Do Aspies have delayed mental development?

[nagibator]

I'd say yes, especially in my case. I'll be 34 next month and always say I'm developmentally between 16 and 20. I feel exactly the same as I did 10-15 years ago. I work 4 jobs, but other than that, really have no additional responsibilities. I can't imagine it, either. I still live at home. I can't picture having to work AND maintain an apartment. I could do one or the other, but not both. I'm a "one thing at a time" person. My interests are also very child-like: I have no desire to be in a relationship, get married or have kids. I'm still having too much fun being a big kid, myself! I collect toys and stuffed animals, and am a gamer. I've never cared to be "just like everyone else." That would be boring! I love feeling younger. Most people think I look around 10 years younger than my age, too

How is knowing your own limitations making you developmentally stunted?

I'd rather see it in the opposite. "Most" people just get into relationships and make it up as they go along. And of course they have the same constraints as we do.

Your description kind of reminds me of myself as well. The inner child is what you are talking about I think. It's where all the fun in life takes place.

Just out of a hunch. If You Feel You Are A Wanderer It talks about people feeling out of place and making a connection to actually being from another place. Kind of obvious right?

 

[Larisa]

I wondered a lot - as a child I was reluctant to talk because I needed first to understand what was going on around me before I said anything.
I understood many things that adults totally missed and ignored - and in that regard I always felt like being older than them.
On the other hand I did not do what supposed to be 'normal' for my biological age. I'm 35 now and I still don't get many ideas like 'wanting a boyfriend/husband' or 'wanting a child'.
But in that regard I discovered that I really the feminists speak exactly about the same I see: the modern family model is really tiring and exhausting.
And long working hours to basically survive make relationships between people even worse and more stressed.
I don't get the society's view on children like 'material to shape' - I was a living and conscious human being right from my birth and I have being fiercely resisted to be percieved like 'a material' and to be subject to any 'shaping' ever since.
I don't want to force anyone into what I feel wrong when applyed to myself.

As for other people 'seeking love' and 'behaving like grown-ups' - I really don't get why it includes getting drunk and using primitive cursing language.
Why it includes subjecting your body to tortures of diets, uncomfortable clothes, dangerous shoes, giving own body to other people to have their ways with it.
I don't get how it is 'adult' things if it's totally unresponsible way of behaviour, if most of these people feel abused by others or depressed anyway?
I see that the people behaving according to social expectations to their age - are NOT HAPPY.

There was a psychologist Eric Berne who offered a model of subpersonalities in EVERY human individual: the Parent, Adult, and Child.
I worked with my psychologist and I came to conclusion then my personality just doesn't split.
I watched other people on the group sessions - they really were split and saw the world differently when 'switched' between their subpersonalities.
But I could never do that - my perspective is wholly constant: it includes my whole life experience from the very early age till nowaday and That's what makes me different internally from the most of people around me.
They can say one thing, change the leading subpersonality - and then honestly and furiously deny they said such a thing!
I was baffled for all my life with this capability of the majority of the people around me - and I found the explanation.
They are just internally splitted into subpersonalities which are badly communicating among themselves.
They don't possess the integral perspective on the events of the world.
I can 'run' the occurring real-life event through all my integral life experience - but they don't have stable access to the perspective and memories, like, from their childhood.

 

[freewaydog]

I'm 51 1/2 & I just accepted that I will never "grow up".

 

[Diagnosed2015]

I don't know that it's a "mental delay," or whether it's just another way of seeing the world.

I have spoken often (and even joke) that I'm 18 with 40 years of experience. I never "grew up" in the way I see (or presume) others to do.

Yes, I've held increasingly more responsible careers/positions, I graduated school, raised three great kids, etc., etc., but I see the world through the eyes of a child (when I'm not "adulting").

Anything can excite me, I'm easily amused, easily distracted, can remember my youth (and much of my past) in great detail, etc. The other thing I've noticed is that I "remember" places in my past and then "forget" that things change over years -- so they aren't as I remembered.

Also, when actors or performers I grew up with die, I have a hard time realizing I'm not that far in age then they are. We grew up watching actors, not "comprehending" their real ages.

I "enjoy" being a perpetual 18-year-old, because I can snap into "adult" mode in an instant.

 

[Jim Lee]

This has been a very thoughtful topic. I remember being in my early 20s and wondering when I would feel like an adult. I thought that maturity meant I would possess a "core" that would guide me in life's situations. Other people seemed to give judgements without any serious thought and I believed they were responding from some adult set of rules. Even now, I am 67 years old, I know I am an adult but decisions have to be made from thoughtfulness. I suppose if a person has strong religious convictions they operate with them but for me, I arrive at my feelings on most subjects, after a lengthy process.

