Dude I am a 50 year old High Functioning Autistic Man. I so totally understand everything in your question. Dude unfortunately you will so totally not like my answer. What you are describing is one of the major elements that comprise life on the autism spectrum as we know it. If you master the complex art of socialization so well you lose all child like ways you will have cured your Asperger's my friend. As autistic beings we are hard wired to think rationally, logically. As autistic beings we have a huge database of learned responses to be acted out in response to known social or other life situations. We have learned to generate the expected or appropriate behavior as needed when the life situation presents a structured, logical, literal or quantifiable situation. As autistics we have spent our lives building a vast complex database of "socially acceptable responses we perform on cue as if we were actors on this stage called life. However as you know all too well my Asperger's brother life on earth is not all about the logical rational things we as autistics can master.

A social life requires that we understand the common absolutely subjective social underpinnings of what it means to be a purely social being. We by definition of what it means to live on Autism's spectrum can never experience life as purely social beings. When life shifts to the purely social there is no structure to guide our behavior. As a high functioning autistic man I have developed complicated metrics that quantify every aspect of rational human behavior so I can survive in the workplace and the community where politeness, laws, goals and rules provide structure. Like you my dear friend as an autistic man I lose all my social moorings and become a child when that structured concrete world of goals and law devolve into pure social intercourse.

In a purely social situation as autistic beings we have no structure. In new life situations for which we have no script we revert to a child like state as we attempt to cobble together a proper response. During our child like state if the stresses of the unknown keep mounting in ways we are unprepared to cope with we erupt into what society considers a child like rage. When I am successful beyond my wildest dreams having completed a project or task at work, I too become child like. What you call a child like state I call the primal autistic state. The primal man is true to himself as a child is. Primal autistic beings do not concern ourselves with presenting the trappings of sophistication you are ascribing to "acting like an adult!" The primal autistic being is instantly in touch with the most basic aspects of their humanity. Neurotypicals use terms like "adult" and "sophisticated" to hide from their true natures. Autistic people like us must consciously write complex behavioral scripts to present a "socially acceptable adult persona" to members of the outside world.

Your problem with autism is like in my own life when we are extremely angry or happy the unscripted, unstructured spontaneously truly primal nature that defines our autism experience comes out for the world to see. You are a primal autistic man trying to pass yourself off as a socially acceptable sophisticated adult and every so often the shields drop and people see your primal child like autistic self. Our Autism unmasks and forces us to be true to our innermost primal beings. You will be an adult only when your raw emotions are not stirred. In the final analysis our Autism makes us a brutally honest passionate people. Autism provides you with a passion in every part of your life that will always be shockingly honest and yes child like to those not on the spectrum. As a High Functioning Autistic, I am your primal brother when I look upon you I always see what you call the child like ways. You must accept that the practiced "adult persona" you present to the world is in truth an act of fiction that allows you to survive in this social reality. But do not fool yourself into thinking that "Adult Persona" is your true nature. Oh the adult persona is a useful tool you could not survive in this society without but, never fall into the trap of believing that you are that person.

For us autistic persons this world is a stage and the adult persona's we create are just survival tools we use to make our limited socialization survival skills more effective when required. However as you and I both know the social persona's we create to survive in life have autism imposed limitations. We also both know the social persona's we generate require we invest huge amounts of our limited physical and mental energy to make them convincing tools. When we become child like in anger or happiness we in effect automatically revert to our natural autistic state and nothing you do will stop it. The primal child like autism state is part of what makes you an awesome person please do not be ashamed of who you are. Granted some insecure or ignorant people might make jokes about your primal child like true autistic nature but fools are the price all great people suffer for being true to ourselves. What I call reversion is the cost we pay for being high functioning autistics!