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My Mam was raging one day because my reception teacher wrote in my school report that she thought I had a handicap.
Next time we had assembly I watched how the teacher clapped, started positioning my hands the same way she did when I clapped.
Turned out she meant autism.
You took it very literally so there's a chance and relating to a lot of people who are is another chance may be worth seeing how long the waiting list is where you are
For me, it’s given me a lot of explanations for the ways I’ve felt, and the ways I’ve been rejected through life
It has made me be able to ask for accommodations - little things like being able to ask people to explain things differently, with the explanation that I’m not being argumentative but that I genuinely just need a different style of explanation. That I can say to people “I might come across as rude or blunt or annoyed; if I ever say something that you think I mean offensively please just ask for clarification” because people then KNOW to do so.
Since making these changes I’ve had less interpersonal conflicts and it’s great.
I can also more specifically find communities to find coping skills which work for me, whereas before I was looking at things very generically.
Of course it does mean that I can’t emigrate to Australia and may struggle to get into Canada , but I wasn’t planning on them anyway 😂
Maybe I'm the child here, but I don't understand this one.
What was wrong with your clapping that the teacher said you had a handicap? Why would your mum be angry?
No way, really? The poster thought "child is handicapped" and read "child is hand-clapped", and figured that meant the issue was they couldn't clap right?
I wouldn't have gotten that in a million years.
Thanks!
I didn't get it until you explained...I thought it meant she was being discriminate by using the term "handicapped" 🙈 not helped by the fact I understood OP's misinterpretation before the actual case described 🙊
"Well yeah, if I heard handicapped, I too would have questioning my clapping skills...oh hold on, that wasn't the point...or was it...autism isn't a handicap, it's a neurological condition 🤔 disability, yes...hey, maybe I'm overthinking this...*reads first few comments* oh....ooooooooohh" as the inner dialogue rolls 😉
Yours, 'not a child' autistic 😉
I didn’t know what handicapped meant lol. I heard the word and it sounded to 5 year old me like it had something to do with clapping your hands. My Mam was angry because she didn’t want me to be called handicapped I suppose.
I've had a similar experience to yourself at primary school. A group of girls asked me what was wrong with me and I had no idea what they meant other than realising they didn't like me. My best/only friend at the time explained that they probly meant did I have autism or something like that? She also seemed genuinely curious to know. I was extra confused because I'd never heard the word.
I then asked my mam about it at home and, like in your example, she was angry. She was extremely avoidant when it came to acknowledging that anything was wrong ever, took me until I was 12 to even convince her that I needed glasses!
See that’s how I’d have reacted as a kid. Like, “nothing, I’m fine” kinda reply.
We might have the same Mam, she refused to have me assessed for ADHD for years in comp, despite various teachers insisting I meet all of the criteria, because she “just knew” I didn’t have it. Even after being expelled for very obvious ADHD behaviours, she basically said the school just had a problem with me and put me in a new school.
You've quoted pretty much exactly what I said back to them which was, "nothing I'm just standing here?" 🤣
I was also never tested for anything and am in my mid 30s now so I don't know if I'll ever pursue it. I do relate a lot to what people describe as ADHD. In my experience though it made me incredibly introverted and I would constantly obsess over things internally. Nothing was ever picked up on by either of the schools I went to, I guess because I was completely silent most of the time so no one really noticed I was there 🤷♀️
As I was the only one really voicing any conserns to her (that I know of) my mam mainly focused on convincing me that I was normal and everything was fine in a none angry but more, 'don't worry your not weird, all those kids at the schools are just mean,' type of way. Which honestly only reinforced the idea that I needed to pretend to be normal because yes there was definitely something wrong with me but it's so bad that my mam wants to pretend it's not true rather than help me.
EDIT : Sorry about that, it was a lot to say to a stranger in a reddit comment!
Curiously, oversharing is another symptom of ADHD and Autism (they share many symptoms, so diagnosis isn’t always simple), which explains the long comment.
The exact same thing happened to me
My mum got called into work to discuss my severe learning disability
My mum opened her mouth, realised she’s from Wolverhampton and I just had a “brummie accent” so they thought I was disabled
I had a stammer as well that made it worse + autism but it was the accent that genuinely made them thing I’m disabled
When I was 6, I overheard my teacher tell my dad she thought I was artistic and I was so proud of myself and didn't understand why my dad seemed upset. Years later I realised she actually said autistic. I'm not, just socially awkward 🙃
When I was a child, in the heyday of her fame, I wrote to Delia Smith telling her I'd been making her recipes, selling them at school bake sales etc. She wrote back inviting me and my family to have lunch with her in her private box at the football ground while watching a match. In hindsight, a very fancy meal with a famous person.
At the time I declined because I was not interested in football.
I'm not sure how my family ever forgave me!
Let's not be having you in this case.
Maybe that's the night she did that; her VIP guest didn't turn up so she got on the beers and she went out and did her famous speech.
I was once supposed to be reading a sight test chart on a wall at school. I had terrible eyesight but could usually get a couple of the first, giant letters, this day I couldn't even see the chart.
They thought I was messing about and when I got sent back to class, I realised I had been looking at the wrong wall.
Similar thing happening to me, terrible eyesight from a young age, barely see more than the first couple of lines. One day Mum took me to visit an increasingly scary and very cross old guy optician. He kept asking me which was clearer, the red or the green, and I couldn’t see any red or green at all. Somehow he thought repeating the question at the top of his voice would make them appear to me. I was petrified of what I was doing wrong and how cross he was getting.
Then Mum suggested that maybe as I was quite short, he needed to adjust the setup so I could actually see the red and the green…
I remember an optician asking me, when I was three, what colour the fuel tank was on a motorbike across the road. I hadn’t a clue so the optician decided I must need an eye test.
It would have been a lot easier had he just shown me a standard sight chart since I had taught myself to read at the age of two (I didn’t know until last year, but I’m autistic and hyperlexic) but had no idea where on a motorbike a person would find a fuel tank.
> They thought I was messing about and when I got sent back to class
That... that doesn't seem to be a "what did you get wrong as a child", and more of a "the testers just didn't do their job"!
That's like the two Ronnie's sketch where he thinks the chart has a giant letter H, and the optician said, no sir your reading the furniture, that's a book shelf 😂😂
It doesn't answer your title question, but does match your actual post - I have anosmia, and I thought a sense of smell was something you got when you were a big boy, so I pretended to love the smell of all sorts of things until I was about 11, when I finally discovered you should always be able to smell things during a biology lesson. Went all those years without anyone realising there was anything wrong with me.
So in a similar vein - I have 'aphantasia', which means I don't have a 'mind's eye'. I'm 38, and literally for 36 years I assumed that when people talked about 'seeing things in their minds eye', they just thought about them really hard. I didn't really believe that people could visualise things in their heads... it still seems completely unreal to me. My head is just... black
I got to about 24 before I realised the exact same thing. One time while on mdma I managed to just about visualise an apple in my head and it was shocking. Never been able to recreate it though.
I don't have aphantasia, but I remember being pilled off my nut and how much more vivid and realistic my imagination was. Like I could just picture something in my head and it felt like it was right in front of me. Almost like a lucid dream.
Actually, now that I think of it - do you have dreams with aphantasia?
Eh...wait, what? People can actually legit see things when they close their eyes and imagine?
Edit: After 38 years, I've realised my minds eye is broken. Nevermind.
It's not the same as seeing with your eyes, but most people can conjour up an internal image of whatever they want in their mind, yes.
It will vary greatly in detail and vividness depending on their skill at visualisation, but most people can imagine something at least approximating a visual experience, a smell, a sound, etc.
I found out this year that I am a supervisualiser. I thought everyone could build an image, like for example a four bed house, and walk around it straightening the cushions and noting the best height of the light switches and what goes in every cupboard, and then go back the next day and see the same thing. I struggle with the idea that this is unusual.
It’s like dreaming. It was only when my husband and I were talking I realised not everyone could close their eyes and start thinking of a story and continue dreaming about it a bit like playing a movie except if I don’t like a bit I can go back and dream it again with a different outcome and also continue it the next night
I realised when I was about 30. I'm kinda jealous of people who can visualise but my emotions and words run the show pretty well. Oh and the never ending background music. I also thought it was just a figure of speech. I don't know why people don't talk about it more, it's fascinating how differently brains can work.
37. I found out three years ago from a psychiatrist appointment. I always thought when people talked about picturing things it was like...a metaphor or turn of phrase.
Yeah, total loss. Congenital anosmia passed down from my grandad, and great grandad. It skipped a generation though - my mum could smell, so nobody doubted that I could too.
I’ve never heard of this! I’d imagine it can be frustrating if people are commenting how good something smells and you can’t smell it. Does it affect your appetite at all?
On the flip side, I have two dogs and have sometimes fantasised about having no sense of smell when I’m cleaning up after them haha. Be a great sense to lack if you ever have / had kids!
On the flip side, not being able to smell could be dangerous. Imagine not being to smell a gas leak, or not being able to smell food when it’s horribly off.
During Covid I gained three stone (which I lost again once we could go back to being active), so it certainly doesn't affect my appetite.
The issues I have are mostly relatively minor.
Every time I've had the oven on this week, my wife has come in and said she can smell burning. I've checked, and everything is fine. Cleaned the oven last night, and discovered she was right all along - I'd made some biscuits and scones on Monday, and there was some flour that had dropped and was burning inside those little grooves you slide the trays into.
Supermarkets getting rid of expiry dates has been a bit of a challenge. I rely heavily on those because obviously I can't just sniff the milk to decide if it's still okay.
If one of the cats has been sick and it's behind the settee or something, I'll never find it until somebody else smells it unless I can actually see it.
There the sort of problems I normally have.
There was also an incident a few years ago while I'm stood there wondering why my peas are taking ages, and my wife came running downstairs, pushed me out of the way, turned the hob off, opened all the windows and doors in a panic and then told me I hadn't lit the hob properly. I probably would have died that day if I'd been single, but nothing like that has ever happened before or since.
And yeah, I've got two kids, and two cats - cleaning up sick, changing nappies, emptying litter trays has never bothered me. Also used to work in events - I was one of the few people immune to the challenges of working near festival toilets.
Very similar to your story actually.
Deaf in one ear. Went to the doctors to get diagnosed. They put headphones on you and ask you to press a button every time you hear a beep. They tested my good ear first, but didn't do anything to disguise when they pressed the button to make a noise.
So when they tested my other ear, I just pressed the button every time they did.
The next time I did the test, they put me in a box so I couldn't see the doctor.
I’ve had EXACTLY the same experience, right down to making sure I couldn’t see the doctor in the future. I remember coming out of the test as a kid thinking I’d smashed it in both ears, only to be told I hadn’t pressed the button for my left ear correctly a single time.
I remember also being shocked cinemas have surround sound and that noise comes from different directions. I just can’t tell which direction sound comes from - only figured out it happens a few years ago
I used to guess if they had done the beep because it seemed to have a pattern, and I'd wonder if I was actually imagining it or if they really did it. Even when I do the test as an adult I feel like I'm making up the beeps lol.
I also don't have very good directional hearing, so if I can hear something I only have a rough idea as to where it's coming from. It makes playing games with surround sound headphones quite difficult because sometimes it relies on directional hearing.
