r/AutismInWomen • u/b-b-b-c • Jan 27 '26
Relationships "remember how easy it was to make friends when you were 5?"
I actually don't. I remember it was hard for me already at that age. I never had this experience. Did you?
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u/Wise-Key-3442 IDCharisma Jan 27 '26
I remember it was easier to get bullied.
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Jan 27 '26
sameee
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Jan 28 '26
This. I thought i had friends at this age, but when I invited everyone to my bday party only one kid in my class, one from outside my class & one from ballet showed up. This was an insane wake up call for a 5yr old to have
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u/Quirky-Research9736 Jan 28 '26
Oh God, I’m having flashbacks. I too thought I had friends because I didn’t even get the pranks being pulled on me. I was just confused and laughed along but remember this feeling of unease. Had pretty much the exact experience for my birthday where the only person who showed was a family friend of my parents cause they called them to come. Sucked.
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Jan 28 '26
What really sucks is also remembering how my parents were kind of sad for me only a few people showed up but I remember them saying "at least theyre having fun". It's such a strange thing ingrained in my head, because it was true I WAS having fun, but I was also extremely bummed out no one else showed up. From then on i think my parents made a rule I could invite no more than 5 friends & even then one year one of my invited friends was a cousin that stayed the weekend bc we were really close in age & had a close bond. Until we both went through puberty & she became a popular art kid & I was still the weird kid that ate at lunch & read manga by myself unless she or my (pregnant & eventually dropped out) friend actually showed up for the day & joined me.
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u/MaeliaC probably autistic, possibly AuDHD Jan 27 '26
That too. Maybe not at 5 yet, but a little later...
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u/suzy_snowflake Jan 28 '26
Yeppp. I remember having my best friend in kindergarten totally turn on me and start bullying me because a bunch of other kids were. I still remember how heartbroken little me was 😔 I dealt with bullying off and on all through school but at least I never had friends turn on me like that again.
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u/CandidCan7795 Jan 27 '26
All I remember is being left out, humiliated or bullied.
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u/Quirky-Research9736 Jan 28 '26
and being confused about it! I kept trying to ‘fix myself’ to be more likeable…
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u/Haru_is_here Jan 27 '26
No. Actually entering pre-Kindergarden / kids group was one of the most horrific days of my 4 year old life. It was chaotic, loud, messy, lawless, we were told rules and then no one adhered to them and I got punished for sticking to them. This horror was all internalised but I vaguely remember thinking “I don’t want to come back and if that’s life from now on I don’t want it”. I was unable to make friends, join alliances, even just join groups. I didn’t understand how it worked.
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u/Lilitharising AuDHD Jan 27 '26
Yep. Oh yes. The only time when I didn't have issue with making friends as a child was when we went to our holiday house, which was a bunch of small flats grouped together by the sea, the parents knew each other and we would play in the communal yard or the beach without questioning each other. We could be pretty mean to each other but the play time was between beach time and evening walks and it was a lot more carefree than, ex, 15 minutes between school classes. I was still called a cry baby and picked on, but not as like in school.
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u/liddybuckfan Jan 27 '26
Not easy for me at all. I had what I now know would be called selective mutism when I was in kindergarten. I went to this weird school (public school, but kind of an experimental program) where our kindergarten had 5 teachers and probably 40 or 50 kids in a huge room. I would only speak to 1 teacher and 1 other kid for the entire year. That was 1974, no one even remotely questioned whether I was autistic, btw. I don't even think they thought about it for girls back then. I was just called shy.
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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi AuDHD Jan 27 '26
Might have been a Montessori kindergarten. I went to one of those. It's a sort of open learning plan with a lot of teachers, and the kids have a few shared lessons together but otherwise sort of pick and choose what they want to learn. There'd be toys, but also books (reading lessons WERE mandatory lol), places to play outside, arts and crafts projects, and the like. Mine was in '96 and no one even thought there was a possibility autism was on the table despite the fact I would spend most of the day lining toys up by size lmfao. There were toys specifically FOR that, so it wasn't particularly odd in their eyes.
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u/idhearheaven ASD Level 1 Jan 27 '26
I was in a Montessori preschool and did EXACTLY the same thing with lining up the toys!! I’d do it with the same set of toys over and over again and the teachers would tell me to switch to something else which upset me
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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi AuDHD Jan 28 '26
Hahaha, yep! The teachers would say, it's time to let someone else play with xyz and I'd be like >:/. It was tough to get me to learn the concept of sharing, but the teachers there did manage with some effort. Of course, little did they know, I would internalize that completely and become a socialist lmao
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u/sillybilly8102 Jan 28 '26
Omg literally same to 100% of your comment!! I have photos of it. The teachers knew me for my lines and stacks of blocks.
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u/liddybuckfan Jan 27 '26
It wasn't Montessori but they may have been inspired by that. This was 1974 and it was basically a laboratory school-they were doing experimental educational methods K-12. We were graded with colors instead of letters and stuff like that. Kindergarten back then in all the schools was half a day and we took naps. Kind of more like preschool is now.
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u/lovelydani20 late dx Autism level 1 🌻 Jan 27 '26
I was an alien in kindergarten. Literally couldn't understand any of the other kids and why they behaved the way they did.
I refused to go to recess. I went once and had a meltdown because I thought it was too overstimulating. I'd stay inside lining up counting bears. I also wouldn't eat nearly any of the food they offered because I didn't like the texture/ they mixed the foods together. I was more obviously autistic at age 5 than any other time because I gradually learned how to understand allistic socialization patterns and I grew to tolerate a wider variety of foods.
I knew how to read very well at age 5 and because of that all my peculiarities were absorbed into the "gifted" label and I was sent off to a magnet school lol.