 

[Nicci]

As a baby I developed very quickly, in terms of movement and language. But emotionally and socially and such I definitely feel like I've developed a lot slower. Without a doubt. I have no idea if it's purely an environmental thing (meaning being autistic in an NT environment isn't stimulating in the same way the environment would stimulate the NTs) or if biology plays a part in that.
Currently I'm 30 and I mostly interact with people in their early twenties (I'm a university student and started at an older age than most) and I'm constantly surprised at how much more mature they are, compared to me at that age. I keep thinking "oh so that's how normal people experience their twenties"

 

[Chris Russell]

I wondered a lot - as a child I was reluctant to talk because I needed first to understand what was going on around me before I said anything.
I understood many things that adults totally missed and ignored - and in that regard I always felt like being older than them.
On the other hand I did not do what supposed to be 'normal' for my biological age. I'm 35 now and I still don't get many ideas like 'wanting a boyfriend/husband' or 'wanting a child'.
But in that regard I discovered that I really the feminists speak exactly about the same I see: the modern family model is really tiring and exhausting.
And long working hours to basically survive make relationships between people even worse and more stressed.
I don't get the society's view on children like 'material to shape' - I was a living and conscious human being right from my birth and I have being fiercely resisted to be percieved like 'a material' and to be subject to any 'shaping' ever since.
I don't want to force anyone into what I feel wrong when applyed to myself.

As for other people 'seeking love' and 'behaving like grown-ups' - I really don't get why it includes getting drunk and using primitive cursing language.
Why it includes subjecting your body to tortures of diets, uncomfortable clothes, dangerous shoes, giving own body to other people to have their ways with it.
I don't get how it is 'adult' things if it's totally unresponsible way of behaviour, if most of these people feel abused by others or depressed anyway?
I see that the people behaving according to social expectations to their age - are NOT HAPPY.

There was a psychologist Eric Berne who offered a model of subpersonalities in EVERY human individual: the Parent, Adult, and Child.
I worked with my psychologist and I came to conclusion then my personality just doesn't split.
I watched other people on the group sessions - they really were split and saw the world differently when 'switched' between their subpersonalities.
But I could never do that - my perspective is wholly constant: it includes my whole life experience from the very early age till nowaday and That's what makes me different internally from the most of people around me.
They can say one thing, change the leading subpersonality - and then honestly and furiously deny they said such a thing!
I was baffled for all my life with this capability of the majority of the people around me - and I found the explanation.
They are just internally splitted into subpersonalities which are badly communicating among themselves.
They don't possess the integral perspective on the events of the world.
I can 'run' the occurring real-life event through all my integral life experience - but they don't have stable access to the perspective and memories, like, from their childhood.

Hi Larisa - I am interested in Transactional Analysis (the arm of psychology that Eric Berne started all those years ago when he identified the Parent, Child and Adult ego states.) I am working with a psychotherapist that has come to the same conclusion - that Aspies are only have the adult available - no child or parent, and the reason we are so often misunderstood is that we don't switch between them... It means that we are formal, businesslike, logical, truthful and focused. It doesn't mean we don't know how to have fun, relax or be responsible for a child, or get angry and throw a tantrum. But it does mean that our reasons for doing so are different. When this idea was first proposed to me, I was flabbergasted by the simplicity of it - it really does account for many of the problems I had encountered when interacting with people...

 

[Chris Russell]

Everyone's experiences will be different where this is concerned, but I thought I'd throw this into the mix: I was considered a poor reader in my primary school because I didn't want to read story books. When the spelling and comprehension tests came around, however, it showed I had the highest reading age of any child in the school. I can only assume this was rooted in my tendency to stay in the library at break times, reading reference books about birds and dinosaurs, and learning the language patterns present in their Latin names... Oddly, I was always terrible at maths tests, even though my coursework kept me in the top sets throughout my schooling (I later found out I had dyscalculia, so I could grasp to methodology but got the calculations wrong.) Strengths and weaknesses are often misinterpreted in developing children... On the other hand, I think I'll always retain my social naivete and love of giant inflatables - it's one of the things I love about being an Aspie - I can be deadly serious - talking quantum physics or climate change etc. but I can't walk past a bouncy castle...

 

[Suzanne]

I got my periods early, but then PCOS messed them up

I got my period when I was 16.

