Can an Aspie develop typically as a baby?

Page 1 of 2 [ 22 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

Joe90
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 26,492
Location: UK

30 May 2013, 5:29 pm

Nobody knew I had anything wrong until I started school at the age of 4, because of my sudden unusual antisocial behaviour on my first day at school, which brought attention and concern to the teachers and my parents.
But let's have a look at how I was when I was a baby. Obviously I don't remember anything from when I was a baby, but my mum does, and also she recorded a lot of my development in the baby book what I've recently looked through, and we've got plenty of pictures and videos too. Here's what I know of how I was as a baby, which would not indicate that I had an ASD to even professional people:-

-When I first learned to walk by myself (I was 11 months), my mum held out one arm and tapped her leg and said, ''that's it, walk to Mummy, you can do it, walk to Mummy...'' and I walked exactly to her, looking very excited

-I had my first real smile at about 5 weeks, and my mum said that it was when my dad was playing with me, making silly faces and laughing, and it made me give a first proper smile. Could this be a form of empathy, being so I was around the age to first smiling and was having an adult smiling a lot at me which made me smile?

-I loved being played with, and I often held out my arms to an adult for a cuddle

-My mum told me the other day that I used to cry if she left the room or disappeared from my sight. Once we were in a shop and I was in the buggy, I was about 17 months, and my mum left me with my brother while she went off to get something, and I started crying ''Mummy....'' I read this is quite typical in babies, and I also read that Autistic babies may not worry if a loved one leaves the baby's sight

-My mum said I made eye contact a lot, like a normal baby

-In a lot of pictures I've got of me as a baby I am smiling at the camera, even as young as 8 months

-I was interested in toys, and I have a video of me at 7 months sitting on the floor grasping a colourful toy and putting it to my mouth and dropping it then reaching towards it again, like how a typical baby plays with a toy

-I babbled a lot at 7-8 months and over, and said my first word at about 12-13 months (I think it was ''Mummy'')

-I responded at games like ''Peek-a-boo''

-I wasn't any cleverer or delayed from other babies

-I was potty-trained by 2 and a half, and stopped wearing nappies in bed by 3 and a half, and never looked back (not sure if potty-training affects Autistic babies or not)

-I settled into preschool OK, My mum even remembers the preschool assistants saying I'm good with sharing toys with the other children, and participated well in group activities like painting. (The preschool assistants watched out for behaviour of all preschoolers and would tell their parents what their toddlers a like when the parents aren't around).

I can't think of any more, but these are a few points that are what a typically developing baby would be like in general. Are there other Aspies here who have proof that you showed no signs of ASDs until well into childhood? How come?


_________________
Female


Callista
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Feb 2006
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Posts: 10,775
Location: Ohio, USA

30 May 2013, 5:44 pm

My mom tells me I made eye contact as a young infant, staring intently at her face, and smiled for the first time during my first week... but I'm pretty sure that wasn't a social smile; probably just me grimacing and Mom with her first baby thinking everything I did was wonderful. I do know that I was unusually hard to comfort and cried unusually much and did not have a regular sleep-wake cycle as an infant, but I learned to walk and talk on time. While I probably wasn't smiling for real during my first week, I certainly did learn that some time during infancy. So it's a mix of autistic traits and NT ones.

Preschool is a good deal more forgiving than kindergarten in terms of behavior. Smaller groups, less social pressure to sit down and stay quiet and be a good little student.

Autistic people can be apparently normal for some time. Usually it's because the developmental demands haven't exceeded their abilities to cope yet. Then they fall behind. Entering elementary school is a common time for this to happen.


_________________
Reports from a Resident Alien:
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com

Autism Memorial:
http://autism-memorial.livejournal.com


daydreamer84
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jul 2009
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,001
Location: My own little world

30 May 2013, 7:58 pm

Callista wrote:
Autistic people can be apparently normal for some time. Usually it's because the developmental demands haven't exceeded their abilities to cope yet. Then they fall behind. Entering elementary school is a common time for this to happen.


It;s actually mentioned in the DSM V now - it says" :C. Symptoms must be present in early childhood (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities)" I watched a youtube video about the DSM V development today and they explained that often ,especially with the first child , mummies don't know what IS normal development and miss indicators and indicators aren't seen until kindergarten and sometimes even later (say if the children are home schooled and the parents adapt to the child and the child doesn't have much social interaction ect). Are you the oldest child or oldest girl in your family?

