What were some typical childhood things most kids have done but you couldn’t (and still can’t)?

[Misty Avich]

I am in Mensa, but had a C average in high school because of daydreaming and drawing, instead of doing homework.

What kinds of things do you like to draw?

People, mostly. I used to draw me and my family and friends a lot, in scenes. Sometimes I'd draw me in a scene I was worrying about, or excited about.
I'd also draw South Park and The Simpsons pictures.

Nowadays I draw people wearing different clothes that I like to make up designs of.

 

[Crossbreed]

Nowadays I draw people wearing different clothes that I like to make up designs of.

That is evidence of a special interest...
(BTW, my figures & clothing designs were always superhero costumes.)

 

[Misty Avich]

That is evidence of a special interest...
(BTW, my figures & clothing designs were always superhero costumes.)

It's quite normal for a woman to be into fashion. I don't know much about clothes or textiles, I just like drawing it. Hobbies and interests aren't just for autistics. My NT cousin is an excellent artist and has a room dedicated to all her drawings. She draws Disney princesses on canvases but they're absolutely brilliant, and she paints them perfectly. She does it alone, it's not part of a social interest. She also likes dressing up as celebrities in her room.

 

[bard]

I couldn't read properly until I was 7, but it might be because I didn't want to.

I couldn't say the whole alphabet until I was 8, thanks to a preschool video I used to watch that sung the alphabet at the beginning but went A B C D E F G H l J K elamenapee, elamenapee Q R S T U V W X Y Z. That middle bit always threw me and was responsible for making the alphabet confusing to me after K.

I was behind on math. When I was around age 6-8 we done math using these plastic cubes that you click together, but I spent more time playing with them than I did at learning any math. I'd often get detentions because I was the last to finish any math work if there wasn't a teacher's assistant in the classroom to help me.
When I got older I was put into a small group for math with other kids who also struggled at math.

I wasn't the brightest kid at school, which is why I doubt my diagnosis.

I'm not sure how being playful instead of focused means lacking intelligence...

The diagnosis doubt is one of those things, which everyone has their opinions, and in some ways psychology leaves a great deal of precision to be desired that is outside of meds...

Still, if it was just a matter of socially awkward, that's kind of the most basic 'maybe autism' and only because you were playful instead of focused is why they probably pursued it. If you were getting fantastic grades and you were socially awkward they might not have regardless of the truth of the matter

 

[Misty Avich]

I'm not sure how being playful instead of focused means lacking intelligence...

Well it doesn't but it just means I was probably averagely intelligent rather than little professor. Most high-functioning autistics diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome say they were little professors as children, like preferring to read books alone than to play with other children on the adventure playground.

 

[Jumpinbare]

If I had been allowed to take a book to the playground, I would have been sitting and reading. As it was, I wandered aimlessly around till it was time to go back inside.

 

[Misty Avich]

If I had been allowed to take a book to the playground, I would have been sitting and reading. As it was, I wandered aimlessly around till it was time to go back inside.

That's what this girl did, who was a couple of years younger than me. She had Fragile-X syndrome but maybe autistic as well, and she used to just wander around or stand, always alone. I was the opposite - always playing with friends. Making friends was so much easier as a child, it only became hard to be accepted when I got to around 11 years old.
But as a little kid I liked recess because it gave me a break from sitting in a classroom learning. I could "let off steam". I remember there was a new piece of play equipment in the playground and I really wanted to play on it as much as all the other children did, so a teacher had to supervise to make sure too many children weren't all on it at once. When it was my go (along with a few others) I enjoyed myself, chasing my cousin and other kids we knew around on it and just being a normal kid. I always felt depressed and sometimes even anxious when the bell rang ready to go back to class. Unless we had swimming. I couldn't swim, but I still loved swimming sessions at school - especially when they got all the pool toys out and we could just play.