 

[xudo]

I got my period when I was 16.

I was 10

 

[nagibator]

Okay seriously now. The more I read your answers the more I think Teal Swan has a point when she is saying that people with Aspergers are like an indicator species in a biological eco system that indicate the health of the system.

Essentially she says that only a society where we as "Aspergers people" can live in without contorting ourselves is a society worth living in.

I guess what we can do to help this healing process along is letting other people know when there is something that doesn't make sense.

Kind of relates to my other thread https://www.aspiescentral.com/threads/how-to-live-life-with-aspergers.18999/

It also contains a link to the video where Teal talks about this and other topics.

 

[Larisa]

Hi Larisa - I am interested in Transactional Analysis (the arm of psychology that Eric Berne started all those years ago when he identified the Parent, Child and Adult ego states.) I am working with a psychotherapist that has come to the same conclusion - that Aspies are only have the adult available - no child or parent, and the reason we are so often misunderstood is that we don't switch between them... It means that we are formal, businesslike, logical, truthful and focused. It doesn't mean we don't know how to have fun, relax or be responsible for a child, or get angry and throw a tantrum. But it does mean that our reasons for doing so are different. When this idea was first proposed to me, I was flabbergasted by the simplicity of it - it really does account for many of the problems I had encountered when interacting with people...

Yes! Thank you for your words - they supported me
I got to that by myself - but it's really simple and explain a lot about my differences from people I watch around me.
But I would like to point that it's the "Parent" subpersonality (state) that, in my opinion, I lack (and live fine without).
Because my 'Child' and 'Adult' are inseparable: I feel emotionally and think by me mind at the same time. My emotions are reflected in my very body in every moment of time - I just learnt very long to notice them and to read MY OWN body's language.
It's just (that puzzled my psychologist till she accepted my way) - I need to understand the real world situation and AFTER that I can sort out my PLENTY of emotions about it.
Besides - my emotions are ALWAYS ambivalent: because I consider the situation simultaneously from my 'child'-part (my memories about the past state of things) and from my 'adult'-part (my current reasonable assessment).
For example: I sold my father's piece of land - and I was simultaneously: sad about parting with one of places of my memories about him (he died few years ago) and I was joyful about getting rid of the high-maintence property I could not financially afford keeping.
My emotions do not rip me apart - but, on countrary, they help me make really think-through decisions.
It's just NATURAL. I think and feel AT ONCE! Because I basically live.

 

[Larisa]

Hi Larisa - I am interested in Transactional Analysis (the arm of psychology that Eric Berne started all those years ago when he identified the Parent, Child and Adult ego states.) I am working with a psychotherapist that has come to the same conclusion - that Aspies are only have the adult available - no child or parent, and the reason we are so often misunderstood is that we don't switch between them... It means that we are formal, businesslike, logical, truthful and focused.

I wish to explain more my consideration on the very theory of Transactional Analysis.
I thought a lot and came to conclusion that there was the mistake from the begining: with describing the properties of the states (Parent, Child and Adult). Like 'Child' is the only one who has emotions and 'real wants', 'Adult' - the only one who has reason and operates the mind.
I watched real children (and took some part in raising my niece) and I noticed that children live under constant pressure of adults' prohibitions.
HOW can they know what they WANT? They obsessed with 'forbidden fruits'.
And if to look at a family then it becomes obvious that the child is the most conservative member of this small comunity: children feel stress about parting with their old favourite clothes and shoes, stubborn about their favourite toys and places to be. Children feel the hardest stress about moving to other place to live.
So the real property any child possesses from the birth and loses in the process of 'upbringing' is inderstanding what they DO NOT want: the changes that makes them unhappy.
The adults press the child to submit to them till the child stops feel for themselves and starts totally depend on other adults' opinion.
And a notion about 'child's wants' - a stable desire forms only after the child learnt the Parent state: it's not what this child considers to make him happy - it's what the society around him considers 'cool'. Even 'to have a big family' or 'to be an astronaut'. Real child's interests lie in exploring the what they see around before passing the judgement.
I read that about 3 years age a child learns to imagine their parents all the time - like they always after his shoulder with their demands and prohibitions.
A human being ALWAYS has emotions, and denying that capability for the 'Adult' state - is absolutely wrong. Any child is capable of thinking and enjoys considering new knowledge in his field of interests - and denying that capability for the 'Child' state is wrong.
But is's done to be silent about the real implications of the 'Parent' state that REALLY responsible for all the wars and violence in human activity: justifying 'punishment' instead of talking like equals, blind submittance to orders from authorities, justifying killing people on the ideological grounds and so on.
It's nor 'Child', neither 'Adult' - it's 'Parent' who is in charge of that all.