For me there were some indicators before kindergarten but also some contra indicators of ASD. When I was a baby my mum said she didn't notice anything like me making less eye contact but when she looks back - looking at the autism indicators she realizes that I had a rigid body posture and didn't "mold" to her arms when she held me like my sister did. I do smile as a baby in some pictures- you can also see the rigid posture when I'm being held. My preschool teacher did tell my mum she was concerned about me being off in my own little world. On the other hand my milestones were all within normal range (like you mentioned) and I did things like push carriages with dolls in preschool (so as a very small child showing some symbolic play). I also stimmed a lot as a preschooler and as an older kid too. So I was also a mixture.



Last edited by daydreamer84 on 30 May 2013, 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ettina
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,971

30 May 2013, 8:08 pm

Quote:
Can an Aspie develop typically as a baby?


They usually do.

If you know what to look for, you can spot Aspies around 4-6 years old. Classic autism can be spotted earlier, around 1-2 years or in rare cases before the first birthday.

This is one of the areas where an early speech delay actually makes a difference. Autistics who will have a speech delay generally have delays in preverbal communication before speech would be expected to emerge (eg lack of communicative gestures, lack of joint attention) which allow you to detect it earlier. Autistics without a speech delay (ie Aspies) can have gesture and joint attention delays, but often they don't, which means you have to wait until they fall behind on the more complex social milestones such as theory of mind.

The link is because gesture and joint attention help to support early speech development. It's more tricky to learn to talk without a solid foundation in preverbal communication.



hblu1992
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 16 Dec 2012
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 114

30 May 2013, 8:48 pm

The first post is basically a paraphrase of my early history.Yep everything was great until age 4 then 8O !



Callista
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Feb 2006
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Posts: 10,775
Location: Ohio, USA

30 May 2013, 11:30 pm

daydreamer84 wrote:
Callista wrote:
Autistic people can be apparently normal for some time. Usually it's because the developmental demands haven't exceeded their abilities to cope yet. Then they fall behind. Entering elementary school is a common time for this to happen.


It;s actually mentioned in the DSM V now - it says" :C. Symptoms must be present in early childhood (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities)" I watched a youtube video about the DSM V development today and they explained that often ,especially with the first child , mummies don't know what IS normal development and miss indicators and indicators aren't seen until kindergarten and sometimes even later (say if the children are home schooled and the parents adapt to the child and the child doesn't have much social interaction ect). Are you the oldest child or oldest girl in your family?
Both. I'm my mother's first child.

Makes me feel a little better about her being so much in denial; maybe at first she really had no idea what babies were supposed to be like.


_________________
Reports from a Resident Alien:
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com

Autism Memorial:
http://autism-memorial.livejournal.com


League_Girl
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 27,205
Location: Pacific Northwest

31 May 2013, 12:29 am

I also developed normal as a baby. I pointed to things, I liked to be held, I loved to tease, I was very good at manipulation to get my way, I had tantrums, I did my terrible twos. I haven't heard anything from my mother that indicated an ASD in my early years. I assume I hit all my milestones and I know I smiled and I am sure I smiled when people smiled at me. I walked at 14 months and I babbled on time and then I stopped, I cried when my parents left me with my baby sitter. I also knew how to provoke people at age two and tested them. Like for instance, I knew my parents didn't like me playing with the light switch in the bedroom we used as the family room so I would play with it anyway just to see their reaction and have them get mad at me and yell. I would be laughing and looking around and sometimes at them.

Only things I heard wrong about me was my speech delay, not looking at her when she speak to me but I looked at my dad when he spoke because he had a loud voice. My eyes wandering around when people speak to me, I read in my medical records I had rituals, good with puzzles, problems sharing, not tolerating touch, and my mother told me I wrung my wrists in crowds and when I get overwhelmed, and I remember I had things a certain way for my stuff. I also remember being left alone in the car in my car seat and I would look around and someone told me on here it was a sign of autism and most toddlers would cry if they woke up in their car seats alone and no one else was in the car. I also remember when I accidentally got locked in my grandparents trailer, I just wandered back and forth in there until someone found me in there and I didn't cry one bit. I also read in my medical reports about my play skills being inappropriate. I still used my imagination like putting the phone up to my ear but the doctor wrote it was below my level what I was doing and I also used to fail my hearing tests even though I could hear again.