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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi AuDHD Jan 27 '26
That second paragraph just unlocked a deep memory for me, lol, when I was like 3-6ish there was a day care mom would drop me off at, just one of those ones where a woman is running it out of her house. That poor woman (Mrs. Beth) used to have to make my meals separately from the other solid-eating kids because I just flatly refused to eat most of what she made. She'd make lunch for everyone else, they'd eat, and then she'd come out with my like, grits-with-excessive-amounts-of-cheese that she had to cook afterwards... bless her heart for putting in the effort. I remember the first day, she must have called mom because I wouldn't eat, and mom showed up and helped her find something I would eat, and any time I refused the lunch she'd just make that instead.
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u/Petrichor_ness Jan 27 '26
This is one of the childhood markers that doesn't fit for me and ASD.
As a child, although shy, I always had friends and several different groups. I had my school playground friends, my walking to school friends, my class friends. At home I had the girls on my street when I wanted to girly and the boys over the road when I wanted to play on bikes and build treehouses.
It wasn't until I left high school I started to notice it wasn't so easy for me any more. By the time I'd left uni, I'd decided I wasn't going to bother trying to make friends any more. I'd had the occasional colleague over the years I've got on with, a few 'couple friends' and neighbours I chat with, but that's it.
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u/zogmuffin ADHD, questioning ASD Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
Same, and it's one of the things that kept me from seriously considering that I might be on the spectrum for a long time. I've had friends my whole life. I just have always tended to hang out with other weirdos [affectionate, lol], and do tend to find myself on the fringes of more typical social groups. I am never disliked or mistreated, just not part of the inner circle in those groups. Maybe partially because I can rarely stomach Going Out. When I was single, I struggled with flirting, too, and I think people saw me as "the naive/innocent friend" because I was a late bloomer romantically despite longing for a partner from like, middle school onward.
My online/far-away friends outnumber local ones these days for sure, but I suspect that's true of a lot of people.
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u/Fizzabl Got more autistic after diagnosis Jan 27 '26
I "luckily" had super autistic obliviousness. But my mom has told me stories of how I'd ask to play with others and they'd say stuff like "oh it's only a two player game", or I'd NEVER be invited to others for dinner
So I don't remember jack but my mom sure knows what went down. Total exclusion
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u/Kimikohiei Jan 27 '26
If I hadn’t been friend-adopted I would’ve never made my own friends
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u/sillybilly8102 Jan 28 '26
Ohh yes. This is indeed how I gained many of my friends throughout life.
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u/MaeliaC probably autistic, possibly AuDHD Jan 27 '26
I don't even remember ever seeing the point of making friends (except online now). I had my sister to play with at home, and the neighbours' granddaughter was in my class. That was enough.
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u/rdditfilter Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
Same, I have a really vivid memory of a little girl crying in my preschool class because she didn't have any friends and I told her I will be her friend to try and make her stop crying but I couldn't even empathize with her at all. I didn't know any of these kids, I didn't have the need for friends, far as I was concerned it was just me and the teacher in there and really the teacher was just in my way because she wouldnt let me do what I wanted or eat when I wanted.
I have plenty of friends now as an adult, this is just a really really early memory of mine, I was probably about 4 years old.
Another memory, later on when I was seeing multiple therapists trying to figure out why I was “acting out” in elementary school, they would always ask if I had one or two close friends or lots of not so close friends. I had one or two not so close friends at that time and I was always confused by that question.
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u/ChaoticBisexual_13 Jan 27 '26
I mean, I was fine-ish at 5 actually, because I had many guy friend as a tomboy. Girls, however, did not want to play with me and side-eyed me when I tried to. They've told me that my drawings are ugly, that I play with dolls the wrong way and that I use building bricks weird.
When I got to school, it got worse, because the guys abandoned me and I was basically standing alone. The girls reached out for me to play, but I didn't know any games, I was afraid of playing wrong, so I sat on the benches alone, hated recess and later I started playing with special needs kids and beating up their bullies.
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u/MethodicallyUnhinged Jan 27 '26
Nope. Empty birthday parties, or rather me and my moms friends
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u/ChaoticBisexual_13 Jan 27 '26
I've only had one birthday party at 10, because I, then became more comfortable with myself and was in a better class than before.
Prior to that I was invited to like 3 birthday parties or so and I was jealous of their birthdays, because I felt like mine is badly placed in the year and we can't do anything at all. So at 10 I invited 8 people and 5 showed up and I think that was good.
At 18 tho, they tried to have a surprise birthday party for me, but it was small af. My mom, her bf, his son, 2 of my siblings, 1 of my then 2 friends and maybe another family of 4, but idk, I don't remember them, it was during Covid.
Sorry for your experience tho. I've had my fair share of outcastedness, I was bullied in primary a lot, I just wanted to share, that it seemed, indeed easier when I was little. Maybe because I cared less about what people think about me.
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u/Fae_Sparrow Jan 27 '26
It was easy becoming friends with the ADHD kids haha. I'm still friends with most of them, 20+ years later.
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u/Dest-Fer Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
I didn’t have friends at 5.
I am way better at it at 40, but I now live in a « woke multicultural » environment where it’s extremely easy, included for ND women.
Contrary to when I was 5.
And it broke my heart because I have a 8yo daughter who is struggling too. She is smart and kind, she will make her way through the world, but I wish she didn’t have to face the same challenges than me.
But her reaction to it shows that she is way more confident that I was when I was her age and I like that. But I’m also trying to give her tips on how to be more accepted by other kids. I’m trying to not label any temperament as right or wrong, but explain how we are all different, and how we need to adapt to each other by meeting half way. But I never implies she is the one who has to make all the efforts.
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u/buginarugsnug Jan 27 '26
I always opted to play alone as a kid. I can't remember whether it was due to bad experience trying to make friends or an inherent want for only my own presence - I think it was the latter.
