Agreed-- and one aspect of being very far from the normative, neurotypical experience of childhood makes a person fundamentally apart from most others.
How many adults can relate to the experience of a literate childhood at ages 3-6yo? How many can relate to an awareness of international events at age 7 to 10?
Only other people who lived that themselves-- and that isn't many.
I'm about five years YOUNGER than I 'seem' online. The reason is simple. I remember things like Watergate and the fall of Saigon very clearly. I was well under four years old then.
My daughter also seems "old" for her chronological age in terms of her framing experiences. She recalls 9/11. And really-- she shouldn't, since she was two.
In addition to meshing with those who have experiences that most of our contemporaries are too young to recall, we also have unique and life-shaping epiphanies at ages that are just flatly a little weird.
For example, I'm VERY sure that most 5yo children do not spend a contemplative hour staring up at the sky and truth-testing solopsism as a pragmatic philosophy, before rejecting it as basically untestable. Yet I recall it clearly.
There are things that set me apart from most others for a lifetime. My developmental arc is just radically different from that of most people. Childhood and adolescence spent waiting for others to catch up was excruciating, but adulthood has been a disappointment, too, because I never considered the fact that while I was "waiting" for them, I was not standing still either.
