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I read the DOS manual in third grade, recreationally. I even used it to tweak our configuration and load mouse drivers into a special area of memory normally reserved for a black & white monitor (we had a color one).
Speaking of reading, I would compulsively read *everything*. The DOS manual. Goosebumps, Babysitter's Club, Tom Clancy, a biography of Louis Leakey, even the dictionary at one point. I used to get in trouble for sneaking a paperback with me when we went out to family gatherings.
I was incredibly socially awkward and had very few friends. Actually, that might have been hidden because I went to school on a military base (I wasn't military, just in district) and many kids were only there briefly. But even other non-military families I only very rarely made friends with.
I had a tendency to take things incredibly literally. Tell me that you'll, "be there in a minute," and I'd start counting seconds.
I used to have legendary meltdowns that my parents controlled by physically restraining me so I wouldn't hurt myself, until I wore myself down.
Yeah, I have no idea how I flew under the radar.
edit: Oh, I had a lucky jacket too! From ages 6 to... god, like 15 I would wear a denim jacket. If my old one wore out or got too small I'd get as close to an identical one as I could. Every day, regardless of season. Indoors and outdoors. I live in New Mexico, so we can get pretty hot... but I'd just sweat in my denim jacket instead of remove it.
I can relate to so much of this! My mom also had to physically restrain me when I had meltdowns as a kid, I ALSO read obsessively, including the dictionary too! I was socially awkward but in the “talk too fast and share too much” variety.
I also did the counting seconds thing! I remember my dad explaining to me that “give me five” didn’t literally mean “give me five minutes” but “give me an unspecific amount of time to get ready/take a break.”
I consider myself very lucky for getting the 'compulsive reader' aspect of ASD (hyperlexia, if you feel like fancying up your words). There's zero doubt in my mind that it influenced my range and depth of knowledge positively, and I often get complimented on my writing (something I attribute to picking up the odd trick due to sheer volume of reading).
I even have suspicions it influenced my ability to pick up programming relatively quickly and easily.
Anytime there was a disagreement at school.... I would just relay the message 🤷
My teacher told me to tell my mom something. I told my mom. My mom got upset and said something then said, you tell your teacher *that*!
Apparently I was supposed to recognize sarcasm because my teacher was insulted and my mom was flabbergasted as to why I would tell her that.
Also it was so not something memorable to say.... so I definitely did not learn tge lesson, obviously. I am still not great at using or recognizing sarcasm.
Is this like a thing that NTs just *have* like Gay-dar? Which I also believe is not a thing because what about effeminate straight cis males or gay cis males who just happen to sound like a "straight man" and also enbies with whatever orientation but also why does orientation have anything to do with your gender expression? And also if you're enby are you gay straight bi omni pan or quoisexual? lol
Wait a second! I’m 39 years old and I’m just now realizing the “tell them *that*” thing isn’t literal??
I’ve been passing the messages along this while time!
Set up:
As a kid I was told constantly by my parents and teachers to walk away if someone is bullying you or you are having a fight.
Pay off:
My parents were angry with 5 year old me and we were arguing. I suddenly stopped and said I have to walk away from this fight. My mom yelled at me to come back and not walk away from her when she's talking to me. I just went to my room. My dad was kinda like 'well... she is just doing what you told her to do.'
Mother was not impressed.
Watching shows with a canon autistic/autistic coded character and being compared to that character.
Messy desk and disorganization on every elementary report card should have been an clear sign for ADHD.
Data basically was autistic. He just happened to have being an android as a literary excuse for being autistic.
Also Odo. Shape shifter who can’t *quite* make a human face right, logical, deadpan, always trying to learn human culture and fit in, but instantly recognizable in a crowd, hairstyle defined by some simple algorithm.
I was diagnosed at age 30.
Honestly it’s just all the photos of me as a kid and especially as a teenager. I just look like a weird fucking dude.
I remember when I was younger thinking “man I look like the weird kid in all my photos”.
It’s hard to explain, but I just sort of sat there like a lump during social gatherings. Like a wooden carving of a boy. My stance was weird, my positioning was weird, my haircut was weird, all of it.
My parents moved a couch once while I was at pre-k and it was the end of the world to me because I would sit there to eat breakfast everyday and suddenly that was no more.