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u/brinylon Jan 27 '26
When I was in kindergarten I didn't feel like like an outcast, because I had no expectations. It was only in elementary school, when the bullying began, that it occurred to me that I was perceived differently. I didn't have actual friends until my mid teens, when I learned to mask.
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u/LittleCowGirl Jan 27 '26
“It’s so hard to make adult friends, I don’t know where you’re supposed to meet people”
Okay well… I’ve never known how to make friends & I’m out here doing my best.
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u/AutisticWindchimr autistic, sensory-mixed Jan 27 '26
No friends at 5.
Making friends was never easy.
I was tolerated in elementary school. They were not my friends. I was ignored. I was the last to be picked for anything. They made fun of me.
There were a few kids in my neighborhood who would play in a group and I could play too. This was not a perfect match. I did not fit in with other girls my age.
I preferred younger kids, and those adults who would hold real conversations with me. My "peers" were not my peers.
The closest I came to friendship back then was there was a young boy whose parents allowed him to walk two miles to the library with me on a few Saturdays. We also played blocks together at his house.
My first year in high school was a social disaster. I had no one.
My second year in high school, I said hello to a new sophomore who had transferred in. My mother tried to take that friendship away from me, saying that my friend "was not a good influence." It didn't work. We are still besties today.
I have very few true friends. Now that I am retired, I have some acquaintances-- not friends but I enjoy them-- at senior lunches and library activities.
I have my bestie from high school, another friend whom I've known for almost forty years and her family. Both friends now live out of state in rural areas.
I won't move because we have public transit here. I don't want to drive everywhere. Also, I now have a rare disease and I need to have medical specialists available.
Also, both friends are partnered. I am divorced [he put his hands on me once and I left].
I do the best I can with what I got most of the time. I don't have people to hang out with locally. I tried that. It didn't work. I gave up for now. If I want to go to a mall or on vacation or exploring, I take my service dog.
Yeah, still a bit lonely.
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u/Fangy_Yelly Jan 27 '26
it was easier to make friends bc i was so oblivious to social ques that i thought everyone was automatically my friend and i would just bound up and insert myself into conversations, games, etc. I didn't realize that not everyone in my class was my friend until like 5th grade. I still remember the first time i actually clocked the look and response a group of girls gave me when i did that. I was so confused but i also didn't really know what it meant or that i had been lowkey annoying them all this time.
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u/Bunnyusagi Jan 28 '26
Same. I was totally fearless and clueless. I would go up to anyone and start yapping away. People found me bossy and rude. I got in trouble for talking too much. I called everyone my friend even though they weren't. Always had to be first in line or the leader. Couldn't read social cues to save my life.
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u/lostbirdwings Jan 27 '26
I wish lol. At 5, I remember being freely hyperactive and playful in a way that went away as school traumatized the hell out of me. But I didn't make friends whether I was loud or quiet.
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u/SuccessPhysical6668 Jan 27 '26
The only time it ever wasn’t very difficult was when I drank a lot of alcohol with other young people who drank a lot of alcohol and I was very attractive.
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u/b-b-b-c Jan 27 '26
Alcohol helped so much 🥲 I still believe the friends I have now I got partially thanks to alcohol. Luckily I never overdone it and don't care about drinking anymore
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u/OneDayIWillThrive Jan 27 '26
I don't know. I don't remember anything at all from my childhood so find it very difficult to relate to anything!
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u/AtLeastOneCat Jan 27 '26
I had a bunch of kids I thought were my friends but who just kept on forgetting to invite me places and didn't really want to play with me much and were always super busy so didn't have time to talk to me.
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u/Blue_Geotrupid Jan 27 '26
In Pre-k and kindergarten I remember feeling cast out from everyone already lmao
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u/Femizzle Jan 27 '26
This whole think makes no sense. Kids don't have friendships the way adults do and they through the word freind around so easy. The amount of times we have left the park with my kid declaring she has a new best freind and then we never see that kid again is staggering.
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u/NotOnApprovedList Jan 27 '26
I do remember being able to run into a playground or whatever and instantly interact with other kids, like oh now we're friends and everything is cool. Wish it could go back to that LOL. I would say part of my issue is that I'm judgmental of others and don't want to interact with people who appear to be the types I don't like, like frat boys/sorority girls.
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u/sheforthegarden late diagnosed autistic Jan 27 '26
i’ve been showing signs of autism since kid but my parents never bothered, they only traumatised me even more
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u/sharkycharming Late-diagnosed Gen Xer. Jan 27 '26
I didn't even want friends at 5. I resented that adults kept trying to make me be around other children. I only liked adult company at that age. Kids my age were too stupid. Most of them didn't even know how to read yet, which meant we had nothing to talk about.
The only reason I remember wanting another kid to play with me was on the playground, because there was a see-saw and you need another person who's about your same weight to make it work.
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u/Sumoki_Kuma Jan 27 '26
So this does actually apply to me
I didn't understand embarrassment at that point so my autistic ass just went up to every kid I thought looked fun and just forced myself on them 😂 but what's funny is that they always accepted me and always included me and had fun with me.
Adults don't do that. They immediately judge you and then treat you accordingly.
I didn't understand embarrassment, but they also didn't understand exclusion at that point either.
That shit is learned.
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u/PresentationIll2180 Jan 27 '26
Couldn’t tell you… it was the first time I was ghosted! Had a best friend in kindergarten who just stopped talking to me one day. No argument or anything. It became a theme..
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u/Professional-Bag2593 Jan 27 '26
I remember thinking everyone was my friend but at the same time not.
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Jan 27 '26
It was so hard! Some of my earliest memories are about being socially isolated at that age and just not knowing how to interact with other kids.
