Sufferers Stories

Gary: Aspergers Syndrome and OCD

Gary has Aspergers Syndrome as his primary condition with secondary OCD. Gary has written an article  relating to his first year of school experiences at age 5.

by Gary

I recently read an article where the author argued that ‘the most important lessons in life are learned in the kindergarten.’ Surprisingly, as an AS/OCD person I agree with that statement. However, as you will see I agree for reasons entirely unintended by the author.

Although fifty years have passed I can vividly remember my first year of school. In the town where I grew up children who had reached age five began by attending a half-day program called ‘kindergarten’ for one year before beginning first grade.

On that first day my mother took me over to the nearby school and left me in the charge of my new kindergarten teacher, Miss Raile. I was immediately overwhelmed. I was used to playing quietly by myself or at most with one other child, usually my older sister. I found myself thrown in with twenty-five other children. To make matters worse I soon found that the teacher, rather than being my protector, expected me to interact with those strange creatures!

I tried hard to listen to the teacher and learn the new rules. In mid-afternoon to my horror the teacher called a ‘rest break’ and had the children line up, boys in one line, girls in another. We were led out to the bathrooms. Once inside the boys’ bathroom my peers became very noisy and wild as they lined up at the urinals. I nervously stood to one side. I knew that I could not do something that private in front of other boys so I quietly washed my hands. Fortunately, I did not need to go.

During recess I also stood to one side. I had always found playground equipment to be scary rather than fun. Amidst a hundred screaming children the thought of using swings, slides, monkey bars was unthinkable.

I tried to convey to my mother what I thought of school, but she would not listen. I was five so I had to go, end of discussion. That first week the only part of school I found tolerable was ‘nap time.’ During that time we pulled out our small nap carpets and lay down to rest. The teacher turned off the horribly bright fluorescent lights. Miss Raile urged the children to rest and to remain as quiet as possible. That I could do!

The second week my kindergarten teacher humiliated me by sending me to ‘speech therapy.’ I was deemed to have ‘lazy lip movements’ and to not speak clearly enough to be understood. The speech teacher was kindly enough but I hated being ridiculed by the other kids for being singled out in this way.

A major classroom activity in kindergarten was art, especially drawing with crayons. My peers loved this while I definitely did not. I had always been clumsy with my hands. More important I felt that drawing was ‘stupid’ since I could create much more interesting images in my head. However, my interests were of no concern to the teacher so I stumbled my way through drawing.

Finally, there was music, a special interest of Miss Raile. I had no problem listening to music. However, Miss Raile firmly believed that all the kids should learn to move with the rhythm of music. Although we were too young to really dance she expected us to bang tambourines and skip together in unison while she played the records. I tried my best and banged away at my tambourine. However, skipping was another matter. All the other kids were natural ‘skippers.’ However, I resisted. I did not openly defy my teacher and I did make some feeble attempts. However, I had determined that I was not a ‘skipper.’ Miss Raile was incensed by my clumsiness and failure to learn.

I will digress at this point and say that I did indeed eventually learn to ‘skip’ entirely on my own. I was about nine years old. However, I quickly learned that at that age ‘skipping’ by boys was considered ‘sissy.’ Oh, well, that is the story of my life!

Getting back to kindergarten, I somehow managed to survive that year and get promoted to first grade (in my town children like me who had middle class/educated parents were never held back). However, that year certainly taught me some lessons and left a mark that remains today.