 

[nagibator]

Hi Larisa - I am interested in Transactional Analysis (the arm of psychology that Eric Berne started all those years ago when he identified the Parent, Child and Adult ego states.) I am working with a psychotherapist that has come to the same conclusion - that Aspies are only have the adult available - no child or parent, and the reason we are so often misunderstood is that we don't switch between them... It means that we are formal, businesslike, logical, truthful and focused. It doesn't mean we don't know how to have fun, relax or be responsible for a child, or get angry and throw a tantrum. But it does mean that our reasons for doing so are different. When this idea was first proposed to me, I was flabbergasted by the simplicity of it - it really does account for many of the problems I had encountered when interacting with people...

Everyone's experiences will be different where this is concerned, but I thought I'd throw this into the mix: I was considered a poor reader in my primary school because I didn't want to read story books. When the spelling and comprehension tests came around, however, it showed I had the highest reading age of any child in the school. I can only assume this was rooted in my tendency to stay in the library at break times, reading reference books about birds and dinosaurs, and learning the language patterns present in their Latin names... Oddly, I was always terrible at maths tests, even though my coursework kept me in the top sets throughout my schooling (I later found out I had dyscalculia, so I could grasp to methodology but got the calculations wrong.) Strengths and weaknesses are often misinterpreted in developing children... On the other hand, I think I'll always retain my social naivete and love of giant inflatables - it's one of the things I love about being an Aspie - I can be deadly serious - talking quantum physics or climate change etc. but I can't walk past a bouncy castle...

Holy EXPLETIVE!

Looks like I also have dyscalculia, as I too know how to do it but somehow use the wrong numbers x) Even once happened on a tax return.

The thing with being a child and an adult at the same time rings true to me. I almost lost my inner child because my adult could not understand that other people have an inner parent. Which as @Larisa so brilliantly points out is a rule system that was not arrived at independently.

 

[nagibator]

Okay, now if we can be adult and kid at the same time and that for what seems to me like at least age 7 or 8 what does that mean in terms of others? Are they always kids only kept in check by their parent? That's kind of what it seems like to me. However when I let my inner Adult out others seem to be able to be adultly too. Almost like I show them how it works or something.

 

[Ambi]

Something that just crossed my mind a moment ago but has come up every now and again is if Aspies mentally develop slower than NTs. Even when I was around 21 I didn’t really feel like an adult. Oh sure by 18 society deemed me an adult but even with three extra years to really settle into adult life I didn’t quite get there. Oh sure a lot of it probably had to do with me barely working but even then I don’t suspected I could have found love, got married, have children, a full time job, living on my own, and whatever else come with adulthood. I don’t know if I would have been emotionally or mentally ready for that stuff yet. I suppose arguable many NTs might not be ready for that too around 18. I felt like and actually still do feel like I’m living like an older teenager without grade school. Since that’s just my own experience, anyone has similar ones that might lead to some sort of common ground? Maybe I'm not wording the question correctly and someone will come along and point that out?

I have read that Aspies tend to be emotionally immature for their chronological age - it made a lot of sense to me for myself - kind of embarrassing to swallow at first, but it explains a lot for me. I'm in my late 30's and feel emotionally like a teen or sometimes older, but not my age at all. It makes me a late bloomer in all ways. I read we can keep developing, but we usually stay behind our chronological age.

 

[nagibator]

I have read that Aspies tend to be emotionally immature for their chronological age - it made a lot of sense to me for myself - kind of embarrassing to swallow at first, but it explains a lot for me. I'm in my late 30's and feel emotionally like a teen or sometimes older, but not my age at all. It makes me a late bloomer in all ways. I read we can keep developing, but we usually stay behind our chronological age.

Could you explain what emotionally developed means, is and looks like?
How would you know that you are developed?

 

[Nemo]

If we're talking about mental development, I was smarter than NTs 2 years older than me. Socially, I prefer to talk to people older than me. Emotionally.. I don't know. I can control my emotions and hide them well, but when I let them out I can have tantrums like a 2 year old.

 

[Nemo]

I was 10

I was 12.

 

[ksheehan88]

Emotionally... Yes, I've not matured yet I don't think. I struggle to control my emotions and they are always extremes.

Socially... generally speaking I can't stand people my own age. We have little in common and I find them to be much too bitchy and dramatic. I prefer the company of people a bit older than me.