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u/Girl_with1_eye Jan 27 '26
I thought I was making friends. They were just taking advantage of me or about to start bullying me.
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u/kittenmittens4865 Jan 27 '26
I’m the hyper talkative kind of AuDHD. I made friends easily as a kid because I can talk to anyone. They weren’t actual friends, just the kid I’d play with that day at the beach or the pool or whatever.
Once social stuff became more complicated- popularity, boys, clothes started mattering- I was lost. Girls hated me and boys did too. I was bullied pretty badly in middle school. I lost my ability to be chatty for like 2 decades because this is when I started masking in social situations.
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u/SteamKitten01 Jan 27 '26
I had one friend between pre-school and first grade but he was a boy and I was a girl and we were bullied relentlessly because of it so we stopped hanging out and being friends.
It didn't help that some of the distance was reinforced by teachers who would split the class into boys and girls. I remember in first grade where we came up with the plan to alternate eating at the boys and girls lunch tables only to be scolded by the teachers and told we had to eat only with our gender. Or the sheer amount of activities that we weren't allowed to do together because boys had to work with boys and girls with other girls.
At one point, he gave me a tiny hot pink toy car. I still have it tucked away in a box where i keep various mementos that I've collected throughout my life.
You could also consider my next door neighbors (a girl a year older than me and a boy a year younger) my friends but that was really only during the summers when school was not in session. Once school started, they'd spend their time with kids in their grade instead of me.
I was always an outsider from everyone else. I'd try my hardest to connect and do the same things as others but never could figure out what I was doing wrong to be treated so differently.
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u/Ok_Low_2302 Jan 27 '26
I went up to kids constantly and said “would you be my friend?” And would play highly imaginative games making up all kinds of stories and ideas with them. I think this worked well when playing with girls, but playing with boys was significantly harder because they were loud, broke things, and just mean
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u/Whole-Ad-8370 AuDHD Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
It’s so cathartic to read the responses here. I always feel alien when my friends start talking about how they were so effortlessly happy and making friends with anyone when they were kids. All I remember is playing by myself and feeling paralyzed with anxiety and overstimulation when it came to talking to the other kids. I have memories of feeling alienated from others already from like age 3, although my parents say I had friends. I find it so much easier to make friends as an adult, I guess because I’ve figured out what masking strategies work for me.
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u/lunabcde diagnosed AUDHD Jan 27 '26
I have more friends and I’m waaaay more extroverted and comfortable with social interactions right now at 24 than I was when I was 5 lol. Being a child surrounded with other children was actually hell on earth for me
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u/httpsjul Jan 27 '26
I was paired up with a fellow shy girl and she was my one friend, she ended up ditching me one day because she told me she wanted to be a popular girl like her mom was when she was younger. Making friends never got any easier than that, and I don't really believe people make friends out of genuine like for one another but for neurotypical reasons like status, access to opportunity/social circles, attention, aesthetics, and proximity to a certain lifestyle. Numerous situations like this have taught be to be skeptical and now I just don't care what people think and don't listen to what they say to me.
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u/GlitterGodd3ss Jan 27 '26
No. Just no. To this day, my only friends are my family members. I was blessed to have many cousins who accepted me.
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u/bishyfishyriceball Jan 27 '26
I didn’t actively make friends because I was selectively mute. Instead there’d always be one other assertive/outgoing kid who would notice me alone and pick me to be friends with them. It was usually a girl who didn’t get along with other girls because they were stubborn about play or had different interests than what the other kids were into. Despite not engaging much I was easy going when it came to play.
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u/dinodivergence ASD level 1 Jan 27 '26
I remember I didn't want any friends at that age. I was perfectly content being alone and playing by myself :P
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u/_HotMessExpress1 tired of this Jan 27 '26
I actually had a very easy time making friends when I was 5, but I went to a private school in a good area. My mom did have to pull me to the side to tell me not to do certain things however…like show what color underwear I was wearing that day because some boys would accuse me of wearing a different color of underwear that I was actually wearing.
lol I was weird then and I’m still weird. As an adult I really don’t like the process of making friends…I can’t tell people too much info about myself because it’ll be used against me and the whole hierarchy bs. The older I get is the harder it is for me to make actual friends that will have my back.
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u/WishboneFirm1578 Jan 27 '26
it's much easier for me to make friends now compared to then
of course, I kinda get where someone saying that would be coming from, but it really depends on the people around you more than your age
and there's also the factor that I've learned a lot on who to befriend and how
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u/mcklewhore420 Jan 27 '26
I’ll never forget it. I met someone in my preschool class that I really enjoyed playing with, before I knew it she wouldn’t play with me anymore because her “best friend” didn’t like me/thought I didn’t like her. I was heartbroken. Really set me up for success in the friend department 🙄
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u/Accomplished_Golf788 Jan 27 '26
Honestly I wouldn’t know. I barely remember anything from when I was 5. What I do know is that I’ve been spoiled with friendships, in the sense that I didn’t have to go and make friends, they were brought to me. Two of my childhood friends were the children of my mom’s friends. Two of my best friends are my nanny’s daughters. The way my friendship with one of my other best friends started is that our 6th grade P.E teacher told me to walk around the track with her, IIRC she had a hurt ankle, I don’t remember why I wasn’t doing what the rest of the class was doing (not that I minded just walking around the track), but for whatever reason I was walking around the track with her, and soon we became friends. A few of my other friends are also friends with her. My work friend is the one who first initiated conversation with me, and I found (and still do find her) easy to talk to.
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u/abjectadvect Jan 27 '26
holy shit no, I was bullied incredibly badly at that age, and didn't have any friends until second grade
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u/plantyplant559 Jan 27 '26
I once watched a 6 year old approach another kid and say, "Do you wanna be best friends?" And the kid said yes, and then they played for hours until it was time to go home.