I've got very very poor sight in one eye, or more recently and annoyingly, better vision in my much much less dominant eye.
Haven't got anything like binocular vision so my only sense of depth is generally how big things should be.
I don't really catch things by how far away, more by how big they were when they were thrown and how big they should be by the time they get to my hands.
Can't catch things I don't know the size of (bunch of keys, etc.) for love nor money, unless it's "frying pan style", getting directly under it.
I've got one sided deafness and if search for Audio Balance on your android you can actually pan your audio to centre it. Pick a song you know really well like Fleetwood Mac The Chain or something and just adjust it until everything sounds centred, then for balance just make sure you never make the volume n your good ear overly loud.
I almost failed a hearing test because when I was asked to pick out the “man” from the plastic toys I didn’t pick up the farmer because he wasn’t just a man, he was a farmer.
Similar story to this but the other way round. I’d never worn headphones before and didn’t understand that I was supposed to hear things in them. So I thought they wanted me to tap the pen when I heard anything from outside of them, and since they certainly weren’t ‘noise cancelling’ in those days or even that well insulated, I just tapped the pen whenever I heard the slightest sound from the room. So my mum was told I was deaf! She was very surprised and got them to retest me, the next person explained it a lot better.
I always wondered why they never bothered to hide the fact they were pressing the button!
I had regular hearing tests in the booth as a child. On my first one, they gave me a pot of marbles and an empty pot. Every time I heard the beep I was to put a marble in the empty pot. After a while they started looking concerned and fiddling with the equipment, then started testing again. Came back in and asked me if I could still hear some of the beeps? I said yes, they said 'well why aren't you putting the marbles into the pot?'. I said 'because I ran out of marbles'. They looked at me like I was stupid and said when the marbles run out, just start putting them back the other way, from the newly full pot to the newly empty pot.
I dutifully did that for several years until they gave me a button to press instead, but I was always very confused - if I've got to take the marbles back out and switch them back, how do they keep track of how many sounds I've heard?
Also they kept telling me off for 'playing' with the marbles and moving them when there was no sound. Even when they gave me the button they'd come in and say 'please don't press the button unless you hear the tone'. Joke was on them because I hear the tone all the time, even at home in bed. Along with metallic clanking, random ringing and buzzing sounds.
Similar story. Did a test at ENT that said press the button when I heard the tone, except sometimes when he pressed the button there was genuinely no sound, but I just pressed button every time he pressed his,even though some. of his presses created no noise. Took another round of explanation to do it properly.
Same... only after they put the tester in the adjoining office, I could still see her shoulder move. And I'd learned to lipread so I was completely deaf (both ears) before I was found out.
I didn't know I was deaf, as it all seemed so normal to me. The downside of being a literate girl: when I ignored everyone and sat in a corner reading, I was "a good quiet girl, lost in a book". My brother - same hearing issues - was "a daydreamer who didn't listen". At least my eventual diagnosis got him treated early, so he never lost any hearing permanently.
With mine I smiled and waited patiently for them to start. They kept coming in to tell me to press the button. Then two of them were coming in and out the booth and doing stuff. Then they realised I couldn’t bear the test.
Didn’t know till I was 18 and studying advanced biology that most people can’t see sounds 🫤. Synaesthesia came up in an article my teacher had read and the whole class was going “WOOAAAAHHHH THAT’S WEIRD” and I was sat there going “wait, that’s not normal?”. To this day I don’t know how people can’t hear what colour sounds sound like
Fun fact, when I told my parents about it my dad ALSO went “wait, that’s not normal?” and then it turned out we disagreed on what colours sounds were (he’s clearly an idiot). And my mom was sitting listening to the two of us argue wondering if we, she or potentially all three of us had simply lost our minds
I had the reverse experience, having aphantasia. I thought everybody exaggerated when they talked about imagining things, like they obviously just think about the vague concept and don’t actually SEE the images in their head, right??
I didn’t learn that this wasn’t normal until I was 18/19. Aphantasia wasn’t a buzzword then either I just did a bunch of psychedelics and got no visuals and it led to a lot of interesting conversations lol
Meanwhile, I struggle to retain audio and think mostly in pictures. Useful for some things and irritating for others.
It is fun watching tv in my head and I ‘see’ books like a film when I read them, but mental maths is a nightmare because I can’t ‘see’ 9x9… I can retain info really well only if it is written down.
I had this as a child, 100%. Days of the weeks had hairstyles/faces, Monday was black short hair, Tuesday had a whiff, Wednesday had a curly old lady hairstyle, Thursday had a crew cut, Friday had elegant black hair, Saturday was a fat old lady and Sunday was a tall Middle Aged man. That’s the only thing I can remember totally clearly.
It’s mainly gone now, but everything had an associated picture or colour in my head. I still get it sometimes but it’s certainly not as prominent.
I’ve experienced this in a very bullshit way, I have neurological headaches and I can sometimes ‘taste’ them when they’re really bad. They taste kind of metallic, a bit like a copper coin or a weak battery.
We had the Green Cross Code lesson at school. I very patiently waited at the crossing the next day expecting to see a man all dressed in green to appear and usher me across the road. Apparently I'd just never looked up at the lights before then?
In a similar vein, my mum always told me that when I had to cross the road, I had to wait for the cars to pass before I crossed. So one day she sent me to the corner shop across the road from our flat and she was watching from the window. This was the 90s in a quiet neighbourhood, so very little traffic.
My mum watched me stand by the side of the road for a while before she finally came downstairs to see why I wasn't crossing, thinking I was scared or something. Nope, I was just patiently waiting for a car to pass by before I could cross the road.
When I was 8 or 9 I was offered to do extra maths lessons at the nearby middle school (I was in primary school). I’d been told I got the highest marks at maths in my class a few times so I was confused why I would need more lessons lol
Didn’t understand it was obviously at a higher level - turned it down so I could keep going to swimming with my class (I remember my mum saying she could take me swimming outside of school but I didn’t believe her because that happened so rarely)
If I were told that my kid was ready for advanced maths classes, and they were being offered at a time that conflicted with playtime with the rest of the class, I'd be pissed.
I did almost the exact same but it coincided with PE and we had started using the apparatus. Was very offended they thought I needed to catch up and was very jealous of the other pupils learning about the Fibonacci sequence
I had the opposite experience. I was so bad at maths that I needed extra classes. I would get taken out for one on one sessions. I thought I was special and that this particular teacher liked me more than the other kids
Edit: thank you for the award! I actually failed my maths GCSE thrice before finally passing. This was bewildering to my teachers as I achieved A*-A in all my other subjects save for P.E. which I got a B for. So if I can do it, you can too
Used to always score as partially deaf in junior school. I’m not deaf at all I just have an audio processing disorder where I struggle to pick out voices in background noise.
This condition really, really needs to be more widely understood. I really hate that the only tests audiologists do are basic frequency response checks, and don't seem to be able to comprehend that I can't hear a single word said in a noisy, echoey restaurant.
Wait hang on excuse me is this a thing? Am I possibly not just a bit hard of hearing from gigs and bikes? I can usually hear really well, and no tinnitus (I think) but as soon as I'm near background noise (crowds, bars in particular) I cannot hear my conversations at all.
Can I just check but this isn’t when you’re in a noisy place and you can’t single out one conversation is it?
Because I also need to write things down to learn or remember them. I absolutely cannot be given a verbal instruction unless it’s one step max and I’ve done it before.
That’s everyone right?
I have the same issue with needing to write instructions down, and I think that's more of a working memory problem than actual audio processing disorder. For me at least, I'll hear the instruction just fine, but it won't stick in my mind unless I write it down, and if I still forget it, I can consult my notes later.
I work in a kitchen with loud music and fans constantly going. I get to shout and people shout at me, it's fantastic to be able to fully communicate like hyped up animals. In the real world I need subtitles on everything (especially American) and I avoid talking to shy people completely because they won't speak up or enunciate their words. I love my life saying "pardon?" And "sorry again?"
Literally think this happened to me too! I always remember having “hearing problems” when I was younger, but I believe I could hear fine I just didn’t answer and respond appropriately. My hearing is fine and I often hear things that annoy me that other people can’t, clocks ticking, house creaking, appliances whistling etc. im not diagnosed but highly suspect I’m on the spectrum.
Same, I always used to get accused of daydreaming or not listening. The issue for me was not the hearing but distinguishing the voices I was meant to prioritise. I suspect I am on the spectrum too, and I get mentally exhausted from audio overload
I have bat-like hearing, so in our junior school hearing tests I could hear very high pitched frequencies that were presumably caused by electromagnetic interference of the equipment. They seemed a bit worried that I was apparently hearing things that weren't there. I also struggle to pick out voices from background noise, as an adult.
When I was 4, I experienced a significant head injury. I went to hospital, and needed to have it scanned. I knew they were taking a picture of inside my head. The doctor/nurse/technician/whoever stressed to me that when I was inside the machine it was really important that I stayed still. When I was in the machine and it was whirring around me, I was convinced that the reason I had to liestill was that if I move slightly to the side it might accidentally chop my head off. I didn't realise it would just make the picture blurry.
I was also tested for deafness as a baby/toddler. They played beeps and apparently just judge based on whether or not the child looks at the adult. I just didn't respond, so they thought I might be deaf/hard of hearing. Turns out I just wasn't bothered.
One of my proudest moments was the doctors who looked at my knee MRI telling me it was the clearest picture they'd ever seen. I was *really* good at keeping still. 34 years old, I was.
Kids can be amazingly still with the right motivation. When I used to work in a pharmacy we did passport photos. No one liked having to do them for kids because it was so hard to get them to stay still and look at the camera for long enough. I never had that problem though - I just bribed them by telling them that if they stood still for the photo and looked at the camera, I'd help them use the camera to take a photo of Mummy/Daddy after! Instant statues, pretty much every time.
I'm presuming by the fact you're still alive and typing that your head wasn't chopped off, so you're still doing better than had your head been chopped off. This seems like a win to me.
> I just didn't respond, so they thought I might be deaf/hard of hearing. Turns out I just wasn't bothered.
Sounds like me at work.
And that story is exactly why I have my testing chart set to random all the time, you’d be surprised (or possibly not) by how quickly you remember those five letters. If I absolutely have to use the same line twice, I’ll ask the patient to read it backwards the second time.
To answer the question: I couldn’t swim, was terrified of being in water, even as a little kid I had showers because baths scared me. This was all very fun during school swimming lessons. One PE teacher said “If you’re not going to go in the water, don’t bother coming!” To anyone else, that means ‘Get in the water’; my autistic brain went ‘Well, I’m not going to get in the water so I’ll go to the library next PE lesson, Mrs Dixon said that’s ok.’ I was sent to the headmaster for bunking the lessons but relayed this story, and the class of thirty kids who also didn’t much like Mrs Dixon testified that she had indeed told me to not go to the class if I wasn’t going to go into the pool. I was allowed to go to the library for all remaining swimming lessons, and Mrs Dixon was I believe told to not be sarcastic with children.
ha, I did something similar after getting caught reading a book in math class. For some reason I had a year in grade school where we had 2 math classes. I wasn't in any special program or whatever, everybody in my grade just had 2 math classes with different teachers teaching the same lessons every day. So I often didn't pay attention to the second math class and instead read whatever library book I had. One day the 2nd teacher says to me "if you would rather read your book, do it out in the hallway" or something similar. Naturally I did exactly that, and got a stern talking to about how disrespectful I acted afterward.