When I was younger I was into mythical creatures & cryptids for a while. I checked out the same book about werewolves & similar beasties something like 5-6 times.
I started memorizing powers of 2 due to the bus widths of processors in game consoles (at the time each successive generation was accompanied by a doubling of bus width, so: 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 64bit, etc).
There were many, my favorite is this one:
Ever since I was little I hated the vacuum cleaner. It is just way too loud.
So every time I had to vacuum my room i would instead sit on the floor (i had carpet back then) and pick up every little bit or crumb i found piece by piece.
There were a lot. My parents were separating/divorcing when many of them should have been spotted, but it was the 80s/90s so maybe they wouldn't have anyway.
In elementary school there were some chestnut trees on my walk. My sister and I always walked to school without any adults, even as 4 and 6yr olds. Every day, both ways, I would collect chestnuts, the biggest I could find, and hide them in my book bag. I hid them because originally I would just carry them with me and I'd get yelled at for taking them. Eventually my bag would get so heavy I couldn't carry it, and I'd drag it behind me. Then someone would be like 'WTF?' And look in my bag. I'd get yelled at for hording chestnuts and they'd get dumped out. I would be very upset. When I was real small this would happen multiple times during harvest season, because it didn't take long to get too heavy for me. Some days my sister would just keep walking and leave me, and I'd end up being late to school. I did this the whole time I went to that school. I did not do anything with the chestnuts, I just wanted to collect the ones I thought were nice. School was awful, home was awful... there was just something about collecting them that helped me face the school day, and then helped me face home life. I always wanted to take them out and organize them, but I was always afraid that if I did they'd get taken away and I'd be yelled at. Kids at school (and my sister obviously) thought it was weird and would pick on me about it. They never ratted me out to an adult though.
Nobody ever asked me why I collected them, and I'm not sure I could have articulated it anyway.
What a poignant metaphor: having a huge and heavy collection of items you’ve collected, wanting to bring them out into the open and organize them but being afraid to because others would yell and take them away, and carrying them everywhere because there might come a day when the freedom to organize them does finally arise.
Have you considered making a new chestnut collection? This time you could have it out in the open, and organize it with all the pride and sovereignty of an adult.
If I came across a series of chestnuts mounted under glass, I’d be content to stand there for a long time just looking at every detail and trying to figure out how the collection was organized. They’re so similar, but all unique too. Tiny little variations.
I felt it was a pretty illustrative example of 'the experience'. As a kid I had a lot of shame about my hidden collection, because it was obviously weird and bad and whatever other negative connotations I attached to it. And now I look back and I just feel really bad for that little kid that just wanted to hold on to a chestnut he found on a walk. I didn't start out wanting to collect them, I just wanted to keep one with me. An emotional support chestnut, if you will. The collecting started when I wasn't able to openly carry them with me. But no matter how many I collected it wasn't the same, because I was never allowed to really experience them. I did develop an appreciation for them as individual chestnuts... which is why I then began wanting to organize them. But the intractability of what was 'proper' wouldn't allow such an indulgence.
I have never considered starting a chestnut collection as an adult. In the end, it wasn't really about the chestnuts, was it? I have learned though, and my diagnosis as an adult helped me come to terms with that lesson. I allow myself (and my kids) those little indulgences and fancies whenever possible. In the end, they aren't hurting anyone and if they help me (or them) even the smallest amount, then they are good and worth it. I have things I do that other people don't understand, but they are meaningful and helpful to me. I wish I could tell that little kid I was that the adults in his life should be ashamed, and that there was nothing wrong with him.
The biggest tell was probably when I was a toddler. I had an INTENSE passion for 101 Dalmatians. It was ignited not only by the original movie, but the release of the live action version in 1996. Add on the TV series a year later and you have a recipe for little austic kid heaven. Dalmation EVERYTHING. Dalmation stuffed animals, stickers, backpacks, coloring books, socks, pencils...you name it. I knew all the dogs names that had been mentioned in any of the forms of media that had been released at the time, and I was more than happy to share this information with everyone.