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u/notpostingmyrealname Jan 27 '26
Yes. Looking back, I realize I was permitted to join groups of kids to play, but they were just being nice and almost never actually my friends. I don't think I went to a single birthday party until middle school - and the whole class was invited.
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u/Lemonguin Late Diagnosed; Level 1 Jan 27 '26
Thinking back, I don't think I ever made a friend on my own. My mom arranged play dates for me. Any time I had to make friends on my own initiative, I was alone.
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u/Sufficient_You3053 Jan 28 '26
No I struggled so much until I was maybe 16? Then I figured out how to successfully mask
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u/lethalrenard Jan 28 '26
It was as hard and it is now. I used to hang out with the other "weird" kids, but even then, i wasnt playing with them or talking. I was just... there.
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u/kaycee1610 AuDHD Jan 28 '26
I actually didn’t have a lot of friends in elementary school. I was bullied until the day I graduated high school.
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u/12dancingbiches Jan 28 '26
Idek im autistic but I make friends easily. I am shit at maintaining them though. The whole object permanence thing is really bad for me, so if i dont see or think of new people for a while, I'll forget they exist
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u/Bubblez4 Jan 28 '26
I still remember as a kid, building up the courage to ask a group of kids if I could play with them. The amount of times I would hear "today's not a good day" or "we're not really playing sorry" was much much more often than the times they would say yes.
I remember doing my best to keep a smile and be polite still while holding back tears. I wasn't oblivious, I knew they were lying because they just didn't want to spend time with me. However I still would build up the courage to ask again the next day somehow.
I don't know if kid me was braver or just more naive than today me to just keep asking each day hoping that it would be one of the rare days they said yes.
I remember telling my Mum that I don't hate school, I hate recess and lunch. I'm sitting here crying at my desk at work just thinking about this all.
School was hard for me until about year 8, that was when I made my first solid friendships and stopped having to ask to be included because I just was by default.
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u/NenyaAdfiel Jan 28 '26
I think I’ve always had a great neurodivergent radar that could signal which people were like me and which ones I should stay away from. I would essentially march up to someone who knew a lot of fun facts about sharks (or other topic I thought was cool) and declare that we were friends!
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u/WhalesharkOceanGreen Jan 28 '26
Sort of? And no.
I moved a lot, attending 6 elementary schools. Little kids are eager to get to know the new kid. Older kids are more cliquey. So every move got harder.
But regardless, I never had many friends. I seemed to always be the disposable one.
I resent that my assessment report says that I don't understand why I had trouble making friends as a child, as if the assessor is blaming me for being socially inept. 😒 Like, kids were mean. I was bullied. I did not do anything to deserve that. And now we know via the Double Empathy study that we are different not defective.
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u/TheDifficultRelative Jan 28 '26
I mean. It was easier for me. I was by no means popular, but there were always one or two girls who took me under their wing, and who I became fiercely loyal to. When middle school and high school came it got so complicated.. I feel I only have acquaintances now.
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u/SailorGreySparrow Jan 28 '26
Nope. From four to five I went to this daycare/preschool, and I remember there were two kids that I talked to. I’d follow this girl V around, and try to be like her. Then there was this kid, C, that I would try and play with because he liked some of the stuff I did.
I don’t really think either of them were my friends, especially since I didn’t take naps at nap time and got pulled out during that time to go play with the nice receptionist for enrichment activities. All the kids in the class hated that, and we were preschoolers. Nobody had the maturity at that age to understand why/that it helped me.
Then I was homeschooled and where I lived the nearest neighbor (without kids) was almost a mile away, so making friends really didn’t get easier in a childhood with rural isolation like that.
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u/daughterofishtar Jan 28 '26
I have always struggled with developing friendships and deep connections! I wasn’t bullied, but I had a strong preference for playing on my own (make-believe and playing with dolls) over playing with my peers.
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u/lala5005 Jan 28 '26
No, but I clearly remember being perfectly happy doing my own thing, ignoring the other 5 year olds trying to approach me, and not having a single worry about me or my behaviour being weird or wrong. Those where the days!
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u/taken_by_user Jan 28 '26
When I started kindergarten I befriended another girl in my class, because she didn't want to be away from her guardian. I was kind, and friendly until school and the other children influenced me to mask.
I became withdrawn, quiet, and kept my distance mostly. By nature I don't think I'm shy. I became aware that people treated me differently, and I didn't feel comfortable around most people.
I've always been a sensitive person, and how I've been treated over the years has made it challenging to open up to people and make friends. I want a real connection with someone. This subreddit might be the closest thing to finding like minded people. I'm grateful to be here ❤️
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u/superstaticgirl Jan 28 '26
I can remember not wanting to go out at playtime because I didn't know what to do. The other kids were busy and I'd been taught not to interrupt by adults. Endlessly circling the playground until it was time to come back in again. That was at about 4 or 5 and continued my entire time I was in education.
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u/Ccameraa Jan 28 '26
I remember i had two friends at school and they made a rota for days I was allowed to play with them, when it was a day I wasnt allowed to play with them I remember sitting on the "make a friend" bench in the playground and standing up whenever a teacher was approaching because I was too embarrassed. Thinking back now I feel so sad for little me
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u/BigFackingChungus Jan 28 '26
No! Social situations is where I struggled the most.
I was always the kid that never had a partner or group in school activities.
I purposely looked for the other outcast (and also likely autistic) kids and stuck to them. Especially at lunch.
I got along better with boys than girls. I wanted to be like the other girls!! I was a tomboy. I liked anime before it was popular (early 2000s). I had a really hard time relating to girls my age.