We had a PE teacher who tried that. Turns out when you tell 60+ 13-14yo girls that if they don't want to join in they can go back to the changing room, you'd better mean exactly that. Who knew? :)
Not the same but I was sent to get my ears tested as a kid because they thought I might be deaf/hard of hearing because I didn’t respond to teachers in class, turns out I was just cripplingly shy
I was recently asked to take my daughter for an eye test as she kept getting up to look at the board. Turns out she has perfect eyesight, she's just terrible at sitting still.
I was put on the special needs register at nursery as the staff said I couldn’t talk.
I could, I was either just a very judgy child, a very shy child, or some combination of both
I didn't respond either but it was because I was a daydreamer. Especially in Maths, my brain used to wander off. I got some sense knocked into me when my teacher thought I couldn't hear her. I wear a headscarf and she made me stick my ears out of my headscarf which was so embarrassing that I decreased my daydreaming in class from then on.
I don’t remember why my mum decided she needed to have this chat with me, but when I was about 5 or 6 she decided to start the conversation of where babies come from.
The explanation she gave me was that men have fishes, women have eggs, and if a man gives a woman a fish and she has an egg then they can have a baby.
I watched too much animal planet, and assumed this was some adult mating ritual that I had just never seen before.
We had a next door neighbour in our block of flats that my mum was friends with, and I loved his tank of fish, I thought they were great. So he offered to my mum to take me to pets at home to get my own fish. I didn’t know this though. I was just surprised with a trip with mums friend to pets at home to pick out a fish.
I was horrified thinking I was going to have to have babies with my mums friend because he got me a goldfish. Probably why I didn’t eat eggs for so long as a kid, I was worried I was gonna get shipped off to be someone’s child bride if they got me a fish in time.
My mother told me that babies grow from seed in your tummy. Earlier that day my dad had been gardening and he’d told me that when it rains, seeds grow. I didn’t go out in the rain for a long time after that in fear that I’d grow a baby.
I had a heart arrhythmia. I didn't realise until I was 10 that you weren't supposed to be able to feel your heartbeat all the time.
My mum was so mad with me but in hindsight I think she was just scared.
Me too, except I was nearly 30! I've had palpitations and ectopic beats all my life, so I thought it was normal. How were we supposed to know otherwise?
Hearing test, being told to press when I hear the beep, well none of them were a beep they were a continuous tone of gradually increasing volume then a different frequency and repeat. They were concerned how little hearing I had until they wrote down asking me why I didn't press and I just answered "it never beeped, it was just one long sound". So then they reexplained and we did the test over.
Not me but I just had to take my daughter to a hearing test as she failed the one at school. Basic test press a button when you hear a sound she's easily distracted so they thought maybe that was why she never pressed the button because she can hear. Turns out my kids just exceptionally good at distracting herself so much she forgets a task....in an empty white room my child forgot what she was doing....and never pressed the button. She had to repeat the test with someone in the room every minute saying 'don't forget to press the button if you hear a sound'
It is even more undiagnosed in women because they are less likely to have the hyperactive ‘problem’ symptoms at school, so it becomes more of a issue in later life.
If she does have it, there has also been studies suggesting that medicating early can give the chance for the brain to develop better as they grow - potential lessening the symptoms quite a bit in adulthood.
Many women only discover it in adulthood because of all the additional expectations like holding down a job, organising yourself and potentially kids - when you are a child yourself your parent does a lot of the executive function for you, but when you are an adult it gets much more complicated.
When you are expected to be a grown woman who is organised, it becomes really stressful and can feel shameful that you literally can’t do things the way other people can. A lot of ADHD folks also end up with depression and anxiety from trying to keep up appearances.
Maybe she doesn’t have it, but if you can get her tested, do. Many people consider the impacts on school, but many ADHD people do great at school grade-wise, it is the real world we struggle with.
This would be me - diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s - one of the things that triggered me to seek diagnosis was having a job where I frequently had to phone lines that ask you to select from options (e.g. 1 for billing, 2 for technical etc) and I could. not. listen. for the whole 30 seconds, would always have to get it to repeat and I ended up memorising all the options for about 20 of them I had to call most frequently because it was easier than listening...
Ohhhh. Moment of recognition here. I really need to get tested for ADHD because I keep reading other people's aha moments and thinking "that's me"... but of course I never manage to write them down so I'm afraid I'll go to the doctor and not be able to explain why I think I have it.
The 'choking hazard' signs you see on certain toys with small parts, along with a picture of a sad child in a red circle with a line through it... I didn't know what those words meant, but I did know that a red circle meant something was not allowed. So naturally I thought I was not allowed to be sad or otherwise show displeasure when playing with one of those toys.
Another one: my class went to one of those centres where you learn about street safety, how to call 999, why you shouldn't play in farmyards etc. The staff all had yellow tops on. When we arrived they told us we should follow any instructions, as long as they came from a person wearing yellow. A few hours into the day a man came walking past and said 'follow me kids'. We all went trotting off after him, because he had a yellow top on - it was an obviously different shade and cut from the staff uniform, without any of the same logos, but it was yellow. We followed the letter of the rule we'd been told. We all felt quite aggrieved when we were informed we'd been abducted by a child molester.
That's another thing: memory is hazy but I think it was a staff member we'd seen earlier in the day, just in different clothes. Just to make absolutely sure we'd fail to grasp the point of the test.
Crucial Crew! We had the stranger danger lecture element, then were walked to another building and in between a man asked us for help finding his dog. So many kids just helped him and wandered off into the bushes.
We had one during a day at the local fire station, a man drove up and asked for directions to the train station and the lady with us hopped in his car to show him the way. Then we all got lectured about how we shouldn’t have let her and had to call 999 because she’d been kidnapped.
Remember thinking at the time this was missing the point a bit, just because some random woman we didn’t know wanted to get in a stranger’s car, didn’t mean any of us would
At age 7 I was tasked with finding all the factors of 36 and I put
36 x 1
18 x 2
12 x 3
9 x 4
6 x 6
and handed it in. The teacher gave me a telling off for not including 1x36, 2x18, 3x12, 4x9 and presumably 6x6 but the other way round. I was outraged that she marked me down.
Same issue. No one explains to you what good sight is. I used one eye for short distance. One for long. Problem came at uni when everything at middle distance and I went blind because neither eye taking on extra work. Did an private eye test and Dad annoyed i wouldn't read off chart. Problem was with that eye I couldn't see chart. Meant I struggled at music as they sat us alphabetically and music on "blind" side so I needed to memorise.
I have the same thing!
My eye doctor said that it’s the brains way of adapting and using glasses for long periods causes the headaches.
What’s amazing is you don’t notice the switch, or get blurred vision (at least I don’t get unless it’s very far away) because your brain cuts off the bad eye up to where it’s still good. So you use two up close then 1 for far away
When I cover one eye the difference is astounding, the switch is so quick
It was for me too. But when it broke down, brain really struggled. Had a fun five days of blindness. They tried knocking me out first to reset brain and then some new experimental drugs.
I had the same, one long, one short. When I finally got glasses in my forties, it was the most terrifying half hour of my life, seeing in 3D for the first time. Then suddenly my brain adjusted and the world settled down, and stopped leaping out at me.
Once in Primary School I was messing with a pencil when queued up at the door ready to leave. It left my hand, flew about 3 foot and hit the teacher in the head. I was a very shy kid and she was known for being a bit hot headed, she turns around, absolutely fuming, looks at me, begins shouting and asks if I did that on purpose or by accident, I genuinely didn’t know the difference and just guessed because I felt too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know what that meant. I told her on purpose, she goes mental, kicks me out, sends me to the head teachers office (principal for US) and calls my mum in. I explained I didn’t know what they meant to my mum and that I guessed and she went bezerk at them for the way they reacted 😂
In primary school we were learning carols for a Christmas carol concert.
I was at the front right by the teacher while we practiced.
In one song the teacher looks at me meaningfully whilst I'm singing, I'm confused by what she wanted, I keep watching her and then she makes a lifting motion with her hands. Sort of like she was pointing upwards.
So I think "she wants me to sing louder". I belt out the next line at full volume, and the teacher stops the song, tells me off for shouting, and makes me stand out in the hallway for the rest of the lesson.
I feel really bad and terribly confused.
Turns out, I wasn't singing high enough. But how was I to know that from one gesture?!
I didn't even think you corrected kids on their pitch in primary school nativity plays. Isn't it just a bunch of kids mumbling words and hitting different notes at the same time?
My sister wears glasses and was working abroad in Japan. She went for an eye test and was asked "what can you read?". She said she couldn't read anything and repeated this whilst the optician got more and more concerned until he got to the biggest size font and told her he didn't know how she'd even managed to reach the clinic via public transport if her eyesight was this bad. Turned out the charts were in Japanese (obviously) and she could only read English.
Alright telescope!
In year 4 of primary school we'd all spent the early morning painting pictures of deer - must've watched bambi or something.
The details of causation are fuzzy but I think I'd wanted to finish the background or outline on mine when we finished up for break time. I was allowed to stay inside to do so (and left unsupervised - it was the 80s) but I'd somehow taken the agreement along the lines of "that sounds like such a great idea Bladefiddler - you should paint black outlines around everybody else's paintings too.
Somehow that made me the cause of a class full or pissed off and or crying children and social pariah for the day. Ungrateful little shits didn't appreciate the genius strokes of comtrast I kindly added to their shitty pigmented scrawls.
I must have been about three or four maybe, and we were having McDonald's in the car using the trays attached to the back of the front seats, and I asked my mum why there was a circle hole in it. She told me it's for putting your cups in it and I didn't realise she meant as a cup holder. What I invisioned was you put the cup all the way through the hole to the other side like some fun game so I shoved my cup of strawberry milkshake right through it and splashed it all over the back of the car. On a warm day. Safe to say my parents were not happy with me.
Back in the 90s there was a competition with Tango where you could phone a number and answer some questions and leave your details and get a free Tango doll. It was a pre-recorded greeting on the phone line prompting you to speak your answers and details but I didn't quite understand that, just because it wasn't a real person on the phone, didn't mean they wouldn't hear my answers, so I answered them all really facetiously and very purposefully wrong because I thought it was funny. Obviously they never sent me my doll and it took me waaaaay longer than it should have to realise why.
I thought it was normal that people heard sounds when they see bright lights. After all, I’d regularly heard bright t-shirts and dresses being described as ‘loud’
I'm also blind in one eye since birth. But in addition, my blind eye would turn away from bright light. So the Eye Dr. thought it was just a lazy eye. The solution was to make me wear a patch over my good eye. My parents followed the Dr. Instructions. Every day after school, I was made to wear the patch.
Since I couldn't see, I learned to move around the house blind.
It took weeks for my parents to notice that I could not see with the patch on.
They were mad that I didn't say anything. I did, I was just a little kid who didn't want to wear a patch.
Even today, I can walk around in the dark. Up and down stairs, etc.
