to play or communicate with other children.  And when I tried I failed completely.

I just played alone with coloured wodden bricks.

When I was older my mother told me that visitors often commented that I was very odd as an infant.  I never spoke with anyone or took an interest in people.  I just played in silence ignoring everyone.

I was taken to one side, aged 7, and told to stop writing my numerals using straight lines mimicking the form of seven-segment displays. 

I think in those times it was fairly general that we would be 'pulled up' for not following the 'standard' writing of the policy of the school.

Contrariwise to your teacher, we were made to write the three with a flat top.  And also the four with an 'open' top, not making a triangle.  A nine had to have a vertical line below the circle, not one at an angle. A '1' would have to be a straight vertical line.  A '2' would be outlawed if it had a 'curly' bottom.  A '6' conversely to the '9' had to have an angled line. There was no room for individualism at all.   Punishment was handed out for offending, such as being rapped over the knuckles with the ruler, or smacked on the legs (boys wore short trousers so it would be quite painful).

There were also rules about the relative sizes within quite strict limits.  I remember one lad, who in retrospect was dyslexic, who was frequently punished for writing his capital 'R' the wrong way round, which probably didn't help him, and being left handed was also subject to punishment.

Those were the days!

Great article and a very interesting theme, Tom. Whenever I've spoken about the origins of our sense of difference with other late-diagnosed autistic people, it's often the case that they can trace it an awfully long way back.

The first big realisation for me was, much like yours, at lower school, though I couldn't say exactly what age. There was a particular pair of lads who were the playground bullies (I still remember their names), and I was perplexed by one particular question. Why did they choose me to inflict their illogical behaviour on? The strange thing is that I didn't really feel particularly persecuted; my social awareness was so poor that it just seemed like yet another example of human beings doing things that I didn't understand - maybe this was how things were supposed to be? Rather than being angry at them, I was more upset with myself for being unable to understand what was going on.

What led me to an answer was the realisation that their taunts were usually about the way that I moved, my posture, parodies of my voice, and (to them) my overly formal language. Why did my arms and hands, often held rigidly at my sides or flapped around, concern them so much? I had no interest in watching other people's hands (unless I might need to duck!), so why would anyone else? My words seemed to work perfectly well to get my message across to less belligerent people, so why should my precise choice of words matter so much to them?

I turned my analytical mind to observing the other kids more closely, figuring that there must be some algorithm or other by which the bullies were categorising people. Hmmm. Apparently, the other kids did use different words when talking to each other than when talking to grown ups. And when they were talking, their hands were often active, seemingly synchronised somehow with what they were saying. I had discovered pragmatics and body-language, and I wondered how the other children came by this knowledge. Were there some secret school lessons that I'd missed out on? Was there a book that I should have read? (I was hyperlexic, so surely would have done so if I only I knew which book.)

It's the first time that I can remember being aware that my natural behaviours alone were not enough, and that there were kinds of knowledge inaccessible to me, but which others seemed to just know without being aware of where it came from. It's when learning to mask became my prime directive.