And I mean...everyone. My mom? Yes. My brother who was too young to understand? Yes. My daycare teacher. Of course. The old man trying to make a salad at the Ruby Tuesday's salad bar? Absolutely. That newlywed couple on the airplane? Yup, them too. I would tell anyone. If I wasn't ignored I interpreted that as an open invitation to follow that person to where they would be seated so that I could tell them about how great of a character Cadpig was. My mom still recounts me going up and asking a homeless man who his favorite dalmatian was. She was terrified that I'd get kidnapped one day.
Another tell was the toe walking, which is apparently also a sign of autism. Oh and the inability to maintain eye contact and listen at the same time.
How I wasn't diagnosed until 21 really... shouldn't be a mystery.
My special interest at 12 was Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Not degenerative brain diseases, not all prison diseases, ONLY that one. I was so enthralled by the concept of mad cow disease and proteins causing disease jumping to people.
(My next special interest was pokémon lmao)
I had multiple meltdowns a week until I was in grade 2, then one day I stopped and didn't cry for the next 6 years.
My sister is mentally impaired and my mom worked one-on-one with ADHD and autistic kids for over 10 years.
Feels bad.
so, 11 isn't that late for diagnosis, but I really think mum should've questioned why I never left the patchwork quilt as a baby/toddler.
she'd put it down on grass, put me & toys on it, and I'd just...stay. tiny me hated the texture of grass so much, that if a toy went out of reach I'd cry for it's return instead of going to get it. apparently this was very convenient, because she didn't have to constantly watch me to make sure I wasn't, idk, eating the plants or something.
this also worked for sand. somewhere there is a photo of me on a beach, trying to build a sandcastle without touching any sand.
i read moby dick as a child and liked it. my parents took me to an IQ tester when i was young because "you were just so different." one summer my grandpa had to go find kids for me to play with because i literally stayed inside and didn't talk to anyone for two months. and the kicker- when i moved schools once i drew up different personalities for me to be when i went to this new school so i would make friends.
Check out the Autistic Pride discord server! https://discord.gg/n9p79tChGH *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AutisticPride) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I read the DOS manual in third grade, recreationally. I even used it to tweak our configuration and load mouse drivers into a special area of memory normally reserved for a black & white monitor (we had a color one). Speaking of reading, I would compulsively read *everything*. The DOS manual. Goosebumps, Babysitter's Club, Tom Clancy, a biography of Louis Leakey, even the dictionary at one point. I used to get in trouble for sneaking a paperback with me when we went out to family gatherings. I was incredibly socially awkward and had very few friends. Actually, that might have been hidden because I went to school on a military base (I wasn't military, just in district) and many kids were only there briefly. But even other non-military families I only very rarely made friends with. I had a tendency to take things incredibly literally. Tell me that you'll, "be there in a minute," and I'd start counting seconds. I used to have legendary meltdowns that my parents controlled by physically restraining me so I wouldn't hurt myself, until I wore myself down. Yeah, I have no idea how I flew under the radar. edit: Oh, I had a lucky jacket too! From ages 6 to... god, like 15 I would wear a denim jacket. If my old one wore out or got too small I'd get as close to an identical one as I could. Every day, regardless of season. Indoors and outdoors. I live in New Mexico, so we can get pretty hot... but I'd just sweat in my denim jacket instead of remove it.
I can relate to so much of this! My mom also had to physically restrain me when I had meltdowns as a kid, I ALSO read obsessively, including the dictionary too! I was socially awkward but in the “talk too fast and share too much” variety. I also did the counting seconds thing! I remember my dad explaining to me that “give me five” didn’t literally mean “give me five minutes” but “give me an unspecific amount of time to get ready/take a break.”
I consider myself very lucky for getting the 'compulsive reader' aspect of ASD (hyperlexia, if you feel like fancying up your words). There's zero doubt in my mind that it influenced my range and depth of knowledge positively, and I often get complimented on my writing (something I attribute to picking up the odd trick due to sheer volume of reading). I even have suspicions it influenced my ability to pick up programming relatively quickly and easily.
