What age did you guys realise how important socialising and social skills were?

[Shevek]

This awareness has been slowly growing since about age two, with some spurts.

 

[NB79]

i didn't think about 'social skills' but i was very aware i couldn't feel right with others, like other people would do, it created all sorts of anguish, and depression/sadness. Because inside we have needs to socialize like everyone else, but it just doesn't want to work.

 

[AprilR]

My parents were not exactly normal, and i always knew i was different ever since i started school. I just did not know the reason i was different, the term "social skills" "social intelligence" and such. School life was spent hiding from people and trying to mimic them when i have to. It is all a blur now.

Learning about autism and that social skills as a skillset that can be developed and that it is necessary for survival? Waaay late, like in my 20s. I still get surprised when parents around me talk about their child's# social development "and" ability to make friends" because when i was a child those were not important, i just had to get good grades.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

What age did you guys realise how important socialising and social skills were? I think I did around year 5/6 when my desire to be social was compelling me to interact with others. So, I started feeling deeply lonely as I had no person around me to connect with. Not at home or at school. And it's like I suddenly realised that I wasn't alone in the world and that there were people around me, if that makes sense. To this day, I still do not know how to really compute this, how to feel about it. I am as confused now as I was back then on this fact. I can form statements from it from observation and learning but I do not know how to act off of them. I can certainly say that I instinctively feel an urge to act nice, kind and pleasant and that this is right. Besides from that, nothing else. I feel like a child still mentally regarding this.

As a result, my attempts to socialise were cringy, unsatisfying and fruitless. I never met my goal until I came across the concept of suicide later on in year 11. From year 11-13, I promised myself I'd commit suicide at the age of 18. In that period, I had no care of how people saw me or how I treated others as I would not deal with the consequences anyway, so I managed to gain a 'friend group'. I was never truly satisfied with them. I only desired fun in my final years so we what we had was shallow. From what I said, you can probably see that this was partly my fault as I cemented myself as the easy-going, fun friend, which is too weak of a foundation for stronger friendships that would satisfy our nature, or soul or whatever. I've still not found a way to act as uncaring as I did then without thinking of suicide. It's bizarre - the more I take life seriously, the more I fail at endeavours of friendship and learning.
Interestingly, my grades were really good during this period, eventually plummeting as I started taking life seriously, thinking I had a future. But many other things occurred at the same time in year 13, and I could not deal with the stress and lacked guidance.

I don't really know how to conclude. Lol.

Personally, my knowledge of socializing and social skills grew in stages throughout my life.

As a child, it was primarily focused upon social manners, being polite, respect, self discipline, emotional discipline, not hitting other people, etc.

Then, I think it was another few decades of experience, making mistakes, gaining wisdom...but still having a lot of questions.

Then, after I was diagnosed and I took that deep dive into autism that I realized how different I was from others, becoming much more self aware, answering a lot of questions I had about interacting with people, etc. I also realized that there were things I could change...and others that I couldn't.

 

[Jenisautistic]

Probably when I was 15 during and after the attacks on me, I was thinking I would lose all the people that I care about
I realize that without them at the time that I was with them, I wouldn't have anything
Which kind of became the reality in 2015 somewhat

As for ending it, I was too busy and thinking about how to get to my old school again or how to drop out so I wasn't really focused on that
Although the feeling that I had after all this was horrific and still sometimes to this day
Sometimes I still obsess over them because I really cared for them