As a young child, my autism was not diagnosed until the age of nine. Therefore, any unexpected behaviors I exhibited were noticed by my family but were not connected to living on the autism spectrum.

I would self-stimulate as a toddler to the TV at home when my favorite TV show, "Barney The Dinosaur" was on by arm-flapping, but my mother did not think anything of it then. Following my autism becoming official, then therapy and being aware of my tendencies were more of a priority.

As a child going into my preteen years, my mother recalled having to explain to strangers why I was arm-flapping in public. I would also self-stimulate by skipping, as in being so excitable by my thoughts that I skipped in a dancing motion while arm-flapping. 

My elementary school peers were only informed of my autism in the fifth grade, so any unexpected behaviors I exhibited before fifth grade were reacted to with judgmental facial expressions and derogatory remarks.

Upon looking back at my time in elementary school, I noticed that my peers were reacting judgmentally and in a derogatory manner, and I responded by feeling hurt and misjudged.

However, due to my lack of self-advocacy skills at the time, as a young and yet-to-be diagnosed child, I did not say anything because I was not sure of how to articulate how hurtful the reactions were to me.

Going into junior high school, the verbal abuse escalated and my peers were as unkind as can be.

I did have some acquaintances in junior high, one of which was both verbally and physically abusive in one instance, but the majority of my peers at that time were as one would expect junior high school peers to be due to unexpected behaviors.

The reactions of my peers in junior high school were harsh, cruel, and demeaning most of the time, to the extent that I dreaded going to junior high school each day.

I was mistreated and made to look foolish in many social interactions due to my autism causing a lack of interpreting sarcasm and humor the intended way.

That verbal abuse took its toll throughout an entire grade, sixth to seventh, being subjected to the "r" word frequently and meanly by certain peers and being the brunt of a lot of sarcastic jokes at the same time, most of which I did not recognize was being teasing toward me at the time.

By the beginning of seventh grade, my self-esteem due to the verbal abuse took its toll to the extent that I considered the worst course of action imaginable.

However, I managed to feel enough self-worth to prevent that and, in an early instance of self-advocacy, informed the junior high school guidance counselor and my parents of my thoughts of the worst.

Upon my self-advocating, I was switched to a different school system and school, designed for students with severe disabilities and students with anger and behavioral issues.

Around this time, outside of school, I had two experiences, one in a public setting and one outside of my home, that reinforced the necessity for me to modify unexpected behaviors.

The experience in public was that I developed a habit of imaginative role-playing of myself in TV shows I enjoyed at the time, as well as verbally imitating those characters' voices in my voice, and I would exhibit that behavior in public on occasion.

I decided to exhibit the imaginative role-playing of the TV characters' voices, which others would perceive as unexpected, on a public beach my family and I often went to.

I distinctly recall one young man, who was a few years younger than me, giving me a judgmental facial expression, which was likely both discomfort and confusion, from my right-hand side, and my mother told me after we left the beach that day of another judgmental reaction of an older person.

As my mother sat at our beach towel, trying to gesture to me to stop the unexpected behavior, my mother overheard a teenage lady walking with her friend who happened to notice my unexpected behavior refer to me as "that "r" word boy."

After my mother told me that, when my mother and I both knew of my intelligence, it dawned upon me to modify that behavior in public more often.

The other experience at home involved the same behavior at the beach, but I exhibited that same behavior in my home backyard at that time.

As I arm-flapped and imitated the TV characters I was mentally imagining in my backyard, as my body was shifted away from the main road that my childhood home was adjacent to, I heard the very judgmental and mean-spirited reaction from someone driving by my home. That person shouted a very vulgar word at me that is usually directed at the LBGTQ+ community, a word that begins with an "f."

Upon that vulgar "f" word being shouted at me from within my own home by a judgmental and mean stranger, which my mother and younger brother overheard from inside our home due to how vocal that stranger was, I went inside feeling humiliated and ashamed, at which point, my mother was honest with me and said, "That is why we encourage you not to do that in public, Mike."

From then on, I made a concerted effort to modify my unexpected behaviors, which was indeed an effort since I was used to those unexpected behaviors from habit.

As I entered high school, the teasing continued in certain situations, such as the judgmental facial expressions due to my peers not recognizing the unexpected behaviors, and in a few instances, getting insulted out of miscommunications.

In one instance, as a high school freshman, I was in my special education classroom and a classmate was distracting me from a group lesson by being childish.

This classmate was two grades ahead of me, so due to being distracted, I did something unexpected and considered by others to be against social expectations and told on my classmate for being distracting to me.

