Common childhood interests you did not have

[Shevek]

I preferred plain blocks to Legos. It turns out that plain blocks were used for architects' models of large masonry buildings. Mortar won't take tension like a pair of Legos. Each year, I had received a new Meccano set, from #s 2 through 8 or so, but then insisted on getting #1. The large people could not convince me that all the parts in a #1 were also in #9, plus more (they were terrible at explaining things) but deep down, I had a very correct feeling that I had not gotten something most children did at a young age.

 

[L3moncake]

I loved barbie dolls but I didn't really play with them. I would stage their dollhouses, dress them up, put them in their spot and there they would stay.

I would run myself the coldest bath I could handle and just lay in it/ hold my breath under the water. I wanted to be like a polar bear.

I would spend hours "painting the shed". I had a paintbrush and a bucket of water and I would paint the shed with the water making it a darker colour. By the time I had finished the whole shed, the beginning section would be dry and I would start again.

 

[Dadamen]

Actually the only big difference into my and other childern's plays were that I disliked sports with a ball. Also, I had some my strange games I played with myself. But, I actually liked many toys NT kids play, such as lego cubes, water pistols. I also liked going to playground.

 

[D'Andre]

My toys were usually my hands. They were people. They drop by occasionally lol

 

[ヤス三ン]

I did not play with dolls despite being given my aunt's Barbie and Shelly dolls. I lived with my nan and ended up keeping the dolls as wells as the dolls house furniture (and other bits) at my mum's flat, I would take the dolls and furniture out and arrange the furniture on mats, then I would put Barbie and Ken in their convertible car, pushing them around the flat for a while.
I also didn't engage in pretend /imaginary play.
I never cared for colouring in and I don't think that I drew much at all, however I enjoyed crafts.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Team sports or board games. Even now no video games.

 

[Shamar]

I did not play with dolls despite being given my aunt's Barbie and Shelly dolls. I lived with my nan and ended up keeping the dolls as wells as the dolls house furniture (and other bits) at my mum's flat, I would take the dolls and furniture out and arrange the furniture on mats, then I would put Barbie and Ken in their convertible car, pushing them around the flat for a while.
I also didn't engage in pretend /imaginary play.
I never cared for colouring in and I don't think that I drew much at all, however I enjoyed crafts.

Hide and Seek. I thought it was stupid because nobody ever came looking for me. Baseball. Excruciatingly boring to play, much less watch. I was the worst player on the last place team in the crud division. I was not even invited to awards night, even though I thought I should have gotten some sort of recognition for that accomplishment. Just about any other team sport. As an Asperger, I was (and still am) a maladroit and athletically inept. In gym class, the athletic half dominated the game to the point to where the other half was, in practical terms, not even there.

 

[Gerontius]

I didn't like video games, and I sure did age out of television quickly.

 

[Outdated]

We didn't have video games when I was a kid, I got ripped off.

I never played any team sports except for one year when I was told it was either that or a boarding school. They did the same thing again a year later and forced me to join the school chess team, didn't take me long to get the other players to agree that I shouldn't be there.

I rode my bike a lot, I read a lot of books, mostly sci fi, and I played down the creek with other kids now and then.

I got my first computer in 1984 and realized just how underprivileged my entire childhood had been.

 

[mysterionz]

Animals (all Except for marine life until 2019), sports

 

[Luca]

I will preface this by saying that I am absolutely in the minority with probably all of these, and I hope mentioning this doesn't cause conflict :/
I'm not trying to say anything bad or rude at all about people who have these interests, these are just mainstream things that are also often special interests that I just didn't get into as a kid (or as an adult either.) None of what I say here is intended to be disrespectful or invalidating, I hope it doesn't come across that way!

I never liked video games, or had any interest in playing them. Still don't. Maybe like, once or twice a year I will play something with a friend at their house just because I want to support their interests and don't want them to feel like I don't approve of them having that interest. I have no issue at all with people liking or playing video games, or having it as a special interest, though. People always assume I'm one of those girls that looks down on gamers, but I really don't... I think there's a pretty big difference between being disinterested in something, and hating it...