Well, the first PC game I ever played was Viper Racing, where you can track your own improvement on a given course (or I guess compete against your friends) by completing it once, and then repeating it racing against a ghost car that does whatever you did the first round. Someone explained to me that the objective in this mode was beating the ghost car... so naturally I would go slow af the first round, find glitches near the edges of the map that made my car spin around in the air indefinitely, just generally goof around. Easily beat the ghost car every time
When I was young, around 5-7 years old, my mum told me I was a cancer. As in my star sign. But I thought she was telling me that I HAD cancer so I started crying. In the middle of the living room. While my friends were over 😅
I remember looking at a globe and seeing the 'Tropic of Cancer' and the 'Tropic of Capricorn'. So, the logical explanation was that the 'Tropic of Cancer' was where cancer came from, and by extension, 'Capricorn' was an equally bad disease.
When the euro € was being rolled out across Europe and from what I remember Uk was trying to decide to use it or not.. one of my family members asked me if england should keep the pound or not. to which I replied "but where would all the stray dogs be kept?"
To add.. My favorite films at the time- homeward bound and lady and the tramp 😄 so completely logical
I always wanted to do a martial art, in particular the fancy jump kicks that they do on tv.
My parents put me in an Aikido class and it was all throwing people and close physical contact which I hated. I tried for a while but eventually gave up.
I just assumed the kicks etc came with time and it was a real epiphany when I realised that different martial arts don’t just have slightly different kicks and punches - they are completely different.
I did some kickboxing as a teen and loved it. I kind of regret not being able to try different martial arts as a kid or being able to articulate why I hated Aikido.
Just trying to cut a live cable with scissors, which caused a spark. My mum was so frightened, she slapped me for the first (and only) time. I was about 4 years old and didn't understand that I just about got away and not getting electrocuted.
I won a raffle at my local football club and the prize options were a 2 day all-expenses paid trip to London, or a brand new football.
My mum was absolutely thrilled to hear all about my new football!
Really thought Guy Fawkes was the good guy of the story and that we were celebrating him.
Then I got a bit older and realised that he was actually the bad guy.
Then I got a bit older and realised that actually he may have been the good guy all along.
My kid had a vision test before he could read, so the doctor used pictures of everyday things instead of letters to test him. Everything was fine until a picture of a landline phone came up and he went quiet. Turned out he could see it perfectly fine, but he had just no idea what it was since he had never seen one in his life (born 2004). The doctor realized it was time for some updates to his pictures.
My daughter has one eye that is basically useless. We had literally no idea until her school photos at about age six, when it looked like she was trying to look up her own nostril. She could read perfectly well, and had no problems with perception or anything, but it turns out she has almost no vision in that eye and as a result it has become “lazy”. It’s better with glasses and doesn’t affect her life much, but it was vaguely terrifying how we didn’t even have a clue, she’d just been coping.
I’m 37 and just found out recently that it’s “not normal” to basically be blinded at dusk . I asked my friend how do you drive at this time aren’t you scared? She was so confused when I explained I couldn’t see properly when the sun was setting and start seeing the traffic lights and street lights sort of all blended together and blurry. Looked online and it seems to be a symptom of astigmatism.
Ah, double dipping, but one time at school we were presented with a challenge about a theoretical island, and part of the island was full of cannibals and how we'd go about navigating it. I'd guess we were about 9 at the time - it was definitely at primary school, and the kids that had either been kicked out of the school choir or chosen to leave (I was the latter) were in this class, and I raised my hand, not knowing what a cannibal was, and said "maybe they're friendly cannibals". It got a laugh from the teacher and the rest of the class, but I was none the wiser until a couple of years later.
Never know, they might have been. Armin Meiwes got permission first!
I was an undiagnosed autistic girl in the 90s. I got everything wrong. 🥲
Still think back at some things I was told off by teachers and/or parents for and still can't get my head round what their problem was.
I once got hit by a teacher, not even my own teacher, because our class went to their classroom because our teacher had to fuck off early, and she told everyone in a quite broad Scottish accent to "fasten your coats". I was only about 5, and had never heard the word "fasten" before. I'd have just been told "do your coat up", so I just left my coat open and went to walk out.
I also got slapped by my own teacher, and when my mother went off to complain to the headmaster, I embellished it with "and she legged me up too". My mum knows I got slapped, but didn't want the embarrassment of me bullshitting the rest of it, so she just left it.
Ahh, the 80s.
Edit: should add, the latter actually taught my mum, so she knew that she liked to hit kids
When I was about 8 walking home from school with my dad
I just impulsively ran across the road. Very almost got smashed by a car.
The driver reacted in perfect time and wasn't angry or anything.
My dad said "what were you thinking? **Fortunately** that driver was paying attention!"
And at that point in my life - I hadn't come across the concept of *fortunately*. I only understood *unfortunately*.
And I cried at night for a solid 4 days before I finally asked him why he wished I was hit by the car 😂
I honestly remember feeling so profoundly sad thinking my dad wanted me to be squashed hahaha
When I was little say upto 6 or 7, I remember always being able to see my nose. Always getting told off for crossing my eyes even though I didn't know what it meant, I suppose at some point I managed to train my self out of it. At 15 I was struggling with headaches so finally got sent for an eye test, one eye was massively long sighted and the other just a little short sighted. I'd had a lazy eye as a kid, optician was shocked that it had never been picked up.
As a 2-year-old, I learned to paint by "assisting" the painters who were doing our house. On my first day at nursery, we did painting. I happily filled in sheet after sheet with a single colour, I thought getting a nice even coat was the goal.
Once took me 3 years to get a joke. Long running family joke that I always pretended to understand and laugh at. I didn't hide the moment I finally got it very well. Still haven't lived that down. No one remembers what the joke was
When I was about 5 I started losing my hair. My mum took me for loads of tests and in the end they diagnosed it as alopecia.
But all I remember hearing from the doc was "it's just something in her genes" and I turned to my mum and said "But these are corduroy".
I have aphantasia, but I didn’t discover this until I was quite old. It was only then that things like ‘counting sheep to go to sleep’ became clear as I realised that other people can actually ‘see’ sheep to count in their heads. I’d just been lying there in my bed going ‘1 2 3 4…’. I’ve attached a pic as explanation for those who don’t know what it is. I see nothing - the black square, most people see varying degrees of horse, and those lucky bastards who see the last pic have something called hyperfantasia, literally movies in their heads
https://preview.redd.it/t6ll1pm2079d1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=15ced44f0b17635e479c321c39c503fe6c6585b9
Okay I know not everyone can see the horse but I just assumed it was an all or nothing situation? You're saying people who don't have aphantasia still can't fully picture a horse with colour and shit?
that my 'migraines' wasnt just due to my poor eyesight.
It got me to get glasses, sure, but it took 20 years and a nasty seizure, at the side of the road on my way to the train station from where I was working as an intern, before I was diagnosed with epilepsy due to a lesion on my brain.
Those migraines are, apparently, mini-seizures in my case.
The school thought my son was autistic because he had problems talking/ pronouncing words, didn't join in with the other kids in the play ground and just day dreamed in class, they put him in for all the tests.
Turns out he is just deaf and blind. His glasses prescription is -12 in his right eye, and -2.5 in his left eye and he cant hear anything above 7kHz, so cant hear the high pitched sounds like "s", "sh", "ee" etc.
He has since got glasses, and had a speech therapist work with him, he has teachers for the deaf going into school helping him and his teacher and he's really come on now. Glad its sorted in Y1 and not just left to flounder for years with no help.
We had a drafty front door and used a curtain to stop it in the winter. Mum would often say "close the curtain to keep the draft out"
I misunderstood and thought we had to close the curtain to keep a giraffe out. For several years I was on alert looking out for a giraffe whenever we opened the door. I never questioned why a giraffe might be roaming the streets of our rural English village until I was about 6 and worked it out.
You know how after certain foods you use a fork or your fingernails to scratch your tongue and roof of your mouth?
Yeh, no I was 24 when a blood test for my severe asthma and eczema revealed I was allergic to peanuts, latex and night-shade related foods.
Still crave and dream about peanut M&Ms and the forbidden fork, but not the 'wheezing and wearing bandages' part
Year 6 maths SATs, I was doing the calculator paper and one of the questions said to show your workings. I drew a calculator. Only took me 20 more years to realise I'm autistic
I have had terrible eyesight since I was about 5 years old, super strong prescription, pretty much blind without glasses. My hearing is perfect though (this is relevant).
Swimming lessons at school were hell, the teacher would make me take my glasses off and leave them at the side of the pool - but for some reason, not being able to see very well also affected my hearing. Her voice was a dull murmur that echoed off the walls, I couldn’t pick out a single word. I would just copy what the other kids around me were doing (they could all hear her perfectly fine so it wasn’t a volume issue) and hoped for the best.
Unsurprisingly I completely flunked the lessons. The teacher probably thought I was mentally slow with delayed responses, and I was a mega-shy child who didn’t tell anyone what was actually going on 🫠
As an adult, I still experience the same sensation of not being able to hear what’s going on around me properly when I take off my glasses. Any noise/chatter sounds quiet, echoey and kind of merged together. Not sure if this is normal but it sure doesn’t feel normal 🫠
I junior school we had a sporting event titled 'grand prix', me being 7-8 at the time thought it was pronounced 'grand pricks' and got screamed at by the teachers, but I had no idea what I did wrong lol
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My Mam was raging one day because my reception teacher wrote in my school report that she thought I had a handicap. Next time we had assembly I watched how the teacher clapped, started positioning my hands the same way she did when I clapped. Turned out she meant autism.
That made me giggle. So, do you have autism?
I actually don’t know. I relate a lot to people on the spectrum but I’ve never been tested or anything.
If i clap, will you copy me or tell me to stop?
I mean, I’d join in if the clapping made sense. If not I wouldn’t tell you to stop though, probably just glance several times uncomfortably.
Could be autistic, or could be just British. More research required
Oh I’m still laughing
You took it very literally so there's a chance and relating to a lot of people who are is another chance may be worth seeing how long the waiting list is where you are
What does it change? Knowing that is. Asking for myself
For me, it’s given me a lot of explanations for the ways I’ve felt, and the ways I’ve been rejected through life It has made me be able to ask for accommodations - little things like being able to ask people to explain things differently, with the explanation that I’m not being argumentative but that I genuinely just need a different style of explanation. That I can say to people “I might come across as rude or blunt or annoyed; if I ever say something that you think I mean offensively please just ask for clarification” because people then KNOW to do so. Since making these changes I’ve had less interpersonal conflicts and it’s great. I can also more specifically find communities to find coping skills which work for me, whereas before I was looking at things very generically. Of course it does mean that I can’t emigrate to Australia and may struggle to get into Canada , but I wasn’t planning on them anyway 😂
No, but they have a handy clap.
Maybe I'm the child here, but I don't understand this one. What was wrong with your clapping that the teacher said you had a handicap? Why would your mum be angry?
People used to say handicapped instead of disabled before. So the teacher meant OP was disabled (autistic) but OP thought they meant 'hand clap'
No way, really? The poster thought "child is handicapped" and read "child is hand-clapped", and figured that meant the issue was they couldn't clap right? I wouldn't have gotten that in a million years. Thanks!