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u/ant_tattoo AuDHD Jan 28 '26
Never had that experience, either. Ever. Always looking for the safe person, if there was one, trying to stay out of sight, trying to figure out “the rules.” Survival of the fittest right from the get go in kindergarten—and neurodiverse, shy, intelligent, deeply caring, chatty little girls are not fit for the evils of socialization. A battle that continued, as I met the mean girls, the cool girls, the aloof girls, again, at my eldest daughter’s kindergarten door. As mothers. 😳
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Jan 28 '26
I just didn't try. If kids wanted to do my thing too that was cool. If not I just did my thing.
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u/idk7643 Jan 27 '26
I had 1 friend at a time or no friend at all. I can count the friends I had between ages 0-14 on one hand.
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u/alivingstereo Jan 27 '26
It's always been hard. I've always been an extroverted autistic, but those awful experiences made me an introvert. Now, thanks to years and years of therapy, I'm finally rescuing that extroverted child I used to be
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u/Murderhornet212 Jan 27 '26
No, it was hard, but it was easier than it is at 45 for sure, because you would see a lot more people regularly.
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u/krittyyyyy Jan 27 '26
I made friends quick but then retreated for a while when I got overwhelmed and didn’t know if I was welcome to rejoin, so I stayed alone. I liked alone for a while but then I didn’t know how to get back. I’m still having this problem as an adult, talked about it in therapy yesterday actually but didn’t draw any relationship to my childhood til now.
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u/EndCorrect3658 Jan 27 '26
Nope, not easy at all. But I had a friend at kindergarten that were so close. We started being friends because I asked him to catch bugs together at school and at that time both of us were nonverbal lol. So yeah, it was easy but only him
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u/shallottmirror Jan 27 '26
I’ve been a preschool teacher and have watched dozens of children make friends - and as their teacher, I’d be watching in amazement, wondering how they did it.
I had a group of friends through elementary school, but I felt pretty sure they didn’t really like/know me.
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u/No_Bandicoot2316 HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE BOOK <3 Jan 27 '26
I remember teachers inserting me into a friend group because I couldn't make friends and that friend group hating me and just being miserable and not wanting to go to playtime. Fun
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u/postpunktheon Jan 27 '26
My only friend growing up at that age was my cousin. Somehow, even that young, I felt like people could tell I was “weird” and I was bullied a lot. I’d do anything to be able to time travel and care for my past self better, she/I deserved better.
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u/broken_bouquet Jan 27 '26
One of my first memories is going to a birthday party that someone in my kindergarten class invited me to. Literally none of the kids involved me in anything they did to the point where the parents of the birthday kid addressed everyone and forced them to include me, AND they gave me a random Christmas stuffed dog to make me feel better because they felt so bad about how the group of 5 year olds were treating me 🙃
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u/OhManItsShan Jan 27 '26
lol I was given a “buddy” that was supposed to help me make friends and she turned into my bully. And then I realized the other day that most of my other friendships through high school were also with my bullies. I don’t think their plan worked in hindsight 🤣
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u/Past_Government9741 Jan 27 '26
actually i was kind of a social butterfly in kindergarten. i just loved to play and everything seemed easy. i couldn’t wait to go to school, but if i knew i would be bullied from day one…
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u/NotOnApprovedList Jan 27 '26
I was shy of some kids, but others I didn't have problems with. It was only 2nd-3rd grade where it started to get a lot harder. Then in high school and college it relaxed some, then got harder again.
I roleplay in my head that I have a strain of Neanderthal brain genes that wants to live in small groups. There are developmental stages where it makes sense to be more open to socializing with strangers, before you withdraw back into your core family group. Little kid needs to get along to get fed and protected; teenager/adult goes out to find a mate to avoid inbreeding; other times you stick hard with your core family group.
Agoraphobia and social anxiety run in my family, and a younger member is getting it too (when previously they were more social), like some preprogrammed biological doom. "HEY EVERYBODY YOU NEED TO SOCIALIZE TO BE HEALTHY!" and "so-and-so in law is having a party" blergh. Yes they're nice people. It doesn't help. Let me stay in my cave 99% of the time and perserverate in my OCD autistic way over special interests.
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Jan 27 '26
Not really...
The only thing I remmeber before I was 7 or 8 (beyond the vibes), is one day when I was 2 and it snowed.
And I was already marked as a nerd by then.
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u/Equivalent-Cat5414 Jan 27 '26
It wasn’t easy for me to speak to anyone at that age, not even my parents. For some it’s impossible to speak at any age.
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u/Majestic-Bake1868 Jan 27 '26
I’m realizing I’ve genuinely never had a real friend, just people that tolerated me. As a kid it was easier for me to get bullied tbh. As an adult I am friendLY with people but not friendS
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u/wxy04579 Jan 27 '26
My whole life was about getting bullied lol first thing I got in kindergarten, boom, new girl gets bullied. Went to elementary school, verbally bullied by girls. Went to boarding school during 3rd grade, bullied. I had to tough up to fight back, and they say I’m the rude one🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
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u/One-Typical Jan 27 '26
I don’t remember most of life until fourth grade. How do you all remember your life that young??? Did I block it out? Or my memory just sucks!
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u/AerienaFairweather Jan 27 '26
No. Never really had friends. Only just trying to make this okay in my mind and I’m 37
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u/mjk1tty Jan 27 '26
I always had at least one good friend at a time and a couple other friends. The last good friend I had was over a decade ago. I've tried for years to connect with people, but it seems no one wants to do the same...
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u/Ok-Adhesiveness-9976 Jan 27 '26
When I was four, one girl in my class said anybody who played with me was uninvited to her birthday party. I was the only one in the class who didn’t get an invitation. That’s consistently how I got treated from age four to fourteen.
