What were you like from ages 0 to 8?

[Phil P]

What were you like when you were a little tyke? Did you have the same general personality type? How have you changed since then?

At age 0 I was born with mild cerebral palsy. I don't know if this has effected my personality or not, but psychically, my left side isn't as coordinated.
But up till second grade, I always played by myself. I never played with the other kids at recess. I was extreme introvert to other class mates, but I responded to teachers and always participated in class. Now I'm much more extroverted, and while I'm fine being alone, I also like being around people.

Also I was obsessed with videogames. Most people get into them when they are older, but I really liked them at that age and have since grown out of it some, although I still play some, about 10 hours a week. But I never watched TV, due to a fundamentalist christain upbringing, so that was my only screen time.

And I was very concrete. I don't know if that is S or J, but I could not think outside the box. Probably more J. I was stuck in a rut and would do things over and over again. Now I'm the opposite and I hate repetition and I always try to think outside the box.

I always have had a vivid sense of picturing things in my head, from that time till now.

As a baby, I would never move around the house or get in trouble really. I didn't cry much. I just always kind of sat put and was in my own world.

I didn't know if this was a psychology thread or an MBTI thread, but I put it here.

[gps]

I was then very much like as I am now ... however others projected and apperceived.

I was 9+ lbs at birth ... with most of that undoubtedly head.
My language skills were developed enough by age 4 that my mother sent me to fetch things from an aunt who lived up the hill from us.
I started climbing trees at age 3; by the time I was 8 or 9 I had perhaps 7 near-level platforms constructed in one of the pine trees located on my maternal grandparents front yard on their dairy farm.

Upon entering kindergarten at age 4 I was painfully shy, very much suffering from social anxiety.
My love of comic books -- now called graphics novels -- starting before kindergarten had matured by age 8 and proved a `gateway drug' to ink-on-paper books containing progressively less pictorial content and more text in the years following the 8-year cut off of your question.

Oh, my poor spelling abilities were evident by age 8; in 5th grade I was still working out of a 3rd grade spelling book.
I was left handed upon entry into kindergarten; I still have a left sighting eye.

[Blorg]

embarrassingly small, weak, toothless and inarticulate.

[LordLatch]

My beard was a little thinner.

Spoiler: Just like the chart indicates

[Anon]

I was homeschooled, and as a result was very isolated. I kept pretty much to myself, and had a vivid imagination. I was constantly in various fantasy worlds of my own making, using things like woodchips as props for battleships, or just visualizing everything. Once I started reading, I got really into various sci-fi/fantasy books, but mostly fantasy. I also enjoyed comics (Dilbert, not DC). I liked being outside a lot too, and was allowed to be pretty independent at a young age, riding my bike around the neighborhood and going to parks frequently.

In terms of personality, I was a lot more sensitive than I am now. If someone started crying, I would frequently start crying too. I must have lost a lot of mirror neurons when I went through puberty. Maybe they got converted into awesomeness neurons.

[Dynamic]

I do not remember much from my early childhood. However, from what I have been told, I was very advanced and mature for my age. I started using a computer when I was 3, and played a lot of Legends of the Red Dragon on my father's BBS. I had (and still have) a much larger than average vocabulary, though I tend to not use it unless I am writing something technical, or something aimed for a specific audience. I started doing algebra when I was 5 or 6, before I could even read very well. Once I started really reading, around the time I was 6, I quickly absorbed everything that was around me. I was reading on a college level by the time I was 7.

Then, my father passed away in a car wreck...and I really do not remember much from that time. It seems that I had a really hard time with that. I became absorbed in computer games and fantasy novels, and didn't really do anything else anymore.

[pensive_pilgrim]

My parents split up when I was less than a year old and my mother moved across the country with me. When I was three she decided that she wasn't capable of caring for me properly so back I went to live with dad and his new wife. This whole situation affected me strongly - I hated being separated from my mother and I cried a lot and misbehaved, perhaps in an effort to be sent back. I was more extraverted than I am now and would play with the other kids on my street and at school but I was a little asshole and many of my memories are of fights. I started fights and I hurt people and broke things for no apparent reason. I remember a school administrator telling my parents that I had a personality disorder and would probably end up in prison. On one of my first days in kindergarten I remember using a toy similar to a jump rope to whip another boy pretty badly. They had him come and show me the welts because I didn't seem to understand that I had done anything wrong, and I don't remember being angry at him or anything, I just decided to whip him for some reason. I had a lot of incidents like that up until the sixth grade, but for the most part I definitely had anger coming out. Things that stand out are the time I pushed a girl down into the mud and took her glasses for no reason, the time I beat the kid who was probably my best friend with a broom handle and he never spoke to me again, the time I tackled a boy and squeezed his throat so hard my nails drew blood for some reason, I can't remember why. I was constantly in trouble.

I was also "gifted" so there was that. I taught myself to read before starting kindergarten so when the other kids were watching videos with alphabet puppets I got to play by myself with blocks or the classroom apple IIe. In the first grade it was decided that I would go over to a fifth grade classroom for lessons in reading and math. That experiment eventually ended because I wouldn't do any of the homework and I suspect also because my comments about the assigned readings were disruptive. It was really weird being a first-grader in a fifth grade class so I didn't mind, but after that I just did worksheets from some book by myself so that kinda blew. Teachers hated me and I didn't really make friends and from a young age I felt alienated and wanted to be a criminal and destroy things.

Being a kid sucked. I tried to run away at six. I had no plan really, but I stuffed my pockets with change from the change jar and got on my bicycle and just started riding. I was picked up on the highway by a state trooper and brought home to my crying stepmother and I lied and said that I just wanted to go back to Kentucky to ride the horses again(we had gone on a vacation there). I think it was the third grade when I started thinking about suicide and sort of attempted it a couple times but that's getting past eight years old so I'll stop.

[jigglypuff]

i was an eight year old artsy loner, really shy with poor social skills. in everything but art and spelling, i was average as hell. i got a lot of recess time-outs for some reason. i'd just started wearing contact lenses and had a lot of trouble playing in the sandbox. i was also the "runt" of every class and this went on for a quite a while. i had a good sense of humor, though.

my social skills have since improved dramatically but i'm not that different now.

[msg_v2]

I was always kind of a loner, and I always had kind of a temper. I always liked sciency things, and I remember before I could read, being jealous of kids older than I was who could read... I felt like I was missing out on something. I also didn't feel like a fit in, although I don't think that was a reason why I was a loner. I think I was a loner before all that.

I was a good student with behavioral problems, though I tried my damnedest to be well-behaved. In first grade, I mostly kept to myself, and when I didn't found myself rejected. Also, they decided I was gifted. In second grade, I was a bit of a bully. Third grade, I cut that out, and made some friends that lasted until middle school.

[Aurast]

I don't know how anyone remembers enough to answer that question. I sure don't. I can't remember what I was like before 13 years old or so. I must have been pretty run-of-the-mill.