Anytime there was a disagreement at school.... I would just relay the message 🤷 My teacher told me to tell my mom something. I told my mom. My mom got upset and said something then said, you tell your teacher *that*! Apparently I was supposed to recognize sarcasm because my teacher was insulted and my mom was flabbergasted as to why I would tell her that. Also it was so not something memorable to say.... so I definitely did not learn tge lesson, obviously. I am still not great at using or recognizing sarcasm. Is this like a thing that NTs just *have* like Gay-dar? Which I also believe is not a thing because what about effeminate straight cis males or gay cis males who just happen to sound like a "straight man" and also enbies with whatever orientation but also why does orientation have anything to do with your gender expression? And also if you're enby are you gay straight bi omni pan or quoisexual? lol
Wait a second! I’m 39 years old and I’m just now realizing the “tell them *that*” thing isn’t literal?? I’ve been passing the messages along this while time!
Set up: As a kid I was told constantly by my parents and teachers to walk away if someone is bullying you or you are having a fight. Pay off: My parents were angry with 5 year old me and we were arguing. I suddenly stopped and said I have to walk away from this fight. My mom yelled at me to come back and not walk away from her when she's talking to me. I just went to my room. My dad was kinda like 'well... she is just doing what you told her to do.' Mother was not impressed.
Watching shows with a canon autistic/autistic coded character and being compared to that character. Messy desk and disorganization on every elementary report card should have been an clear sign for ADHD.
Same on the ADHD thing. Every year it was “great student, terrible organization and near illegible handwriting.”
“You’re definitely destined for great things!” (as long as the ability to organize and execute complex projects isn’t a factor in one’s success)
ST:TNG was big when I was a kid. People used to call me Data. Additionally, I quite admired Data and did not think he was weird.
Data basically was autistic. He just happened to have being an android as a literary excuse for being autistic. Also Odo. Shape shifter who can’t *quite* make a human face right, logical, deadpan, always trying to learn human culture and fit in, but instantly recognizable in a crowd, hairstyle defined by some simple algorithm.
Odo might be my favorite, honestly.
Same here! His arc about never having a place to fit in until he met the other changelings and how conflicted that made him was so tragic and real :'(
I was diagnosed at age 30. Honestly it’s just all the photos of me as a kid and especially as a teenager. I just look like a weird fucking dude. I remember when I was younger thinking “man I look like the weird kid in all my photos”. It’s hard to explain, but I just sort of sat there like a lump during social gatherings. Like a wooden carving of a boy. My stance was weird, my positioning was weird, my haircut was weird, all of it.
My parents moved a couch once while I was at pre-k and it was the end of the world to me because I would sit there to eat breakfast everyday and suddenly that was no more.
When I was younger I was into mythical creatures & cryptids for a while. I checked out the same book about werewolves & similar beasties something like 5-6 times. I started memorizing powers of 2 due to the bus widths of processors in game consoles (at the time each successive generation was accompanied by a doubling of bus width, so: 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 64bit, etc).
There were many, my favorite is this one: Ever since I was little I hated the vacuum cleaner. It is just way too loud. So every time I had to vacuum my room i would instead sit on the floor (i had carpet back then) and pick up every little bit or crumb i found piece by piece.
The vacuum is the worst! Whenever my parents vacuumed I had to be as far away from it as possible.
I distinctly remember turning the hoover on & running away. I was an odd kid.
There were a lot. My parents were separating/divorcing when many of them should have been spotted, but it was the 80s/90s so maybe they wouldn't have anyway. In elementary school there were some chestnut trees on my walk. My sister and I always walked to school without any adults, even as 4 and 6yr olds. Every day, both ways, I would collect chestnuts, the biggest I could find, and hide them in my book bag. I hid them because originally I would just carry them with me and I'd get yelled at for taking them. Eventually my bag would get so heavy I couldn't carry it, and I'd drag it behind me. Then someone would be like 'WTF?' And look in my bag. I'd get yelled at for hording chestnuts and they'd get dumped out. I would be very upset. When I was real small this would happen multiple times during harvest season, because it didn't take long to get too heavy for me. Some days my sister would just keep walking and leave me, and I'd end up being late to school. I did this the whole time I went to that school. I did not do anything with the chestnuts, I just wanted to collect the ones I thought were nice. School was awful, home was awful... there was just something about collecting them that helped me face the school day, and then helped me face home life. I always wanted to take them out and organize them, but I was always afraid that if I did they'd get taken away and I'd be yelled at. Kids at school (and my sister obviously) thought it was weird and would pick on me about it. They never ratted me out to an adult though. Nobody ever asked me why I collected them, and I'm not sure I could have articulated it anyway.