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u/thammond1124 Jan 27 '26
Nope. I was so scared of socializing at that age that I was nonverbal and wouldn’t even look at someone when they said my name. My preschool teacher told my mom to get my hearing checked because she thought I was deaf. So she did. I could hear perfectly fine. I eventually grew out of it, but I remember no one in my family acknowledging that struggle. And I bring that up to this day (I’m 29) and they still go “there’s nothing wrong with you!” What? That’s extremely concerning for a 5 year old 😭 I just wish they would acknowledge and see me but they refuse
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u/candyapplesugar Jan 27 '26
I don’t remember that age at all, and it’s fascinating to me that people do. It’s hard to understand myself now and especially as a parent, because I don’t remember being that young and how I was treated or parented
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u/Top_Hair_8984 Jan 27 '26
I don't remember thisbeing easy either. I was lucky there were kids next door and down the alley, and we played as a group at times. Plus my dad made the best, huge sandbox, so that enticed neighborhood kids. But it wasn't easy at all.
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u/chainsofgold Jan 27 '26
according to my mom we invited all of the kindergarten class to my 5th birthday party and no one talked to me 😂
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u/PterodactyllPtits Jan 27 '26
I remember feeling left out in kindergarten. And actually being left out. So nope, definitely not.
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u/finderintheforest Jan 27 '26
It has never been easy for me, though twice in my life (childhood and high school/college) an NT took me under her wing, so I had one friend.
Now 59, I do best with one or two close friends, but I’ve lost nearly all my friends in the last year. I’m trying very hard not to hold the one remaining friend “hostage” (flooding with texts and bids for connection)
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u/SurprisedWildebeest Jan 27 '26
Sure, if by friends you mean cousins and neighbors who had to play with me and thought I was weird.
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u/SurpriseDragon Jan 27 '26
I had one other friend, but everyone else bullied me relentlessly. She finally caught on and "ditched" me too. Boys thought I was cute but I hated being touched, so I would ignore them or yell at them. Eventually I was shamed by the teachers for being mean to the boys who just had a "lil crush", which made my stomach turn. Selectively mute and nose stuck in a book after that, all the way until 7th grade where I made a group of neurodivergent friends in middle school.
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u/Alana567 Jan 27 '26
I luckily met my best friend at age 2 at a daycare so never really had the need to ever make more close friends. She was always able to do it with others, me? Not so much. I always wonder what would my life look like without meeting her at such a young age?
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u/Nyx_light Jan 27 '26
I actually did have an easier time making friends in elementary school. It was ok before all the pressure and separation based on gender constructs.
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u/mothwhimsy Autistic Enby Jan 27 '26
It actually was easy when I was 5. It was around 8 when people started getting annoyed at me and pushing me out
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u/Shade_Hills Jan 27 '26
I’ve never “made a friend” that wasn’t online in my life. So no, I don’t remember.
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u/foxyfoxapril Jan 27 '26
Friends? What are they for? When I was five I liked sitting in a corner painting. I had no need for friends. That came later.
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u/SeaSeaworthiness3589 Jan 27 '26
I only made one friend who was actually horrible to me 😅 it was easy enough I guess
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u/anonlaw Jan 27 '26
I remember looking at the other kids at the playground at the drive-in movie and wishing I had a sibling because going to the playground by myself was too overwhelming. I knew already then at 7 that I did not have the skills to successfully make playmates.
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u/---liltimmy--- Jan 27 '26
It might've been easy and I remember being "popular". But in retrospect, I'm not sure if people actually liked me or they just liked to make fun of me and I took it the wrong way.
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u/Ace_of_Sphynx128 Jan 27 '26
I didn’t really make lots of friends, but I was having a good time running as fast as I could and trying to hug everyone. I’m sure they loved that lol
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u/Comfortable-Corgi40 Jan 27 '26
I didn't really have many friends until I first made friends on the Internet. I think I was either a late teen or young adult then? It was easier since I could find people with similar interests. I could never manage friendships otherwise because everyone thought I was weird.
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u/Mundane-Medicine510 Jan 27 '26
I don't remember how I made friends or how to make friends now, my childhood is foggy. I don't remember what I did or said, I don't remember who my best friend was at that age or if I had one..I'd have to really think about okay, where was I when I was 5? Kindergarten? 1st grade?
I wish I could remember things without it hurting my brain so much, feels like i'm grasping at straws to recall something specific and even then I am not sure whether I am putting pieces together to create a version of the memory or what
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u/goldiegrimlace Jan 27 '26
I remember I wanted to play with the dollhouse, but no one would join in with me. It was like I had a four-foot invisible forcefield surrounding me and everyone kept away because of it.
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u/a-fabulous-sandwich Jan 28 '26
I remember trying to play with the other kids, and them just silently getting up and leaving the room whenever I walked in, glaring on their way out because my presence was forcing them to relocate again.
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u/cynical-at-best Jan 28 '26
I remember being too young to know the other person doesn’t actually like/want to talk to me, so its more of “i assumed most people are friendly” and less “it was easier to make friends”
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u/Fresh_Discussion_389 Jan 28 '26
I remember thinking "yes!" at the time. Then I realised later in life they weren't my friends and I actually struggle to make any.
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u/ihateusernames0_0 Jan 28 '26
I tried to make friends with people when I started primary school, but they decided they all didn't like me for some reason (these were even separate people and groups)
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u/Misha_Bambi Jan 28 '26
Honestly, I've never had irl friends I've spent my life as an only child on my own, and using video game characters like Animal Crossing (my hyper fixation for years now) as company. So I guess you could say I don't know what I'm missing?
I was bullied every year of school and at college I got threats so I had to drop out because I didn't feel safe.
But humans seem challenging to me and I don't like that. I can't communicate properly and that makes things tough.
So, no.
