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At ten years old, my weirdness became apparent, setting itself apart from the cute oddities displayed by all children. Suddenly, the way I was treated by others changed; people started giving me strange sideways looks that I could not read. My inappropriate behavior (once taking my knickers off because I was too hot) was no longer that of a child, and I was told I should have "known better."I went to a sleepover at the house of my best friend, Sally, and cried to go home because I was scared "something bad would happen" if I didn't.Soon after this incident, I was jilted, left heartbroken in the dinner line when Sally went and stood with someone else. "It's nothing," said a teacher—but Sally and I knew otherwise. We had been inseparable since six, and her rejection was deliberate, symbolic, the end. It cut me to the quick.I remembered this when Katie, the charismatic 15-year-old "star" of GWA was pictured devastated, watching her ex-boyfriend with another girl at the same school. "It's just one of those things," said a teacher—but for a child with autism it's never "just one of those things."It must be difficult for a teacher to identify those formative moments in a child's life that will remain with them all their lives—there are so many playground squabbles, so many tears, that they must feel weary, as though they have seen it all before. For any child a rejection can be loaded with significance, but for an autistic child it can be devastating, shattering their fragile sense of self (based as it is on a desperate need for approval).
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