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At what age did things start going wrong for you socially?

Full Steam

Full Steam

The renegade master
V.I.P Member
I can remember no problems at all before comprehensive school. I made friends easily and everyone seemed on the same level.

Then I went up to high school and everything changed, and became difficult. It seems like the biggest factor that happened though was that I dropped behind my peers in social age and interests and never caught up again.

The age gap seemed maybe 4 years, but that's very had to estimate of course. I do remember dropping interests one by one as I was either teased about them or noticed that no one else did that any more.

I've been thinking and it seems to me like this age gap (or rather societies reaction to it) has been the root cause of anxiety, at least social. I'm wondering if I'm predisposed to anxiety and that this social lag caused it to manifest.
 
Full Steam said:
I can remember no problems at all before comprehensive school. I made friends easily and everyone seemed on the same level.

Then I went up to high school and everything changed, and became difficult. It seems like the biggest factor that happened though was that I dropped behind my peers in social age and interests and never caught up again.

The age gap seemed maybe 4 years, but that's very had to estimate of course. I do remember dropping interests one by one as I was either teased about them or noticed that no one else did that any more.
Click to expand...

This could essentially be my life. At primary school, there were kids who had closer friends within the year group, but overall everyone was very friendly with everyone else. Then high school happened, and yeah..not so much any more.
 
Hah! Easy answer! Social challenges began as soon as my neurology developed enough for tactile defensiveness to set in. Imagine picking up a baby, and-- she stiffens abruptly in your hands! Becomes instantly rigid as you try to pick her up! Clamps her arms down HARD on her little sides as you try to hoist her, back arched and stiffened!

Yup.... people would lose interest in picking me up/interacting with me REAL fast.

My little brain interpreted things as: Yes, people are unfathomable.... and they automatically do not
like me.

As my behavior in other areas was also odd, and always will be, people did/ do. feel incompetent <<<---- that's the crux ... about how to interact with me, and thus try to avoid doing so.
 
All of them, even in preschool I could never be around the other kids... elementary school I tended to spend recess either aline or in a teachers room... middle school bad bullying started... high school I started sleeping with anybody that would be with me because it was the only way I could feign friendships in my head... college was problems and problems... now I have cats, lots of cats, kitties are your friends! Kitty love! =^-^=
 
I never really had friends, prefered to hang out on my own. Didn't understand the games the other kids played. But I think it was in grade 4, so around 10 years of age, that the bullying started. I vaguely became aware that other kids, for some reason, didn't like me. They would gang up on me and tell lies to get me in trouble. I could not think of any single thing that I would have done to for them to treat me this way.

Past age 12, the bullying was brutal and relentless.
 
I guess I was bullied in elementary school I just didn't see it because it didn't make sense to me at the time, kids would do stuff blame it on me start picking on me then I'd be in trouble for enticing them,I often had to write ******** sorry letters to other kids but in my head at the time that would mean we were going to be friends lol,
 
5th grade. At least that is when I became aware of it. One of my first painful confusing isolating memories form a camp during the school year: everyone else, including my favorite teacher playing volleyball and insisting that I do as well. I was petrified and simply refused, reading alone in a cabin the whole afternoon. That teacher whom I adored like a second mother, never looked at me the same way after that. And I began to learn the reality that I would forever be personna non grata, wherever I went.
 
I was really not much of a talker at all, but I was a pretty child and I was hyper-polite and helpful to adults, realistically that goes a long way. I was homeschooled from grade two through high school and my family moved around a lot as well so I didn't ever really get the bullying. However, when I was in the 9th grade we settled down for awhile in my mom's hometown of fewer than 500 people and I tried to socialize like my NT sister, (basically the town had no library I had no license and kindle wasn't a thing yet) It was epically bad and I didn't fit at all and they all cried a lot. I got in trouble for making them cry and that sparked my special interest in "people and how they work" just to stay out of trouble. Before that, I didn't socialize much but what little I did do was successful, or at least not tear-inducing. But I think that's more to do with the fact that younger kids haven't learned to conform to social constructs as strictly as teens, so they don't notice the otherness of s**t I did/do as much, IMO.
 
In Primary school... aged 5 to 12... I was with kids that I had known all my life. They just accepted my eccentricities and I accepted theirs because, well, that's the life, that's the people we knew since not long after we got out of nappies.

When I was 12 we moved to another city and so a new school and it was immediately disastrous from then on. Lots of rejection and bullying and teachers not quite sure what to do with me.

I'm fairly sure that even if we didn't move cities, disaster would still have struck when I started high school.

For a long time I didn't get why. I didn't see what they seemed to see in me. As I said in another thread, I have let as much of those memories fade away. A part of my life to be chopped out.
 