Same exact thing with movies. Maybe less than 1% of the time I will find a movie that I want to watch by myself, but almost every time I see a movie it's because a friend wants to see it and I want them to enjoy the experience so I watch it with them. I don't find movies or television that enjoyable by myself, and when I do I'm incredibly picky (which is something I've posted a lot about previously.)

Another thing I was never into growing up was fictional books/movies/tv, and fandoms. Maybe I just have no imagination lol. And I didn't think anything negative about people who were into those things either, I know people can be judgmental about it but that's not the case for me. I wasn't even really aware of what fandom was until I was in college, and not until I was like a sophomore or a junior, so that was like right around the time Tumblr really became a thing (2014ish) and although I never used it myself, that was when I became very aware of that interest. I actually really don't know why I never got into anything fictional, even mainstream stuff, but it was just that nothing ever clicked with me I guess. A lot of my friends in college were really into Harry Potter, Disney, Broadway musicals, and Supernatural, particularly. So I have kind of an entry-level understanding of those things lol. Like I will kind of understand referential memes, for example.
I have always been EXTREMELY into music though, and I have a wide range of musical taste and some of it is very not mainstream.

Celebrities were another interest that everyone around me had growing up, that I never understood or liked. I have actually never had a celebrity crush, believe it or not.
N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys were the big "thing" when I was a kid and I kind of liked their music but I don't think I ever knew what any of them really looked like, at least not enough to be attracted to them. I think Justin Timberlake was the only one that I would recognize if I saw a picture, but he has been consistently mainstream for most of my life so it would be weird if I didn't lol.
I don't want to be "that person" but I seriously never liked Justin Bieber. His music or his personality. It was absurd to me how obsessed girls were with him when I was in high school and college. There was one song that came out a few years ago that I liked and I was surprised that it was him.
I was never on the One Direction bandwagon either lol but I've found out as an adult that some of them seem to be decent human beings for the most part. Just never got into their music and was weirded out by the creepy stalkerish fans.
There was another boy band that was really popular around that time, I think they were called The Wanted, and I actually loved one of their songs... but One Direction definitely outdid them in popularity and probably wiped them off the map lol because I don't think anyone a few years younger than me or more has likely heard of them... That song may have actually been a one-hit wonder but I'm not sure. I will have to look this up later.
K-Pop became really mainstream when I was a bit older and it was never really my thing either but I don't outwardly dislike it. Again, though, some fans are seriously creepy and disturbing. But I know that doesn't represent the whole fanbase.

Anime, manga, cartoons, and comic books were another thing I just never got into, but I think that goes in the "fandom" category. I occasionally liked some graphic novels though.
I've always been a self-taught artist too but I never got inspiration from anime or comics or cartoons or anything. I mostly draw portraits and animals, and sometimes realistic but usually stylized.

I was late to the party with Youtube, I think I watch Youtube way more now than I ever did when I was younger, although I have always used it as a music source. I don't like how the algorithm works though and I can see how it traps a lot of people in an echo chamber. I mostly use it for content that is either *credibly* educational, or just lighthearted and humorous (like silly commentary videos, and making fun of memes from reddit.) And background noise when I sleep. And music.

Yeah, I know that was a lot, but that was my input on this topic, since I didn't really specify last time.

 

[FlowerFlo]

Computers

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I was never into team sports.

 

[Laughingowl1975]

Sports espcially with a ball (I would run away if it came near me), I prefered drawing or reading or just wandering about exploring with the one or two friends I had telling amusing stories to each other (not too good at that either).

 

[Luca]

Computers

Yeah, I was never into computers either. Laptops weren't that easily accessible to buy when I was growing up (compared to now) and were mostly used by businesspeople at the time and not so much for recreational use, and I didn't have one until I was 15 or 16.

The original reason I got a computer was so I could do homework more efficiently because I have trouble writing by hand. I ended up using it to learn to edit videos, which was something I became really passionate about and still am, and is still the primary use for my computer(s).
Using a computer to use the *Internet* wasn't something that really occurred to me until I was much older, like in college. I started using things like forums, Youtube, and email/messenger a lot later in life than most people my age did, I think. I was never on Myspace and I was only minimally aware that it was a thing.