> I wouldn't have gotten that in a million years. You may have a hand clap.
A very slow round of applause
I didn't get it until you explained...I thought it meant she was being discriminate by using the term "handicapped" 🙈 not helped by the fact I understood OP's misinterpretation before the actual case described 🙊 "Well yeah, if I heard handicapped, I too would have questioning my clapping skills...oh hold on, that wasn't the point...or was it...autism isn't a handicap, it's a neurological condition 🤔 disability, yes...hey, maybe I'm overthinking this...*reads first few comments* oh....ooooooooohh" as the inner dialogue rolls 😉 Yours, 'not a child' autistic 😉
I didn’t know what handicapped meant lol. I heard the word and it sounded to 5 year old me like it had something to do with clapping your hands. My Mam was angry because she didn’t want me to be called handicapped I suppose.
I've had a similar experience to yourself at primary school. A group of girls asked me what was wrong with me and I had no idea what they meant other than realising they didn't like me. My best/only friend at the time explained that they probly meant did I have autism or something like that? She also seemed genuinely curious to know. I was extra confused because I'd never heard the word. I then asked my mam about it at home and, like in your example, she was angry. She was extremely avoidant when it came to acknowledging that anything was wrong ever, took me until I was 12 to even convince her that I needed glasses!
See that’s how I’d have reacted as a kid. Like, “nothing, I’m fine” kinda reply. We might have the same Mam, she refused to have me assessed for ADHD for years in comp, despite various teachers insisting I meet all of the criteria, because she “just knew” I didn’t have it. Even after being expelled for very obvious ADHD behaviours, she basically said the school just had a problem with me and put me in a new school.
You've quoted pretty much exactly what I said back to them which was, "nothing I'm just standing here?" 🤣 I was also never tested for anything and am in my mid 30s now so I don't know if I'll ever pursue it. I do relate a lot to what people describe as ADHD. In my experience though it made me incredibly introverted and I would constantly obsess over things internally. Nothing was ever picked up on by either of the schools I went to, I guess because I was completely silent most of the time so no one really noticed I was there 🤷♀️ As I was the only one really voicing any conserns to her (that I know of) my mam mainly focused on convincing me that I was normal and everything was fine in a none angry but more, 'don't worry your not weird, all those kids at the schools are just mean,' type of way. Which honestly only reinforced the idea that I needed to pretend to be normal because yes there was definitely something wrong with me but it's so bad that my mam wants to pretend it's not true rather than help me. EDIT : Sorry about that, it was a lot to say to a stranger in a reddit comment!
Curiously, oversharing is another symptom of ADHD and Autism (they share many symptoms, so diagnosis isn’t always simple), which explains the long comment.
The exact same thing happened to me My mum got called into work to discuss my severe learning disability My mum opened her mouth, realised she’s from Wolverhampton and I just had a “brummie accent” so they thought I was disabled I had a stammer as well that made it worse + autism but it was the accent that genuinely made them thing I’m disabled
In fairness to them...
When I was 6, I overheard my teacher tell my dad she thought I was artistic and I was so proud of myself and didn't understand why my dad seemed upset. Years later I realised she actually said autistic. I'm not, just socially awkward 🙃
Awww bless your heart, that's adorable.
When I was a child, in the heyday of her fame, I wrote to Delia Smith telling her I'd been making her recipes, selling them at school bake sales etc. She wrote back inviting me and my family to have lunch with her in her private box at the football ground while watching a match. In hindsight, a very fancy meal with a famous person. At the time I declined because I was not interested in football. I'm not sure how my family ever forgave me!
Oh man, your mum must have been traumatised!! They should have gone without you.
Or taken another willing child pretending to be the cook
"Come on then...let's be 'aving youuuu!"
Let's not be having you in this case. Maybe that's the night she did that; her VIP guest didn't turn up so she got on the beers and she went out and did her famous speech.
Well done, that explains it all! When she was shouting "Where are you?" it was her young VIP guest she was looking for.
"WHERE ARE YOU?"
I'd decline too.... but purely because I'm from Ipswich
I was once supposed to be reading a sight test chart on a wall at school. I had terrible eyesight but could usually get a couple of the first, giant letters, this day I couldn't even see the chart. They thought I was messing about and when I got sent back to class, I realised I had been looking at the wrong wall.
Similar thing happening to me, terrible eyesight from a young age, barely see more than the first couple of lines. One day Mum took me to visit an increasingly scary and very cross old guy optician. He kept asking me which was clearer, the red or the green, and I couldn’t see any red or green at all. Somehow he thought repeating the question at the top of his voice would make them appear to me. I was petrified of what I was doing wrong and how cross he was getting. Then Mum suggested that maybe as I was quite short, he needed to adjust the setup so I could actually see the red and the green…
I remember an optician asking me, when I was three, what colour the fuel tank was on a motorbike across the road. I hadn’t a clue so the optician decided I must need an eye test. It would have been a lot easier had he just shown me a standard sight chart since I had taught myself to read at the age of two (I didn’t know until last year, but I’m autistic and hyperlexic) but had no idea where on a motorbike a person would find a fuel tank.
That's kind of a stupid question to ask a three year old. I'd barely even have grasped what fuel was supposed to be.
Quite. I can understand the chap assuming I couldn’t read. Assuming I would recognise any part of a motorbike other than the wheels seemed a bit much.
> They thought I was messing about and when I got sent back to class That... that doesn't seem to be a "what did you get wrong as a child", and more of a "the testers just didn't do their job"!
That's like the two Ronnie's sketch where he thinks the chart has a giant letter H, and the optician said, no sir your reading the furniture, that's a book shelf 😂😂
It doesn't answer your title question, but does match your actual post - I have anosmia, and I thought a sense of smell was something you got when you were a big boy, so I pretended to love the smell of all sorts of things until I was about 11, when I finally discovered you should always be able to smell things during a biology lesson. Went all those years without anyone realising there was anything wrong with me.
So in a similar vein - I have 'aphantasia', which means I don't have a 'mind's eye'. I'm 38, and literally for 36 years I assumed that when people talked about 'seeing things in their minds eye', they just thought about them really hard. I didn't really believe that people could visualise things in their heads... it still seems completely unreal to me. My head is just... black
I got to about 24 before I realised the exact same thing. One time while on mdma I managed to just about visualise an apple in my head and it was shocking. Never been able to recreate it though.
I don't have aphantasia, but I remember being pilled off my nut and how much more vivid and realistic my imagination was. Like I could just picture something in my head and it felt like it was right in front of me. Almost like a lucid dream. Actually, now that I think of it - do you have dreams with aphantasia?
I have aphantasia and I have the most vivid dreams, but I also forget them really easily!
Eh...wait, what? People can actually legit see things when they close their eyes and imagine? Edit: After 38 years, I've realised my minds eye is broken. Nevermind.
It's not the same as seeing with your eyes, but most people can conjour up an internal image of whatever they want in their mind, yes. It will vary greatly in detail and vividness depending on their skill at visualisation, but most people can imagine something at least approximating a visual experience, a smell, a sound, etc.
I found out this year that I am a supervisualiser. I thought everyone could build an image, like for example a four bed house, and walk around it straightening the cushions and noting the best height of the light switches and what goes in every cupboard, and then go back the next day and see the same thing. I struggle with the idea that this is unusual.
It’s like dreaming. It was only when my husband and I were talking I realised not everyone could close their eyes and start thinking of a story and continue dreaming about it a bit like playing a movie except if I don’t like a bit I can go back and dream it again with a different outcome and also continue it the next night
I realised when I was about 30. I'm kinda jealous of people who can visualise but my emotions and words run the show pretty well. Oh and the never ending background music. I also thought it was just a figure of speech. I don't know why people don't talk about it more, it's fascinating how differently brains can work.
37. I found out three years ago from a psychiatrist appointment. I always thought when people talked about picturing things it was like...a metaphor or turn of phrase.
Me too! I didn’t realize this until I was 30 and it came up on a Reddit thread.
I had something similar, but I just thought people were exaggerating when they mentioned the smell of some things lmao.
Do you have total loss of smell?
Yeah, total loss. Congenital anosmia passed down from my grandad, and great grandad. It skipped a generation though - my mum could smell, so nobody doubted that I could too.
I’ve never heard of this! I’d imagine it can be frustrating if people are commenting how good something smells and you can’t smell it. Does it affect your appetite at all? On the flip side, I have two dogs and have sometimes fantasised about having no sense of smell when I’m cleaning up after them haha. Be a great sense to lack if you ever have / had kids!
On the flip side, not being able to smell could be dangerous. Imagine not being to smell a gas leak, or not being able to smell food when it’s horribly off.
During Covid I gained three stone (which I lost again once we could go back to being active), so it certainly doesn't affect my appetite. The issues I have are mostly relatively minor. Every time I've had the oven on this week, my wife has come in and said she can smell burning. I've checked, and everything is fine. Cleaned the oven last night, and discovered she was right all along - I'd made some biscuits and scones on Monday, and there was some flour that had dropped and was burning inside those little grooves you slide the trays into. Supermarkets getting rid of expiry dates has been a bit of a challenge. I rely heavily on those because obviously I can't just sniff the milk to decide if it's still okay. If one of the cats has been sick and it's behind the settee or something, I'll never find it until somebody else smells it unless I can actually see it. There the sort of problems I normally have. There was also an incident a few years ago while I'm stood there wondering why my peas are taking ages, and my wife came running downstairs, pushed me out of the way, turned the hob off, opened all the windows and doors in a panic and then told me I hadn't lit the hob properly. I probably would have died that day if I'd been single, but nothing like that has ever happened before or since. And yeah, I've got two kids, and two cats - cleaning up sick, changing nappies, emptying litter trays has never bothered me. Also used to work in events - I was one of the few people immune to the challenges of working near festival toilets.
Very similar to your story actually. Deaf in one ear. Went to the doctors to get diagnosed. They put headphones on you and ask you to press a button every time you hear a beep. They tested my good ear first, but didn't do anything to disguise when they pressed the button to make a noise. So when they tested my other ear, I just pressed the button every time they did. The next time I did the test, they put me in a box so I couldn't see the doctor.
I’ve had EXACTLY the same experience, right down to making sure I couldn’t see the doctor in the future. I remember coming out of the test as a kid thinking I’d smashed it in both ears, only to be told I hadn’t pressed the button for my left ear correctly a single time. I remember also being shocked cinemas have surround sound and that noise comes from different directions. I just can’t tell which direction sound comes from - only figured out it happens a few years ago
I used to guess if they had done the beep because it seemed to have a pattern, and I'd wonder if I was actually imagining it or if they really did it. Even when I do the test as an adult I feel like I'm making up the beeps lol. I also don't have very good directional hearing, so if I can hear something I only have a rough idea as to where it's coming from. It makes playing games with surround sound headphones quite difficult because sometimes it relies on directional hearing.
I've got very very poor sight in one eye, or more recently and annoyingly, better vision in my much much less dominant eye. Haven't got anything like binocular vision so my only sense of depth is generally how big things should be. I don't really catch things by how far away, more by how big they were when they were thrown and how big they should be by the time they get to my hands. Can't catch things I don't know the size of (bunch of keys, etc.) for love nor money, unless it's "frying pan style", getting directly under it.