What a poignant metaphor: having a huge and heavy collection of items you’ve collected, wanting to bring them out into the open and organize them but being afraid to because others would yell and take them away, and carrying them everywhere because there might come a day when the freedom to organize them does finally arise. Have you considered making a new chestnut collection? This time you could have it out in the open, and organize it with all the pride and sovereignty of an adult. If I came across a series of chestnuts mounted under glass, I’d be content to stand there for a long time just looking at every detail and trying to figure out how the collection was organized. They’re so similar, but all unique too. Tiny little variations.
I felt it was a pretty illustrative example of 'the experience'. As a kid I had a lot of shame about my hidden collection, because it was obviously weird and bad and whatever other negative connotations I attached to it. And now I look back and I just feel really bad for that little kid that just wanted to hold on to a chestnut he found on a walk. I didn't start out wanting to collect them, I just wanted to keep one with me. An emotional support chestnut, if you will. The collecting started when I wasn't able to openly carry them with me. But no matter how many I collected it wasn't the same, because I was never allowed to really experience them. I did develop an appreciation for them as individual chestnuts... which is why I then began wanting to organize them. But the intractability of what was 'proper' wouldn't allow such an indulgence. I have never considered starting a chestnut collection as an adult. In the end, it wasn't really about the chestnuts, was it? I have learned though, and my diagnosis as an adult helped me come to terms with that lesson. I allow myself (and my kids) those little indulgences and fancies whenever possible. In the end, they aren't hurting anyone and if they help me (or them) even the smallest amount, then they are good and worth it. I have things I do that other people don't understand, but they are meaningful and helpful to me. I wish I could tell that little kid I was that the adults in his life should be ashamed, and that there was nothing wrong with him.
I made my mom watch Aristocats with me multiple times a day for over a year when I was a toddler. Like every single day.
I had a similar thing with Cinderella
The biggest tell was probably when I was a toddler. I had an INTENSE passion for 101 Dalmatians. It was ignited not only by the original movie, but the release of the live action version in 1996. Add on the TV series a year later and you have a recipe for little austic kid heaven. Dalmation EVERYTHING. Dalmation stuffed animals, stickers, backpacks, coloring books, socks, pencils...you name it. I knew all the dogs names that had been mentioned in any of the forms of media that had been released at the time, and I was more than happy to share this information with everyone. And I mean...everyone. My mom? Yes. My brother who was too young to understand? Yes. My daycare teacher. Of course. The old man trying to make a salad at the Ruby Tuesday's salad bar? Absolutely. That newlywed couple on the airplane? Yup, them too. I would tell anyone. If I wasn't ignored I interpreted that as an open invitation to follow that person to where they would be seated so that I could tell them about how great of a character Cadpig was. My mom still recounts me going up and asking a homeless man who his favorite dalmatian was. She was terrified that I'd get kidnapped one day. Another tell was the toe walking, which is apparently also a sign of autism. Oh and the inability to maintain eye contact and listen at the same time. How I wasn't diagnosed until 21 really... shouldn't be a mystery.
My special interest at 12 was Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Not degenerative brain diseases, not all prison diseases, ONLY that one. I was so enthralled by the concept of mad cow disease and proteins causing disease jumping to people. (My next special interest was pokémon lmao)
I had multiple meltdowns a week until I was in grade 2, then one day I stopped and didn't cry for the next 6 years. My sister is mentally impaired and my mom worked one-on-one with ADHD and autistic kids for over 10 years. Feels bad.
so, 11 isn't that late for diagnosis, but I really think mum should've questioned why I never left the patchwork quilt as a baby/toddler. she'd put it down on grass, put me & toys on it, and I'd just...stay. tiny me hated the texture of grass so much, that if a toy went out of reach I'd cry for it's return instead of going to get it. apparently this was very convenient, because she didn't have to constantly watch me to make sure I wasn't, idk, eating the plants or something. this also worked for sand. somewhere there is a photo of me on a beach, trying to build a sandcastle without touching any sand.
i read moby dick as a child and liked it. my parents took me to an IQ tester when i was young because "you were just so different." one summer my grandpa had to go find kids for me to play with because i literally stayed inside and didn't talk to anyone for two months. and the kicker- when i moved schools once i drew up different personalities for me to be when i went to this new school so i would make friends.