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Middle school was when I started getting bullied by the kids I hung out with (it was never very bad-- in fact, I didn't realize it was bullying until quite recently), but I'd say high school was when I kind of "diverged." I just wasn't interested in teenage things, I remember ignoring older kids who talked to me (because I couldn't identify their motive), and I liked focusing on my interests. But I was determined to fit in, and the last two years of high school, I accomplished that even though I didn't have the close, talk-y female friendships other girls did. I did the stereotypical "female aspie" thing of observing others and putting it all together. It helped that I was really good at a niche subject (music) and my friends were all into that as well. It was kind of a bubble. I think I ended high school quite well-liked.

And then, as I put it, the "level" spiked again at university-- no more structure, everyone was social all the time-- and I never really caught up after that.... I feel like as I get older, the more I'm different from other adults my age.
 
Probably High School. It was all so different. A big building, lots of students, it was very overwhelming and I don't think I was on the same level emotionally as the rest.
 
Yes, primary school for me was fine. I have very happy memories of it. Children are more naturally accepting, if they are brought up properly. Looking back, I suppose I did puzzle a lot of the other kids, I never liked groups of girls (and still hate groups of women) but my best friends were a little boy who was gay (well, it was obvious even then if you know what I mean) and a couple of quiet girls. It was a very small school too with strict teachers who encouraged us to work alone and wouldn't tolerate talking in class so Aspie heaven, really.

Then I went to secondary school and that was like being deep-fried in hell. And that seems to be so many people's experience. Quite frankly, it is NT kids who need to be on the school psychologist's couch more than the Aspies. Does anyone agree with that? There was a case recently at a school not far from where I live where a young AS boy of about thirteen who had Jewish heritage spoke about his family's experiences of Auschwitz in history class and there was merciless bullying started after that, he had drawings of swastikas stuffed in his bag and all sorts of things. When I read about it my response was, well, that kid was not the one with the special needs. That kid was not the one with the problems.
 
Like others have said, the problems really started in high school. I don't really remember feeling bad in junior (primary) school, although I don't think I had "friends" like others seemed to. In high school, though, I was not a happy camper. There seemed to be a lot of "joining in" - into cliques, activities, sports, gangs... I could never understand how you were supposed to join in (the rules seemed way too complicated) and, more importantly, why most people wanted to!

I have many, many memories of literally everybody else (kids and teachers) urging me to take part in some kind of group activity and me either refusing, or accepting very reluctantly, and really hating it. I was pretty unpopular!

And I realised that many, many kids at high school were just not very nice. "Sociopathic" might be too strong a word (or maybe not), but a lot of them seemed to have absolutely zero empathy for any living creature - human or non-human; they seemed to really enjoy hurting people (and sometimes animals). So I withdrew into my special interests (one of which was observing and theorising about human behaviour). I had no friends at all until age 16.

On the bright side, withdrawing seemed to stop most of the bullying...

Anyway, the last two years of high school were much better, partly because I got better at sensing who would accept me, and partly because there were finally girls at school! I know it's a cliche, but at least some of the girls really did seem a lot more mature than boys of the same age; they were growing out of that teenage sociopathic stage...
 
Right from around 5 and just got worse. At least, 5 is the memory I have of having birthday parties but feeling VERY uncomfortable and a sense of: is it really my birthday party? Couldn't talk to anyone.

I got my first real best friend about 6 year's ago and she helped me to understand the concept of friendship. Now I have to work on not being static about a potential friendship.

I have figured out, though that if I never receive texts, then they are not a friend.

I do get little revelations each day and those just tell me how bad I am at making friends still. How much is too much and how little is too little?
 
Probably about mid way through senior/high school I began to notice some difference and yet despite the fact that they continued to grow through to the final year of school and 6th form (not that everyone will know what 6th form is, it's basically yr/grade 12 + 13) it was more so in my early to mid twenties that I really began to struggle and I developed new and stronger aspie symptoms.
 
Happened around middle school, things started going downhill and not just socially either. Before, in my elementary years (primary for some of you), I was a hyper-talkative, somewhat outgoing high achieving honor roll student. A bit odd and quirky, of course, but that's par for the course...

Beyond that, I began experiencing depression, withdrawal, extreme rages, threats of suicide, and I lost pretty much any motivation to keep up with anything to do with school or social whatever period. Soon as I started working though and entered my "adult" years, reality kicked in pretty quick and sorted things out quite nicely.

I can honestly say I'm doing better - MUCH better - now that those years are behind me and am more aware than ever before, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it was complete hell to deal with.
 
Grade 3, when I changed schools. I had fairly accepting friends in the first school I went to, but after changing schools people noticed I was different and an easy target for bullying. I made one good friend at that school who eventually left because it wasn't cool to hang out with me and she wanted social status.

I'm still struggling with my social life now, but I'm seeing things in new perspectives thanks to my own hard work and now the help of a councellor.
 
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