Response to a topic on Wrong Planet forum

Question(para-phrased):

Did your parents know something was different with you, but others didn't?

My answer:

I was born early and was in and out of hospital a lot for a while before I can remember. My parents also thought something was up with me but the doctors of the mid-80s chalked it up to my being born early with some C.P. on the side and maybe a brain injury(was supposed but 27 years and a MRI later there's no proof to suggest there was a brain injury and certainly not one to any great degree). I couldn't sit up without support at a year old, but I had also just gotten back from a stay at the hospital before that and at that time I always regressed after being in the hospital and no one marked down milestones or remembers when I started talking since they were too busy with my medical stuff.

I asked my mother is they'd ever tired to get a diagnosis when I was little and she said they did talk to my doctors but they all said I was developmentally delayed and that was normal for kids that had been born early.

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Me rambling about elementary school:

I went through public school with adaptive P.E. and was pulled out for a little while to be tested with flash cards and stuff in resource For me resource was me and the rough mannered lady(My family is very mild mannered compared nearly everyone else here). Her flipping cards while I had to read the words off them or say what the picture was or whatever the test was that time. Hated it, but never really questioned it except once. I'd been going since starting school so maybe I thought it was normal when I was little. I did wonder about it once when I was maybe around third or fourth grade and tried to make sense of it in my own head. I think my reasoning at the time was that if there were others that went to resource like I did they were probably in other rooms each with one adult testing them like I was or if they used the same lady then they likely saw her at different times. By sixth grade I knew of a kid in my class that went to something called 'gate' during class time every so often, because he was very smart so while I knew what I went to wasn't the same thing I figured it was normal for some kids to go to places kind of like I did.

I grew up in the days when if I hadn't actually seen 'disabled kids' passing through the resource room I'd have ever known or they were at the school at all. Nor would I have assumed, since I only saw them passing through resource and nowhere else that they had some room far away somewhere in the school that they stayed in the rest of the time(I assumed it was one room for some reason for all of them). I find it odd now that I assumed they all shared one classroom and that I never wondered anything about them having recess or where they would play since I never saw them on the yard with the other kids. Though the recesses were by grade so they may have had their own recess time and I wouldn't have known anyway if it wasn't at the same time as mine Of course I was pretty oblivious to most things as a kid and kept to myself at the far end of the yard all recess with my one friend and the other girl she'd meet that played with us.

I think it was mainly fourth and maybe even as early as third grade when I started hanging out by the far end of the yard where all the mowed grass was(which I told the others was hay - because I didn't know what it was and when I didn't know what something was I would use the closest word I could think of and strong smelling rows of cut grass looked like hay to me since I never saw how the 'hay' got there each day until later in the year and then I was so used to calling it 'hay' that I didn't care that it wasn't really 'hay' nor did it naturally just appear at the end of the yard every day as I'd assumed beforehand. Yes I have a yard and yes the grass is mowed but the grass clippings are not left on the grass, but thrown in the trash can afterward and back then I wouldn't have even known that yet as I wasn't to be outside when the yard was being mowed.

I really need to use this thing more

I keep forgetting I have blogs. I fail. So I have been diagnosed as PDD-NOS or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified(as 0f 12/31/2011) aka 'Something off, don't know what, here a label for you to wear be happy someone else is paying us the hundreds of thousands of dollars you owe us for it.' (Cosby Show ref.) My mother and I started work on getting money from SSI a few months ago since it has become finally obvious that the whole get a job to support yourself thing wont work for me cause of my disability(sounds so weird to write that). SSI hates me, I knew this already but they hate me more now. They want me to see their doctors who are not trained in ASDs to see if my status has changed since 12/31/2011 which would be a valid concern if I were a kid and still developing and stuff, but I'm 27 and so the chances of my PDD changing much is very unlikely. When my mom called SSI to see if we could postpone the appointments until SSI had all the paperwork they'd asked for(they goofed and messed up some of it, but it's getting fixed slowly), they said the mental part was canceled. Why? No idea. We just hope they didn't think we wanted to cancel it which we don't we just wanted it pushed back until they had all the stuff they needed. We think maybe they canceled it because they had enough stuff to not need to more metal testing, but just today we got reminders in the mail about both appointments and no mention of one being canceled. I just hope I can get on SSI by my birthday or Christmas like they suggested was possible. I really don't want to have to start over again(this is our second time doing this. First time was pre-diagnosis and didn't work out.) I'm praying SSI will be nice and things will work out. I'm also looking into volunteering in the community to try and socialize(which I fail at as socializing doesn't come naturally to me like it does to everyone else) and maybe find and make friends .... and with much lucky maybe maybe one will be a guy and lead to my having a boyfriend for the first time ever. I'd like to get married one day and in a few years I'll be 30 which sounds bad to me though everyone else(all older than me) say it's not a big deal and I shouldn't make so much out of it. I wish my Church had a way I could meet people but it's too small and all the people in it my age are married with kids already. I don't know how to get from here to that myself and no one offline seems to want to approach me in that way(expect for one guy years ago, but he was creepy.) Yeah pity party for me kinda. I'm just stressed and stuff. I've clean up my internet stuff and am trying again to stay away from bad stuff. I was kinda dumb and registered at a dating site(not the first time), but it's helped a little. There are according to the internet single guys that might date me near where I live, I just need to find a way to meet those type of guys offline, like go to another bigger church during the week and try to meet people to be friends with and see what happens. I need reason to leave the house and do stuff and getting friends would in theory help.