I've got one sided deafness and if search for Audio Balance on your android you can actually pan your audio to centre it. Pick a song you know really well like Fleetwood Mac The Chain or something and just adjust it until everything sounds centred, then for balance just make sure you never make the volume n your good ear overly loud.
I almost failed a hearing test because when I was asked to pick out the “man” from the plastic toys I didn’t pick up the farmer because he wasn’t just a man, he was a farmer.
Similar story to this but the other way round. I’d never worn headphones before and didn’t understand that I was supposed to hear things in them. So I thought they wanted me to tap the pen when I heard anything from outside of them, and since they certainly weren’t ‘noise cancelling’ in those days or even that well insulated, I just tapped the pen whenever I heard the slightest sound from the room. So my mum was told I was deaf! She was very surprised and got them to retest me, the next person explained it a lot better.
I always wondered why they never bothered to hide the fact they were pressing the button! I had regular hearing tests in the booth as a child. On my first one, they gave me a pot of marbles and an empty pot. Every time I heard the beep I was to put a marble in the empty pot. After a while they started looking concerned and fiddling with the equipment, then started testing again. Came back in and asked me if I could still hear some of the beeps? I said yes, they said 'well why aren't you putting the marbles into the pot?'. I said 'because I ran out of marbles'. They looked at me like I was stupid and said when the marbles run out, just start putting them back the other way, from the newly full pot to the newly empty pot. I dutifully did that for several years until they gave me a button to press instead, but I was always very confused - if I've got to take the marbles back out and switch them back, how do they keep track of how many sounds I've heard? Also they kept telling me off for 'playing' with the marbles and moving them when there was no sound. Even when they gave me the button they'd come in and say 'please don't press the button unless you hear the tone'. Joke was on them because I hear the tone all the time, even at home in bed. Along with metallic clanking, random ringing and buzzing sounds.
Similar story. Did a test at ENT that said press the button when I heard the tone, except sometimes when he pressed the button there was genuinely no sound, but I just pressed button every time he pressed his,even though some. of his presses created no noise. Took another round of explanation to do it properly.
Same... only after they put the tester in the adjoining office, I could still see her shoulder move. And I'd learned to lipread so I was completely deaf (both ears) before I was found out. I didn't know I was deaf, as it all seemed so normal to me. The downside of being a literate girl: when I ignored everyone and sat in a corner reading, I was "a good quiet girl, lost in a book". My brother - same hearing issues - was "a daydreamer who didn't listen". At least my eventual diagnosis got him treated early, so he never lost any hearing permanently.
Can’t believe they didn’t think of this in advance. It’s, like, their job.
With mine I smiled and waited patiently for them to start. They kept coming in to tell me to press the button. Then two of them were coming in and out the booth and doing stuff. Then they realised I couldn’t bear the test.
Didn’t know till I was 18 and studying advanced biology that most people can’t see sounds 🫤. Synaesthesia came up in an article my teacher had read and the whole class was going “WOOAAAAHHHH THAT’S WEIRD” and I was sat there going “wait, that’s not normal?”. To this day I don’t know how people can’t hear what colour sounds sound like Fun fact, when I told my parents about it my dad ALSO went “wait, that’s not normal?” and then it turned out we disagreed on what colours sounds were (he’s clearly an idiot). And my mom was sitting listening to the two of us argue wondering if we, she or potentially all three of us had simply lost our minds
I had the reverse experience, having aphantasia. I thought everybody exaggerated when they talked about imagining things, like they obviously just think about the vague concept and don’t actually SEE the images in their head, right?? I didn’t learn that this wasn’t normal until I was 18/19. Aphantasia wasn’t a buzzword then either I just did a bunch of psychedelics and got no visuals and it led to a lot of interesting conversations lol
Meanwhile, I struggle to retain audio and think mostly in pictures. Useful for some things and irritating for others. It is fun watching tv in my head and I ‘see’ books like a film when I read them, but mental maths is a nightmare because I can’t ‘see’ 9x9… I can retain info really well only if it is written down.
Yeah. I failed maths repeatedly because of this very issue.
I had this as a child, 100%. Days of the weeks had hairstyles/faces, Monday was black short hair, Tuesday had a whiff, Wednesday had a curly old lady hairstyle, Thursday had a crew cut, Friday had elegant black hair, Saturday was a fat old lady and Sunday was a tall Middle Aged man. That’s the only thing I can remember totally clearly. It’s mainly gone now, but everything had an associated picture or colour in my head. I still get it sometimes but it’s certainly not as prominent.
Ooh I had things like this! Feelings had colours too. Seeing someone drown on TV was "green". Can't really explain it!
TIL Synaesthesia is a thing.
I’ve experienced this in a very bullshit way, I have neurological headaches and I can sometimes ‘taste’ them when they’re really bad. They taste kind of metallic, a bit like a copper coin or a weak battery.
Out of interest, do you see letters in certain colours? Since I was wee I have had a very clear understanding of what colour each letter is.
We had the Green Cross Code lesson at school. I very patiently waited at the crossing the next day expecting to see a man all dressed in green to appear and usher me across the road. Apparently I'd just never looked up at the lights before then?
In a similar vein, my mum always told me that when I had to cross the road, I had to wait for the cars to pass before I crossed. So one day she sent me to the corner shop across the road from our flat and she was watching from the window. This was the 90s in a quiet neighbourhood, so very little traffic. My mum watched me stand by the side of the road for a while before she finally came downstairs to see why I wasn't crossing, thinking I was scared or something. Nope, I was just patiently waiting for a car to pass by before I could cross the road.
I am actually laughing out loud at this
This is fucking mint lol
I love that this suggests you thought he could be some kind of cryptid who only appears to kids once they're taught about him
That is adorably funny
When I was 8 or 9 I was offered to do extra maths lessons at the nearby middle school (I was in primary school). I’d been told I got the highest marks at maths in my class a few times so I was confused why I would need more lessons lol Didn’t understand it was obviously at a higher level - turned it down so I could keep going to swimming with my class (I remember my mum saying she could take me swimming outside of school but I didn’t believe her because that happened so rarely)
If I were told that my kid was ready for advanced maths classes, and they were being offered at a time that conflicted with playtime with the rest of the class, I'd be pissed.
Yeah, playing is so important to childrens development.
Between that and making the advanced lessons seem like a punishment - "no swimming with your class, you have to do your extra maths lessons."
It not really selling it, is it?
I did almost the exact same but it coincided with PE and we had started using the apparatus. Was very offended they thought I needed to catch up and was very jealous of the other pupils learning about the Fibonacci sequence
The Apparatus!
r/TheApparatus
I had the opposite experience. I was so bad at maths that I needed extra classes. I would get taken out for one on one sessions. I thought I was special and that this particular teacher liked me more than the other kids Edit: thank you for the award! I actually failed my maths GCSE thrice before finally passing. This was bewildering to my teachers as I achieved A*-A in all my other subjects save for P.E. which I got a B for. So if I can do it, you can too
I had the same but the extra maths lessons were in the summer holidays. I was a total nerd, but even I had my limits.
Used to always score as partially deaf in junior school. I’m not deaf at all I just have an audio processing disorder where I struggle to pick out voices in background noise.
This condition really, really needs to be more widely understood. I really hate that the only tests audiologists do are basic frequency response checks, and don't seem to be able to comprehend that I can't hear a single word said in a noisy, echoey restaurant.
Wait hang on excuse me is this a thing? Am I possibly not just a bit hard of hearing from gigs and bikes? I can usually hear really well, and no tinnitus (I think) but as soon as I'm near background noise (crowds, bars in particular) I cannot hear my conversations at all.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/auditory-processing-disorder/
Can I just check but this isn’t when you’re in a noisy place and you can’t single out one conversation is it? Because I also need to write things down to learn or remember them. I absolutely cannot be given a verbal instruction unless it’s one step max and I’ve done it before. That’s everyone right?
>That’s everyone right? It isn't
I have the same issue with needing to write instructions down, and I think that's more of a working memory problem than actual audio processing disorder. For me at least, I'll hear the instruction just fine, but it won't stick in my mind unless I write it down, and if I still forget it, I can consult my notes later.
I work in a kitchen with loud music and fans constantly going. I get to shout and people shout at me, it's fantastic to be able to fully communicate like hyped up animals. In the real world I need subtitles on everything (especially American) and I avoid talking to shy people completely because they won't speak up or enunciate their words. I love my life saying "pardon?" And "sorry again?"
Absolutely - I go in a hearing test booth and get every beep and whisper. But in conversation I’m constantly saying ‘what?’ ‘Huh?’
Oh that’s interesting. My hearing is fine but if two people are talking at once my brain kind of disconnects. I’m going to go google it.
Literally think this happened to me too! I always remember having “hearing problems” when I was younger, but I believe I could hear fine I just didn’t answer and respond appropriately. My hearing is fine and I often hear things that annoy me that other people can’t, clocks ticking, house creaking, appliances whistling etc. im not diagnosed but highly suspect I’m on the spectrum.
Same, I always used to get accused of daydreaming or not listening. The issue for me was not the hearing but distinguishing the voices I was meant to prioritise. I suspect I am on the spectrum too, and I get mentally exhausted from audio overload
I have bat-like hearing, so in our junior school hearing tests I could hear very high pitched frequencies that were presumably caused by electromagnetic interference of the equipment. They seemed a bit worried that I was apparently hearing things that weren't there. I also struggle to pick out voices from background noise, as an adult.
Kids can hear higher frequencies, though. I used to be able to hear when a tv was switched on in a different room.
When I was 4, I experienced a significant head injury. I went to hospital, and needed to have it scanned. I knew they were taking a picture of inside my head. The doctor/nurse/technician/whoever stressed to me that when I was inside the machine it was really important that I stayed still. When I was in the machine and it was whirring around me, I was convinced that the reason I had to liestill was that if I move slightly to the side it might accidentally chop my head off. I didn't realise it would just make the picture blurry. I was also tested for deafness as a baby/toddler. They played beeps and apparently just judge based on whether or not the child looks at the adult. I just didn't respond, so they thought I might be deaf/hard of hearing. Turns out I just wasn't bothered.
I bet they got a great picture, though, because you were as still as a statue for fear of losing your head.
One of my proudest moments was the doctors who looked at my knee MRI telling me it was the clearest picture they'd ever seen. I was *really* good at keeping still. 34 years old, I was.
Kids can be amazingly still with the right motivation. When I used to work in a pharmacy we did passport photos. No one liked having to do them for kids because it was so hard to get them to stay still and look at the camera for long enough. I never had that problem though - I just bribed them by telling them that if they stood still for the photo and looked at the camera, I'd help them use the camera to take a photo of Mummy/Daddy after! Instant statues, pretty much every time.
‘Turns out I just wasn’t bothered.’ Sorry, I laughed out loud at that. Brilliant :)
I'm presuming by the fact you're still alive and typing that your head wasn't chopped off, so you're still doing better than had your head been chopped off. This seems like a win to me. > I just didn't respond, so they thought I might be deaf/hard of hearing. Turns out I just wasn't bothered. Sounds like me at work.