I still use my laptop and desktop computer, and even my phone and tablet, almost exclusively for creative stuff rather then "technology" stuff. Texting, and chatting with people on this forum are pretty much the extent of anything else I do with my electronics. I'm not on Facebook or Instagram or tiktok or anything either. I'm a pretty basic laptop and smartphone user lol

 

[Crossbreed]

Spectator sports,* though I enjoyed playing some of them:

• PE- dodgeball;
• PE- soccer;
• PE- archery;
• PE- wrestling;
• PE- track, low hurdles;
• Youth group- volleyball &
• HS team- cross-country running.

*I do like watching Dude Perfect videos, though.

 

[GypsyMoth]

Um, friends? At least until kindergarten. We were rural and lived on a vineyard, so I self-entertained without knowing what I was missing. I was, however, highly imaginative (apparently not an ND trait?). My favorite toys were a mirror, which I placed under my nose and pretended to walk on the ceiling; the cat's string, which I twirled to no end over the course of several years (I was fascinated by how the different speeds and motions to te rotation changed the apparent size and shape of the image the moving string produced); wooden blocks which I always built into the Roman Colosseum (I kept changing the arc angle to discover at what point it was most stable and when it was not stable); and when a little older, a record player with read-along books. I read early and I read a lot.

I'm not sure what counts as "a common childhood interest" these days, so I'm going to err on saying that most of my childhood was spent outdoors. I caught butterflies and bugs, picked flowers, and let the honey bees I picked up in the clover walk across my fingers and hands. (They're very tame.)

When I was a little older and we had moved to town, the kids there had a grapevine swing that swung out quite a ways over a slate-bottomed creek. We'd leap off on that swing and it was like flying--it was also a good 15-20 foot drop onto that slate. We held on for dear life, too. We swam, fished, and I loved hunting for crayfish and catching darters and small minnows. We rode bikes, played sardines, and sometimes we explored abandoned buildings. (I'm not sure if children are allowed to do any of these things anymore. We were never supervised and learned our limits and gained confidence in our abilities through trial and error.) Around adults, I talked with real people and was expected to be a part of the adult conversation--even if my role was just to sit and listen politely.

A little older still and I haunted the woods by myself, tracking deer in the summer and mice through the snow, and learning the sounds the robin makes in the leaf litter and how it sounds different from other birds and small mammals. I learned I have an uncanny sense of direction.

I read obsessively. Somewhere along the way, I began writing fiction--a hobby I've kept up with to this day.

But I don't know what kids do when off the internet these days for fun, so maybe this all misses the mark.

 

[FlowerFlo]

I read a lot too. And quite fast. A single 600 page book i can read in less than a day. Its usefull but also sometimes quite a proplem.
As a child i often was bored by the books meant for me. Too much friendship, a thing i still struggle wiht (why is keeping friends so hard ), neurotypical behavior and not enough pages.
I started reading secretly adult books, news papers etc. when i was around 9 or 10. In highschool we had quite a good school library, which sadly closed wiht covid. But at that point i had almost read everthing including the books in the 16+ Shelf. This was also the time i started reading in class,out of boredom.

 

[Rodafina]

Sports espcially with a ball (I would run away if it came near me), I prefered drawing or reading or just wandering about exploring

Wow, this brought back some strong memories. I was probably eight years old and my parents had signed me up for the town soccer club. Home videos (this was back in the 80s) show a mob of children surrounding the ball and following it as a horde everywhere it went on the field. Then, there is little old, singular me, somewhere opposite the horde, like magnets repelling one another. My parents “bribed“ me with my favorite bubble gum, if I touched the soccer ball (sorry, World, the football) three times during a game. I never did get that bubble gum.

 

[Stuttermabolur]

Wow, this brought back some strong memories. I was probably eight years old and my parents had signed me up for the town soccer club. Home videos (this was back in the 80s) show a mob of children surrounding the ball and following it as a horde everywhere it went on the field. Then, there is little old, singular me, somewhere opposite the horde, like magnets repelling one another. My parents “bribed“ me with my favorite bubble gum, if I touched the soccer ball (sorry, World, the football) three times during a game. I never did get that bubble gum.

I was great at "skotbolti" (shoot ball, basically free for all dodgeball) as I would always run to the farthest possible corner of the room away from the ball and could actually run quite fast. I was terrible at aiming and hitting things, but that didn't matter so much as long as other people were hitting each other.