Another classmate told the classmate that I told on him for the distracting behavior, at which point, the classmate I told on insulted me with a curse word and asked why I told on him.

I did not answer that question, because I knew why I told on him, but because the social expectations are to not tell on your classmates or friends, which I did not recognize due to the autism, I was made fun of through an insulting remark due to my choice. 

In another instance a few years later, in my junior year of high school, I enjoyed different styles of music, such as disco music. One day in my high school cafeteria, I began thinking of a disco song I enjoy, that song is "He's The Greatest Dancer" by Sister Sledge, and began arm-flapping and pacing in-between two cafeteria tables while singing that disco song.

It took a judgmental reaction from an underclassmen who noticed and gave me "that look" to get me to self-regulate the arm-flapping at that moment.

Eventually, with enough social skills therapy that my schools afforded me and choosing to modify the unexpected behaviors, I ended up making some friends at the tail end of high school and graduated with my peers.

One of the topics that social skills therapy covered was "unexpected behaviors," which I was very familiar with by then. That therapy was helpful to my social progression and maturity and allowed me to learn what I needed to learn to be "accepted" for who I was.

There were other miscommunications due to the unexpected behaviors, as well as other attributes related to autism and my personality, but with time, practice, and exposure, I learned some hard lessons and ended up earning some respect from others.

I have told how likeable I am when I am "myself." However, I still have a lot of trauma mentally and emotionally from the teasing from the unexpected behaviors as a child and teenager.

I have also learned to be more respectful to others, you have to give respect to get it back and earn it, and though I still may encounter a degree of scrutiny as an adult from the unexpected behaviors, I am self-aware now to know where it is okay to exhibit those unexpected behaviors and where behavioral modification is necessary.

I am working hard to learn the needed skills for future social opportunities, and I have learned that all I can do is be myself and learn lessons through trial and error.

I pride myself on my progress and determination and provided I continue that momentum, I can achieve a lot of good things as an adult due to my progression and learning from my experiences and trauma.

While I personally disagree with the behavioral modification in public notion, since I believe that those unexpected behaviors are necessary for people with autism to express who they are and for their functioning comfort, I understand the expectation of modifying the unexpected behaviors and modifying against my personal wishes.

I disagree with the notion of people with autism modifying their unexpected behaviors in public for two very integral reasons.

The first reason is that expecting people with autism to modify their unexpected behaviors is teaching the people with autism that the community as a whole is not perceived as adequate to socialize with and that people with autism are inferior to the neurotypical population if the unexpected behaviors are noticeable.

Those unexpected behaviors are part of the autism spectrum for a cognitive functioning purpose since autism impacts the brain and how those brains process in their own ways, so teaching people with autism that they need to "look like everyone else to fit in" is contradictory to embracing autism as a whole, including the unexpected behaviors.

The second reason is that people with autism are not bad people, socially and in general, due to unexpected behaviors. A lot of people with autism are quality people to talk to and be friends with, unexpected behaviors and all, even if the unexpected behaviors appear to look a certain and uncomfortable way to neurotypicals.

As a person with autism who lived through the misjudgment and ridicule of his neurotypical peers for most of his childhood, I have received the message of "Change yourself to make more friends and be similar to everyone else" for most of my life.

However, I do not want to change who I am, autism and all. I like myself for who I am, and unexpected behaviors are part of who I am due to living on the autism spectrum.

I wish my peers from my childhood understood that arm-flapping and all of my other unexpected behaviors were a part of my autism at the time and how I expressed myself due to the autism spectrum. As a result, I wish that my peers from that time would have been more educated, which is not their fault, it was not as educated about in general back then.

If there had been more education and understanding at that time, a lot of the misjudgment and ridicule I dealt with could have been avoided and I would not have the traumatic memories to figure out for myself all of these long years later.

I am responsible for my own healing, that is known, but it is a shame that that responsibility is there, to begin with, due to how unnecessary those experiences were to live through.

I carry that burden each day due to avoidable factors, and that aspect makes the healing process even tougher for me. I am trying each day to heal myself, and through my effort and opportunities now, that healing is getting easier as my life progresses.

Hopefully, with more education and understanding, the experiences I lived through in a traumatic fashion will serve as inspiration that if you live through those moments and work at it, you can learn from those moments and do better for yourself afterward.

It is still painful to mentally relive my trauma, because of my memory and emotional personality, however, I have chosen the high road from those options and I am persevering to set a good example now.