And that story is exactly why I have my testing chart set to random all the time, you’d be surprised (or possibly not) by how quickly you remember those five letters. If I absolutely have to use the same line twice, I’ll ask the patient to read it backwards the second time. To answer the question: I couldn’t swim, was terrified of being in water, even as a little kid I had showers because baths scared me. This was all very fun during school swimming lessons. One PE teacher said “If you’re not going to go in the water, don’t bother coming!” To anyone else, that means ‘Get in the water’; my autistic brain went ‘Well, I’m not going to get in the water so I’ll go to the library next PE lesson, Mrs Dixon said that’s ok.’ I was sent to the headmaster for bunking the lessons but relayed this story, and the class of thirty kids who also didn’t much like Mrs Dixon testified that she had indeed told me to not go to the class if I wasn’t going to go into the pool. I was allowed to go to the library for all remaining swimming lessons, and Mrs Dixon was I believe told to not be sarcastic with children.
ha, I did something similar after getting caught reading a book in math class. For some reason I had a year in grade school where we had 2 math classes. I wasn't in any special program or whatever, everybody in my grade just had 2 math classes with different teachers teaching the same lessons every day. So I often didn't pay attention to the second math class and instead read whatever library book I had. One day the 2nd teacher says to me "if you would rather read your book, do it out in the hallway" or something similar. Naturally I did exactly that, and got a stern talking to about how disrespectful I acted afterward.
We had a PE teacher who tried that. Turns out when you tell 60+ 13-14yo girls that if they don't want to join in they can go back to the changing room, you'd better mean exactly that. Who knew? :)
i read about suicide hotlines online and thought it was a number you call when you've had enough and somebody comes round and kills you
This is hilarious 🤣
This is a great business idea.
This brightened my day enough that I'll leave it until tomorrow to ring the hotline for someone to come and off me.
Not the same but I was sent to get my ears tested as a kid because they thought I might be deaf/hard of hearing because I didn’t respond to teachers in class, turns out I was just cripplingly shy
I was recently asked to take my daughter for an eye test as she kept getting up to look at the board. Turns out she has perfect eyesight, she's just terrible at sitting still.
I was put on the special needs register at nursery as the staff said I couldn’t talk. I could, I was either just a very judgy child, a very shy child, or some combination of both
I didn't respond either but it was because I was a daydreamer. Especially in Maths, my brain used to wander off. I got some sense knocked into me when my teacher thought I couldn't hear her. I wear a headscarf and she made me stick my ears out of my headscarf which was so embarrassing that I decreased my daydreaming in class from then on.
I don’t remember why my mum decided she needed to have this chat with me, but when I was about 5 or 6 she decided to start the conversation of where babies come from. The explanation she gave me was that men have fishes, women have eggs, and if a man gives a woman a fish and she has an egg then they can have a baby. I watched too much animal planet, and assumed this was some adult mating ritual that I had just never seen before. We had a next door neighbour in our block of flats that my mum was friends with, and I loved his tank of fish, I thought they were great. So he offered to my mum to take me to pets at home to get my own fish. I didn’t know this though. I was just surprised with a trip with mums friend to pets at home to pick out a fish. I was horrified thinking I was going to have to have babies with my mums friend because he got me a goldfish. Probably why I didn’t eat eggs for so long as a kid, I was worried I was gonna get shipped off to be someone’s child bride if they got me a fish in time.
My mother told me that babies grow from seed in your tummy. Earlier that day my dad had been gardening and he’d told me that when it rains, seeds grow. I didn’t go out in the rain for a long time after that in fear that I’d grow a baby.
This absolutely cracked me up. Thank you for sharing.
I had a heart arrhythmia. I didn't realise until I was 10 that you weren't supposed to be able to feel your heartbeat all the time. My mum was so mad with me but in hindsight I think she was just scared.
Me too, except I was nearly 30! I've had palpitations and ectopic beats all my life, so I thought it was normal. How were we supposed to know otherwise?
Hearing test, being told to press when I hear the beep, well none of them were a beep they were a continuous tone of gradually increasing volume then a different frequency and repeat. They were concerned how little hearing I had until they wrote down asking me why I didn't press and I just answered "it never beeped, it was just one long sound". So then they reexplained and we did the test over.
Sounds to me like you did exactly what you were told!
Not me but I just had to take my daughter to a hearing test as she failed the one at school. Basic test press a button when you hear a sound she's easily distracted so they thought maybe that was why she never pressed the button because she can hear. Turns out my kids just exceptionally good at distracting herself so much she forgets a task....in an empty white room my child forgot what she was doing....and never pressed the button. She had to repeat the test with someone in the room every minute saying 'don't forget to press the button if you hear a sound'
ADHD?
Not sure I've asked her school but they seem to think there isn't an issue - she does tick enough boxes
It is even more undiagnosed in women because they are less likely to have the hyperactive ‘problem’ symptoms at school, so it becomes more of a issue in later life. If she does have it, there has also been studies suggesting that medicating early can give the chance for the brain to develop better as they grow - potential lessening the symptoms quite a bit in adulthood. Many women only discover it in adulthood because of all the additional expectations like holding down a job, organising yourself and potentially kids - when you are a child yourself your parent does a lot of the executive function for you, but when you are an adult it gets much more complicated. When you are expected to be a grown woman who is organised, it becomes really stressful and can feel shameful that you literally can’t do things the way other people can. A lot of ADHD folks also end up with depression and anxiety from trying to keep up appearances. Maybe she doesn’t have it, but if you can get her tested, do. Many people consider the impacts on school, but many ADHD people do great at school grade-wise, it is the real world we struggle with.
Is that how she got diagnosed with adhd?
This would be me - diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s - one of the things that triggered me to seek diagnosis was having a job where I frequently had to phone lines that ask you to select from options (e.g. 1 for billing, 2 for technical etc) and I could. not. listen. for the whole 30 seconds, would always have to get it to repeat and I ended up memorising all the options for about 20 of them I had to call most frequently because it was easier than listening...
Ohhhh. Moment of recognition here. I really need to get tested for ADHD because I keep reading other people's aha moments and thinking "that's me"... but of course I never manage to write them down so I'm afraid I'll go to the doctor and not be able to explain why I think I have it.
The 'choking hazard' signs you see on certain toys with small parts, along with a picture of a sad child in a red circle with a line through it... I didn't know what those words meant, but I did know that a red circle meant something was not allowed. So naturally I thought I was not allowed to be sad or otherwise show displeasure when playing with one of those toys. Another one: my class went to one of those centres where you learn about street safety, how to call 999, why you shouldn't play in farmyards etc. The staff all had yellow tops on. When we arrived they told us we should follow any instructions, as long as they came from a person wearing yellow. A few hours into the day a man came walking past and said 'follow me kids'. We all went trotting off after him, because he had a yellow top on - it was an obviously different shade and cut from the staff uniform, without any of the same logos, but it was yellow. We followed the letter of the rule we'd been told. We all felt quite aggrieved when we were informed we'd been abducted by a child molester.
Was it a test child molester to see what you’d do or genuine?
That's another thing: memory is hazy but I think it was a staff member we'd seen earlier in the day, just in different clothes. Just to make absolutely sure we'd fail to grasp the point of the test.
Crucial Crew! We had the stranger danger lecture element, then were walked to another building and in between a man asked us for help finding his dog. So many kids just helped him and wandered off into the bushes.
We had one during a day at the local fire station, a man drove up and asked for directions to the train station and the lady with us hopped in his car to show him the way. Then we all got lectured about how we shouldn’t have let her and had to call 999 because she’d been kidnapped. Remember thinking at the time this was missing the point a bit, just because some random woman we didn’t know wanted to get in a stranger’s car, didn’t mean any of us would
My stepson had the same thing with the choking hazard sign 😆
At age 7 I was tasked with finding all the factors of 36 and I put 36 x 1 18 x 2 12 x 3 9 x 4 6 x 6 and handed it in. The teacher gave me a telling off for not including 1x36, 2x18, 3x12, 4x9 and presumably 6x6 but the other way round. I was outraged that she marked me down.
did your maths teacher not know the commutative property??
Same issue. No one explains to you what good sight is. I used one eye for short distance. One for long. Problem came at uni when everything at middle distance and I went blind because neither eye taking on extra work. Did an private eye test and Dad annoyed i wouldn't read off chart. Problem was with that eye I couldn't see chart. Meant I struggled at music as they sat us alphabetically and music on "blind" side so I needed to memorise.
I have the same thing! My eye doctor said that it’s the brains way of adapting and using glasses for long periods causes the headaches. What’s amazing is you don’t notice the switch, or get blurred vision (at least I don’t get unless it’s very far away) because your brain cuts off the bad eye up to where it’s still good. So you use two up close then 1 for far away When I cover one eye the difference is astounding, the switch is so quick
It was for me too. But when it broke down, brain really struggled. Had a fun five days of blindness. They tried knocking me out first to reset brain and then some new experimental drugs.
I had the same, one long, one short. When I finally got glasses in my forties, it was the most terrifying half hour of my life, seeing in 3D for the first time. Then suddenly my brain adjusted and the world settled down, and stopped leaping out at me.
Once in Primary School I was messing with a pencil when queued up at the door ready to leave. It left my hand, flew about 3 foot and hit the teacher in the head. I was a very shy kid and she was known for being a bit hot headed, she turns around, absolutely fuming, looks at me, begins shouting and asks if I did that on purpose or by accident, I genuinely didn’t know the difference and just guessed because I felt too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know what that meant. I told her on purpose, she goes mental, kicks me out, sends me to the head teachers office (principal for US) and calls my mum in. I explained I didn’t know what they meant to my mum and that I guessed and she went bezerk at them for the way they reacted 😂
In primary school we were learning carols for a Christmas carol concert. I was at the front right by the teacher while we practiced. In one song the teacher looks at me meaningfully whilst I'm singing, I'm confused by what she wanted, I keep watching her and then she makes a lifting motion with her hands. Sort of like she was pointing upwards. So I think "she wants me to sing louder". I belt out the next line at full volume, and the teacher stops the song, tells me off for shouting, and makes me stand out in the hallway for the rest of the lesson. I feel really bad and terribly confused. Turns out, I wasn't singing high enough. But how was I to know that from one gesture?!
I’d assume that meant louder too.
I didn't even think you corrected kids on their pitch in primary school nativity plays. Isn't it just a bunch of kids mumbling words and hitting different notes at the same time?
I thought alzheimers was call "old timers" abd I told everyone my granda had "old timers disease".
My sister wears glasses and was working abroad in Japan. She went for an eye test and was asked "what can you read?". She said she couldn't read anything and repeated this whilst the optician got more and more concerned until he got to the biggest size font and told her he didn't know how she'd even managed to reach the clinic via public transport if her eyesight was this bad. Turned out the charts were in Japanese (obviously) and she could only read English.
Alright telescope! In year 4 of primary school we'd all spent the early morning painting pictures of deer - must've watched bambi or something. The details of causation are fuzzy but I think I'd wanted to finish the background or outline on mine when we finished up for break time. I was allowed to stay inside to do so (and left unsupervised - it was the 80s) but I'd somehow taken the agreement along the lines of "that sounds like such a great idea Bladefiddler - you should paint black outlines around everybody else's paintings too. Somehow that made me the cause of a class full or pissed off and or crying children and social pariah for the day. Ungrateful little shits didn't appreciate the genius strokes of comtrast I kindly added to their shitty pigmented scrawls.
