Really talkative as a toddler, then painfully shy?

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I've been thinking about how my mother said that when I was 2 years old, I was really talkative, and that I would sometimes start talking to strangers and walk away with them, still talking. (I have memories going back to about 18 months old, but I don't remember that). But most of my childhood, I was so shy, I was sometimes literally scared to talk to strangers.
(Over the last 10 years or so, I've been getting over it. I'm able to talk to people if they talk to me, like the cashier at a grocery store or something, but I still don't talk much in social settings because I usually either stick my foot in my mouth, say something that someone takes offense to, or just generally make a fool of myself).

I know that talking early or talking late is common in autism, but what about being really talkative as a toddler, then having it reverse like flipping a switch?

Were any of you like that as a child?

It could be that the results of being so talkative (ie embarrassing yourself) made you wary of being so talkative

There's a big difference between being shy & able to talk, and not being able to talk. They wouldn't call a kid a late talker if he could talk in some situations (eg at home with parents) but refused to talk in other situations. That would be more selective mutism than autism.

Anyway, my guess is your shyness came with greater social awareness. The ability to feel embarrassed depends on being able to conceive of someone judging you for your actions, at least on a basic level. Many toddlers don't have that yet.

Most toddlers are shy, but more because they realize they're small and helpless in a big scary world and their only protection is mummy and daddy. It's a hardwired thing, from back when strangers could be warriors from another tribe and large carnivorous animals loved to snatch up children who ventured too far from their parents. (For example, the Taung Child was killed by an eagle.) However, there are some toddlers who are innately less shy than others, and can be pretty friendly with strangers. For the most part, it's just part of normal variation, although actually being willing to leave with a stranger is a bit extreme!

Kids who are shy all along tend to be genetically shy, but kids who become shy later in childhood tend to be shy due to negative experiences in social situations. For an AS toddler, clumsy social approaches will generally be met with a positive reaction just because toddlers are cute and they're not expected to know anything about social norms anyway. As kids get older, peers start to have more influence on their lives, and adults start getting less tolerant of socially awkward behaviour (though still more tolerant than peers, generally), so the same kind of clumsy social approaches will be met with more and more negative reactions. It makes sense for a kid to become shy under these circumstances.

I was a quiet child but not shy really. My mom could leave me with any one and I'd never look back. I was also very passive and very easily taken advantage of but it wasn't until fourth or fifth grade that I started to really have embarrassing social moments. I felt like a freak, I felt like the teachers hated me, and I felt like peers thought I was stupid and immature. I had a breakdown when I changed schools in middle school which resulted in more extremely embarrassing and hurtful social situations. It was about this time I started to turn extremely, painfully shy. I could play a role with some people and in some places but I was never the same again. Withdrawal was my coping mechanism. Kept me out of trouble, but it was and is extraordinarily painful for someone who does enjoy being with people. The problem came in the fact that I just didn't know what to do with people or how to stand or where to stand or how to look at them etc. so the "shyness" was able to basically take over when in places where I was already compromised anxiety-wise, people and places where since childhood I'd been unable to function for other reasons. I never liked the word "shy." I never felt shy but people said I was. I suppose that is the way they saw it. I think that if someone had done what I needed and sat down with me and taught me how to approach people in different situations and in different places I wouldn't have suffered so much from the "shyness." I was okay at school, able to speak at least and able to make a couple friends but it was those unstructured, entirely social things like church events that were horrible. I wasn't as shy around adults as much, but talking to my middle-school and teenage and college peers was...I don't know...it was just hard.