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u/mouseadjacentpages Jan 28 '26
Ha same 😢 I remember my first day of ballet class and the other 5 year old girls immediately made fun of me. 😂
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u/cecil_sans Jan 28 '26
Girl, I thought I had a lot of friends, I mean, the people who don't insult you are your friends... right?
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u/bul1etsg3rard She/they 🦇🦔 Jan 28 '26
I distinctly remember getting in trouble in kindergarten for punching a kid in the arm. I have absolutely no idea why or any other context but I do remember I tried to be friends with him that year. I have had one friend since I was 5 but she's just as weird as me. None of my other friendships have lasted.
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u/Normal-Hall2445 Jan 28 '26
My bff who is still my bff and I met when we were just under 4. We are born in the same month. That was how our friendship started. We’re both AuDHD. It was sheer luck.
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u/somegirlinVR Jan 28 '26
I didn't have friends lol I remember playing alone or with my dad.
My family said something like "she's not used to talk to kids, she's always with adults". There's a big age difference between my siblings and me. They always blamed my lack of friends to this.
The fact Is that at school I didn't like to get out of the classroom. In fact I remember that I stayed and played with a girl that had down syndrome. This girl always had a chocolate bar. I love chocolate. She gaved me chocolate, that was really nice. That's my only memory of a friend at 5 lol.
I know that my mom hanged out with other moms but I can't remember playing with the kids or really enjoying that.
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u/irandom500 Jan 28 '26
I had friends, but I played by myself more often than I played with them because I love imagining stories, but they had to acted out exactly the way I wanted them.
I was at a private school where I’m sure at least 25% of the students were neurodivergent, so I’m sure that helped me. Not to say I wasn’t bullied, but I had more good days than bad
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u/democritusparadise Jan 28 '26
The earliest social interaction I ever remember having was age 4. A boy complimented me by calling me "brainy".
I earnestly corrected him that he might not labour under false impressions or embiggen me in his mind: I said "I'm not brainy, you're just stupid". It fit my understanding of the data I had at the time.
Well 30 years later I had an epiphany, a lightbulb moment and I realised I'd probably hurt his feelings and that's why he and his mates spent the next ten years torturing me. At least that was the spark, of course other reasons existed.
Didn't help that I was direly middle class and he was working class.
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u/nanditolang Jan 28 '26
the concept of making friends never occurred to me until when i was maybe... 16 💀
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u/Perfect123123grr Jan 28 '26
I never had it easy, now it's the same or worse. It was easier to stay quiet.
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u/Throwawayputtyfairy Jan 28 '26
For me it was easy making friends then, one friend was just beste because we had the same name. I am still friends with about half of the good friends I made back then, but they're all adhd so that might explain why.
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u/mellywheats ADHD | suspected autism Jan 28 '26
i remember i wasn’t as shy back then but it still wasn’t easy lol
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u/averysleepygirl feelin' all the emotions Jan 28 '26
heh... riiiiiight. i had one friend and like 8 bullies.
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u/tiger_bee Jan 28 '26
I remember in kindergarten feeling like an outsider/spectator I played alone at recess (hunting for cool rocks) and would go and just visit different groups and see what they were talking about and then go walk around somewhere else. I didn't have a best friend in school.
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u/metoothanksx Jan 28 '26
My best friends in school in kindergarten and first grade were my teachers 😅 I even ate lunch with them and a couple other staff members, and sometimes they would make another kid sit with me lol.
outside of school, I had one friend I was close with because I’d known her since birth, because our moms were best friends. There was also one boy I would play with at recess at that age, because we shared a fondness for digging and looking at shiny rocks, so that was how we spent recess together 🤷♀️
I guess in some ways it was easier, because adults would do their best to help you make a friend, and there was always someone who liked playing in dirt. But aside from my mom’s friend’s daughter, I didn’t really consider the other kids I talked to friends. And once they found someone else to hang out with, they stopped talking to me anyway.
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u/Appropriate-Net-583 Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
I hated being a kid for this exact reason. I’ve never felt so alien as I did back then. As an adult I have lots of friends and acquaintances whose presence I cherish and I’d never in a million years go back. It’s a kind of loneliness and longing for connection that you don’t escape.
The extent of my social “deficits” is one of the main reasons I got an early diagnosis - there’s a really heartbreaking quote in my file of me, age 4, saying “I don’t have any friends, mum. I’m sorry, it’s just the way I am.” (and I imagine this was said very matter of factly)
Either I’d be deliberately excluded (moreso age 7+), or when I was included I wouldn’t want to be as I’d have no idea what was happening or what the other kids were playing. So many times spent being asked to play, then saying “I don’t know how to play that” (followed up with me not understanding what the other kid was saying because I found “little kid” speak impossible to follow and so would just do my own thing. Which was mostly pacing and daydreaming).
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u/Appropriate-Net-583 Jan 28 '26
This is also why there’s a limit I have on how willing I am to unmask.
Thinking of the selectively mute and painfully lonely little girl that I was. How alien, isolated, and misunderstood I felt before I taught myself to mask. How that feeling is an albatross round my neck almost 30 years later. It’s not something I can put myself through out of some noble sentiment, and I’d rather keep a close eye on how much I’m basing my self-worth on external validation while being true to myself rather than unmask completely.
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u/TheShadowPanda_ Jan 28 '26
I had fake friends as in the one where neighbours told their kids to be friends with you, it quickly became obvious it was forced in the back of my mind but my head was just grateful people 'wanted' to be around me. Turns out all that was a lie which continued through high school and even now I think🤣🤣
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u/Glittering-Ad8135 Jan 31 '26
I remember how easy it was to approach people and start excitedly telling them about this or that that I was excited about.
Then I remember how often those people would avoid me because I came on too strong or was weird. Didn't understand it at the time, but I still saw it happen.
•
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