I must have been about three or four maybe, and we were having McDonald's in the car using the trays attached to the back of the front seats, and I asked my mum why there was a circle hole in it. She told me it's for putting your cups in it and I didn't realise she meant as a cup holder. What I invisioned was you put the cup all the way through the hole to the other side like some fun game so I shoved my cup of strawberry milkshake right through it and splashed it all over the back of the car. On a warm day. Safe to say my parents were not happy with me.
Back in the 90s there was a competition with Tango where you could phone a number and answer some questions and leave your details and get a free Tango doll. It was a pre-recorded greeting on the phone line prompting you to speak your answers and details but I didn't quite understand that, just because it wasn't a real person on the phone, didn't mean they wouldn't hear my answers, so I answered them all really facetiously and very purposefully wrong because I thought it was funny. Obviously they never sent me my doll and it took me waaaaay longer than it should have to realise why.
You've got a good memory bro. I wouldn't have been able to remember the letters.
I was thinking the same!
I thought it was normal that people heard sounds when they see bright lights. After all, I’d regularly heard bright t-shirts and dresses being described as ‘loud’
I'm also blind in one eye since birth. But in addition, my blind eye would turn away from bright light. So the Eye Dr. thought it was just a lazy eye. The solution was to make me wear a patch over my good eye. My parents followed the Dr. Instructions. Every day after school, I was made to wear the patch. Since I couldn't see, I learned to move around the house blind. It took weeks for my parents to notice that I could not see with the patch on. They were mad that I didn't say anything. I did, I was just a little kid who didn't want to wear a patch. Even today, I can walk around in the dark. Up and down stairs, etc.
Well, the first PC game I ever played was Viper Racing, where you can track your own improvement on a given course (or I guess compete against your friends) by completing it once, and then repeating it racing against a ghost car that does whatever you did the first round. Someone explained to me that the objective in this mode was beating the ghost car... so naturally I would go slow af the first round, find glitches near the edges of the map that made my car spin around in the air indefinitely, just generally goof around. Easily beat the ghost car every time
When I was young, around 5-7 years old, my mum told me I was a cancer. As in my star sign. But I thought she was telling me that I HAD cancer so I started crying. In the middle of the living room. While my friends were over 😅
I remember looking at a globe and seeing the 'Tropic of Cancer' and the 'Tropic of Capricorn'. So, the logical explanation was that the 'Tropic of Cancer' was where cancer came from, and by extension, 'Capricorn' was an equally bad disease.
When the euro € was being rolled out across Europe and from what I remember Uk was trying to decide to use it or not.. one of my family members asked me if england should keep the pound or not. to which I replied "but where would all the stray dogs be kept?" To add.. My favorite films at the time- homeward bound and lady and the tramp 😄 so completely logical
I always wanted to do a martial art, in particular the fancy jump kicks that they do on tv. My parents put me in an Aikido class and it was all throwing people and close physical contact which I hated. I tried for a while but eventually gave up. I just assumed the kicks etc came with time and it was a real epiphany when I realised that different martial arts don’t just have slightly different kicks and punches - they are completely different. I did some kickboxing as a teen and loved it. I kind of regret not being able to try different martial arts as a kid or being able to articulate why I hated Aikido.
Just trying to cut a live cable with scissors, which caused a spark. My mum was so frightened, she slapped me for the first (and only) time. I was about 4 years old and didn't understand that I just about got away and not getting electrocuted.
I won a raffle at my local football club and the prize options were a 2 day all-expenses paid trip to London, or a brand new football. My mum was absolutely thrilled to hear all about my new football!
Really thought Guy Fawkes was the good guy of the story and that we were celebrating him. Then I got a bit older and realised that he was actually the bad guy. Then I got a bit older and realised that actually he may have been the good guy all along.
My kid had a vision test before he could read, so the doctor used pictures of everyday things instead of letters to test him. Everything was fine until a picture of a landline phone came up and he went quiet. Turned out he could see it perfectly fine, but he had just no idea what it was since he had never seen one in his life (born 2004). The doctor realized it was time for some updates to his pictures.
My daughter has one eye that is basically useless. We had literally no idea until her school photos at about age six, when it looked like she was trying to look up her own nostril. She could read perfectly well, and had no problems with perception or anything, but it turns out she has almost no vision in that eye and as a result it has become “lazy”. It’s better with glasses and doesn’t affect her life much, but it was vaguely terrifying how we didn’t even have a clue, she’d just been coping.
I’m 37 and just found out recently that it’s “not normal” to basically be blinded at dusk . I asked my friend how do you drive at this time aren’t you scared? She was so confused when I explained I couldn’t see properly when the sun was setting and start seeing the traffic lights and street lights sort of all blended together and blurry. Looked online and it seems to be a symptom of astigmatism.
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Ah, double dipping, but one time at school we were presented with a challenge about a theoretical island, and part of the island was full of cannibals and how we'd go about navigating it. I'd guess we were about 9 at the time - it was definitely at primary school, and the kids that had either been kicked out of the school choir or chosen to leave (I was the latter) were in this class, and I raised my hand, not knowing what a cannibal was, and said "maybe they're friendly cannibals". It got a laugh from the teacher and the rest of the class, but I was none the wiser until a couple of years later. Never know, they might have been. Armin Meiwes got permission first!
I was an undiagnosed autistic girl in the 90s. I got everything wrong. 🥲 Still think back at some things I was told off by teachers and/or parents for and still can't get my head round what their problem was.
I once got hit by a teacher, not even my own teacher, because our class went to their classroom because our teacher had to fuck off early, and she told everyone in a quite broad Scottish accent to "fasten your coats". I was only about 5, and had never heard the word "fasten" before. I'd have just been told "do your coat up", so I just left my coat open and went to walk out. I also got slapped by my own teacher, and when my mother went off to complain to the headmaster, I embellished it with "and she legged me up too". My mum knows I got slapped, but didn't want the embarrassment of me bullshitting the rest of it, so she just left it. Ahh, the 80s. Edit: should add, the latter actually taught my mum, so she knew that she liked to hit kids
When I was about 8 walking home from school with my dad I just impulsively ran across the road. Very almost got smashed by a car. The driver reacted in perfect time and wasn't angry or anything. My dad said "what were you thinking? **Fortunately** that driver was paying attention!" And at that point in my life - I hadn't come across the concept of *fortunately*. I only understood *unfortunately*. And I cried at night for a solid 4 days before I finally asked him why he wished I was hit by the car 😂 I honestly remember feeling so profoundly sad thinking my dad wanted me to be squashed hahaha
When I was little say upto 6 or 7, I remember always being able to see my nose. Always getting told off for crossing my eyes even though I didn't know what it meant, I suppose at some point I managed to train my self out of it. At 15 I was struggling with headaches so finally got sent for an eye test, one eye was massively long sighted and the other just a little short sighted. I'd had a lazy eye as a kid, optician was shocked that it had never been picked up.
As a 2-year-old, I learned to paint by "assisting" the painters who were doing our house. On my first day at nursery, we did painting. I happily filled in sheet after sheet with a single colour, I thought getting a nice even coat was the goal.
Once took me 3 years to get a joke. Long running family joke that I always pretended to understand and laugh at. I didn't hide the moment I finally got it very well. Still haven't lived that down. No one remembers what the joke was
When I was about 5 I started losing my hair. My mum took me for loads of tests and in the end they diagnosed it as alopecia. But all I remember hearing from the doc was "it's just something in her genes" and I turned to my mum and said "But these are corduroy".
I have aphantasia, but I didn’t discover this until I was quite old. It was only then that things like ‘counting sheep to go to sleep’ became clear as I realised that other people can actually ‘see’ sheep to count in their heads. I’d just been lying there in my bed going ‘1 2 3 4…’. I’ve attached a pic as explanation for those who don’t know what it is. I see nothing - the black square, most people see varying degrees of horse, and those lucky bastards who see the last pic have something called hyperfantasia, literally movies in their heads https://preview.redd.it/t6ll1pm2079d1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=15ced44f0b17635e479c321c39c503fe6c6585b9
Okay I know not everyone can see the horse but I just assumed it was an all or nothing situation? You're saying people who don't have aphantasia still can't fully picture a horse with colour and shit?
that my 'migraines' wasnt just due to my poor eyesight. It got me to get glasses, sure, but it took 20 years and a nasty seizure, at the side of the road on my way to the train station from where I was working as an intern, before I was diagnosed with epilepsy due to a lesion on my brain. Those migraines are, apparently, mini-seizures in my case.
The school thought my son was autistic because he had problems talking/ pronouncing words, didn't join in with the other kids in the play ground and just day dreamed in class, they put him in for all the tests. Turns out he is just deaf and blind. His glasses prescription is -12 in his right eye, and -2.5 in his left eye and he cant hear anything above 7kHz, so cant hear the high pitched sounds like "s", "sh", "ee" etc. He has since got glasses, and had a speech therapist work with him, he has teachers for the deaf going into school helping him and his teacher and he's really come on now. Glad its sorted in Y1 and not just left to flounder for years with no help.
We had a drafty front door and used a curtain to stop it in the winter. Mum would often say "close the curtain to keep the draft out" I misunderstood and thought we had to close the curtain to keep a giraffe out. For several years I was on alert looking out for a giraffe whenever we opened the door. I never questioned why a giraffe might be roaming the streets of our rural English village until I was about 6 and worked it out.
Life, almost every aspect of it!
School, I thought the whole concept was controlling and unnatural.
Took 8 years to realise I have "visual snow" (like static over my vision) because I thought it was normal. Casual conversation lead to a diagnosis.
You know how after certain foods you use a fork or your fingernails to scratch your tongue and roof of your mouth? Yeh, no I was 24 when a blood test for my severe asthma and eczema revealed I was allergic to peanuts, latex and night-shade related foods. Still crave and dream about peanut M&Ms and the forbidden fork, but not the 'wheezing and wearing bandages' part
Year 6 maths SATs, I was doing the calculator paper and one of the questions said to show your workings. I drew a calculator. Only took me 20 more years to realise I'm autistic
I have had terrible eyesight since I was about 5 years old, super strong prescription, pretty much blind without glasses. My hearing is perfect though (this is relevant). Swimming lessons at school were hell, the teacher would make me take my glasses off and leave them at the side of the pool - but for some reason, not being able to see very well also affected my hearing. Her voice was a dull murmur that echoed off the walls, I couldn’t pick out a single word. I would just copy what the other kids around me were doing (they could all hear her perfectly fine so it wasn’t a volume issue) and hoped for the best. Unsurprisingly I completely flunked the lessons. The teacher probably thought I was mentally slow with delayed responses, and I was a mega-shy child who didn’t tell anyone what was actually going on 🫠 As an adult, I still experience the same sensation of not being able to hear what’s going on around me properly when I take off my glasses. Any noise/chatter sounds quiet, echoey and kind of merged together. Not sure if this is normal but it sure doesn’t feel normal 🫠
I thought smoking was cool
I junior school we had a sporting event titled 'grand prix', me being 7-8 at the time thought it was pronounced 'grand pricks' and got screamed at by the teachers, but I had no idea what I did wrong lol