 

[FoxLovinPat]

I found PE classes daunting as soon as the team games were introduced, because I could never understand the rules of the game. So I'd just absent-mindedly do what I thought was right then let the team down in such humiliating ways. I remember one sports day when I was about 9, I was doing one of those obstacle courses, with lots of parents watching, and no matter how hard I tried, everyone else ran ahead of me and through the obstacles, while I was miles behind, feeling hopeless. I think it was the anxiety of being watched by lots of children and parents, as normally I quite enjoyed obstacle courses.
After that, my mum always let me have sports day off school because she knew how anxious it made me. I don't think children should be forced to participate in team games. They should be extracurricular activities. In mandatory PE classes children should be doing real exercises and games that don't involve harsh competition.

Oh right I suppose that's another thing that I had troubles with that the other kids didn't. But ya I hated PE in school, and I also didn't understand or like how much team sports was involved in it.

It also made me super self conscious of myself because all the other kids seemed to be doing everything required of them in PE just fine. I dunno why or how but I had troubles with even the basic exercises, yet I'd see other classmates showing off and acting like such things were beneath them by making it more challenging for themselves, like doing one handed pushups or clapping in between pushups.
As for the team sports in PE, they were often touted as a fun break from all the workout routines and others seemed to enjoy them but I just did the bare minimum for participation because I had no choice but to. It seemed to me that they had this assumption that "All boys like sports!", which I despised because well I don't and I hated essentially being forced to participate in Sports via PE.
I also hated when they had us run track and timed us on it, I was always last and it was awful and no fun.
Oh and I also hated when they'd take us to the weight room because I had no interest in bulking up my muscles, so I'd just sit around awkwardly waiting for the period to be over whenever we'd be taken there.

Another thing I hated about PE was that it was graded which I never understood, like why grade PE at all? I mean the grade doesn't even count against your GPA, and I think it only mattered if you were in sports, so why have a graded system for all instead of just only for the kids in sports? it just made me feel even more self conscious because I ended up with the lowest grade possible in PE because I either didn't participate or just performed poorly.

 

[bard]

That's what this girl did, who was a couple of years younger than me. She had Fragile-X syndrome but maybe autistic as well, and she used to just wander around or stand, always alone. I was the opposite - always playing with friends. Making friends was so much easier as a child, it only became hard to be accepted when I got to around 11 years old.
But as a little kid I liked recess because it gave me a break from sitting in a classroom learning. I could "let off steam". I remember there was a new piece of play equipment in the playground and I really wanted to play on it as much as all the other children did, so a teacher had to supervise to make sure too many children weren't all on it at once. When it was my go (along with a few others) I enjoyed myself, chasing my cousin and other kids we knew around on it and just being a normal kid. I always felt depressed and sometimes even anxious when the bell rang ready to go back to class. Unless we had swimming. I couldn't swim, but I still loved swimming sessions at school - especially when they got all the pool toys out and we could just play.

Agree, I think... maybe...
I made friends or enemies by fighting them by the time I was eleven. It seemed like before the cliques happened, kids just accepted you or didn't accept you based on how much alike you were to them in one thing or the other. One of the most losing things I did was avoid the clubs that were mocked at school, like the chess club. There was something we had in common. We both knew how to play chess and on average last a while on the board. I made a friend in 5th fighting, lost a potential friend in 6th fighting, made a friend in music in 7th, made a friend in math in 8th, and... i'm not certain I had any friends after that because I made bad choices like not going to the clubs people said were full of nerds. There's a good chance I would have had a number of friends instead of zero if I had made wiser choices about clubs.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I never heard the term "nerd" until I was in college (Georgia Tech), which was ironic, because Tech probably had the highest per capita number of nerds south of M.I.T.
The only non-nerds I knew there were the jocks.
I embraced the term wholeheartedly.
For some reason, they had a term for uber-nerds - lizards. That never made sense to me, but I pretty much fit that definition. Nerd sounded better. (And way better than dork or spaz from ealier schools)

 

[bard]

I never heard the term "nerd" until I was in college (Georgia Tech), which was ironic, because Tech probably had the highest per capita number of nerds south of M.I.T.
The only non-nerds I knew there were the jocks.
I embraced the term wholeheartedly.
For some reason, they had a term for uber-nerds - lizards. That never made sense to me, but I pretty much fit that definition. Nerd sounded better. (And way better than dork or spaz from ealier schools)

Hence, in that embracing, you were socially wiser than I.