Early warning signs

[Voltaic]

What I am wondering is, when you look back at your childhood, before or after being diagnosed, what where some signs that you where on the spectrum?

I was diagnosed just a year back. Before they even spoke the words autism, I didn't come into my mind that I might actually be on the spectrum. I have dine research Before, and I thought I didn't line up. After sitting on the diagnosis for a few months things started to line up.
As a baby, I cried non stop for four months to my parents dismay at four months old, I just stopped. One of the things my mom told me she used to use to get me asleep was the vacuum, which I later became obsessed with. I would take it apart and clean the whole thing. I couldn't put it back together, so my dad had to do so until he taught me how. I also became obsessed with space, starting from a book I still have called 'Why do stars have points?' Other things such raffee the singer, and the book the polar express I spent so much time listening and reading, I mesmerized the album, and the book to the point I could recite word by word.
All fun and game until school. My mom used to say I lived by the motto 'my way or the highway' if I didn't get to do schoolwork the way I wanted to, i became distressed.
Socially I wasn't to bad. I made friends in all of my schools, but only one good one I often hung out with. But even with the singular friend, I was in most part an outcast in a decent amount of schools.

From there, I normalised quiet a bit by emulating a persona. That persona was still kind of annoying and not to fun to be around or to act, so I am trying to find a better solution.

 

[celestialregale]

Being recently diagnosed, I was just considering this.

As a child, I ran in circles, danced a lot and always was fidgeting with everything around me. I would chew on the front of my shirts and necklaces. I also had a thing for walking on curbs, in patterns etc. My grandparents say I would break down 'adult language' into simpler language for my friends. They have also pointed out my aloofness and lack of eye contact.

I can definitely see a pattern of social camouflage throughout my school years. Interestingly, I don't recall having meltdowns or shutdowns until my teenage years.

 

[Adora]

There were signs when I was a kid,even before I was diagnosed I was very shy,had poor eye contact,got obsessed over things and would fixate on them like Greek Mythology,Comic books,drawing and my doll collecting,I also use to hate the flash of the camera when my picture was taken and it made me cry,another interesting thing I found out was that tip toe walking can be a indicator of being on the spectrum,I grew up doing this and still do it to this day,also found out that pacing up and down is a stim and I do this a lot especially when I’m thinking about my drawings of even while on the phone.

 

[Judge]

My parents became concerned observing me all too often contently playing by myself for hours on end. And that I didn't even begin to speak in complete sentences until I was four years old. I paced for a stim as well, and had difficulty looking people in the eyes. And I proved to be quite a picky eater at an early age, much to the chagrin of my parents.

Of course at the time no one professionally had a clue and ultimately pronounced me as "fine".

 

[Sabrina]

There’s an anecdote that my parents retell up to these days from when I was a kid.

I was 4 or 5 and it was going to be a special day at school, since we were going to visit the firefighters’ station. But my socks bothered me, and I was not going to go with those socks. My parents insisted that I should just wear them and get over it, and I repeated myself again, but they said that either I wore those socks or I was not going to the school trip.
So, obviously, I stayed home. They always tell the same story to demonstrate how stubborn I was and to show how they wouldn’t put up with my nonsense and that they were so tough on me that I got the ‘punishment’ that I deserved .

But the only thing that I remember is that I was relieved to be left at home without the socks from hell, and that I couldn’t care less about going to the firefighters.

I also started reading whole books when I was 7. I remember my classmates catching up (reading whole kids’ books) when they were 10. But then at 11 or 12 I was reading grown up novels.
I also remember spending a lot of time in the school chapel or in the bathroom during recess, trying to be alone.

Oh, something else. I had sudden impulses of wanting to move like the tasmanian devil (like wanting to shake my whole body or wanting to punch stuff). When that happened, I used to tell my sister I had “the thing”. I sometimes actually acted it out, if there were no grown ups around. I remember trying to make something fun out of it, pretending that I was going crazy, I even screamed.What was that?

 

[Adora]

Being recently diagnosed, I was just considering this.

As a child, I ran in circles, danced a lot and always was fidgeting with everything around me. I would chew on the front of my shirts and necklaces. I also had a thing for walking on curbs, in patterns etc. My grandparents say I would break down 'adult language' into simpler language for my friends. They have also pointed out my aloofness and lack of eye contact.

I can definitely see a pattern of social camouflage throughout my school years. Interestingly, I don't recall having meltdowns or shutdowns until my teenage years.

Yeah it is interesting looking back after you discover your on the spectrum you also find out about things you do that you never thought was part of being on the spectrum like my tip toe walking and even things like pacing up and down which I do a lot while thinking.

 

[SusanLR]

Now that I have been diagnosed, I can see so many Aspie traits that started early as an infant practically.

Even though there was a girl one year younger than me l next door, I never cared for playing or making friends.
I had my own daily routine and that's all I wanted.
Immediately after breakfast I would go outside where I kept a large spoon and there was a certain place on the north side of the house I would dig with the spoon.
I thought I was going to find something wonderful.

Then there was the child's plastic 45 rpm record player.
An elderly couple gave my parents a big box of records they no longer wanted and I sat for hours every day playing them on the floor with my little player.
That occupied most of my day as a toddler.
I also became obsessed with a first reader book called Tuggy the Tugboat and pretended to be a tugboat.
The area under my crib was my cove.
I remember my Dad bought a big plastic tugboat and slipped it in my "cove" to surprise me. I saw that thing and was like frozen. I carried it everywhere.

I was very picky with eating. And my stim was a big rocking chair and I rocked away. Once so much it fell over backwards! And I just layed there. Didn't cry or anything until Mom walked into the room and found me.

I never cared for making friends but excelled in school way beyond my class. They didn't have as they do now, where you can go ahead and reach college while still in grade school or I could have done that.
I always had anxiety problems and sensory issues too.
And that's a young Susan!

 

[pjcnet]

It was soon pretty obvious that both my brothers as well as myself were autistic from a very early age, but I suppose one of the biggest early warning signs was when I was still almost a baby from around 12 to 18 months when I still hadn't started forming my first words, obviously as I gradually got older it became more and more obvious that there was definitely something "wrong" and it wasn't long before other autistic traits started to show through. We all showed severely impaired development, especially with speech, but if that wasn't enough we also all went through an early childhood phase of epileptic fits that thankfully eventually stopped, then the rest of our autistic traits were soon blatantly in your face and very obvious which meant that even in the 1970s as young children we were all officially diagnosed as autistic (Please note: epileptic fits are more common in autistic children).

PS: For people who haven't read about my family before I was the only one out of 3 brothers that eventually started to show signs of significant improvement as a got a little older and unlike my brothers who still can't for instance count to 5 or read, I am now higher functioning in many ways as an adult, although I've kept numerous autistic traits and I still struggle with certain tasks that many would expect to be easy for an average adult. The problem is it often feels like some people don't believe that I can be so bad at certain "simple" things when I've been programming computers since the age of 10.