I have watched movies about me from my early years and I looked and acted like a normal toddler. I also had hearing loss so that effected my development and I was hypersensitive to noise because I was deaf for so long and symptoms overlap with deaf toddlers and autistic toddlers. That's probably why I have AS instead of classic autism.


_________________
Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed.

Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.


chlov
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Jan 2013
Gender: Female
Posts: 851
Location: My house

31 May 2013, 7:51 am

My mother told me that as a baby my development was not completely typical, but neither completely atypical.

I made eye contact sometimes only with my parents as a baby, and I passed most of my time looking at flies and pointing at them, and I looked more interested in flies than in people (this is what my mother says at least).

I smiled a lot, I've always done it, and I did it a lot even as an infant.

Even as an infant I did a lot of troublesome things: I often took plates from the table and threw them to the ground, or take things and threw them into the fireplace (the house I lived in when I was an infant had a fireplace).

My mother also says I hardly ever cried.

I also refused to drink from a feeding bottle and would only accept to drink from a cup. My mother says this is atypical but I think it is not.

About the "milestones", I didn't have speech delay, but I've had slight motor skills delay and severe self-help skills delay.

Of couse my symptoms became more evident when I started talking and walking, and even more evident when my interaction with the outside world began.

I was told by my mother that I said and did a lot of weird and/or pointless things, even when I was 2-3, and that she was very concerned that I could have schizophrenia.

I didn't like sharing my toys at all as a young child, and in kindergarten I was often told by my teacher that I would have had to be more cooperative in group activities. I didn't like group activities and prefeared to play alone.

Of couse, all this has been told me by my mother.



Joe90
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 26,492
Location: UK

31 May 2013, 12:01 pm

My mum said I was average with crying. I was the third child and second daughter. Apparently my NT brother hardly ever cried at all when he was past 9 months, and he was a very quiet toddler, but turned out NT. My older NT sister (a lot older than me and my brother) cried a lot when she was a baby, and was prone to temper tantrums at every little thing, but grew out of that by age 4,.

I also cried when I hurt myself.

I remember when I was 4, I got locked in the classroom by mistake while I was in the toilet (I don't know why they didn't check the toilets at class dismissal). When I came out, the classroom was all empty and quiet. I remember crying in a panic, and at the time I thought that being locked in a classroom was the worst thing in the world (I think most 4-year-olds would think like that). Then a teacher saw and unlocked the classroom door, and comforted me until I stopped crying.


_________________
Female


League_Girl
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 27,205
Location: Pacific Northwest

31 May 2013, 12:42 pm

My parents said I was quiet and I hardly ever cried. I still cried when I needed something. I also cried whenever I hurt myself and always got help for my owie because I didn't know what to do with it. I also told my parents what I needed like if I wanted to eat, I would pull them to the fridge or slam my hands on it to get their attention and make sounds. I found a way to communicate.

My son is NT and didn't cry a lot either. My husband told me he hardly ever cries and I have never been around another baby that cries a lot so the one I have is very mild. He cried everyday and to me that was still lot of crying. He also cried when he needed something.


_________________
Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed.

Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.


daydreamer84
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jul 2009
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,001
Location: My own little world

31 May 2013, 1:45 pm

I also had a normal amount of crying , OP, and I cried when my mum left me alone (at least sometimes) as far as my mum remembers.

Clov- I also did things that made people in my family worry that I was psychotic or maybe even a psychopathic serial killer in the making. I liked to take things apart (but not put them back together) and I would go up to the closet and unfold all the towels and take apart the socks when they were together in pairs and lay out the individual socks. Also when I was playing with a dollhouse my grandma put together for me and my sister I just opened and closed things randomly and put things inside other things including a little girl doll inside the refrigerator and the stove! My grandma was so upset and freaked out that I put a kid in the stove. Of course I didn't see it that way....although there were times that I did engage in symbolic play as a kid this wasn't symbolic play, I was just idly opening things and closing them and putting things in other things. :lol:

Also I did smile but I do look autistic in most of my childhood pictures. I'm not looking at the camera, I've got my fingers dangling in front of my eyes or have a weird smile. In a series of pictures of me as a toddler I'm playing with blocks with my mum and she's smiling and looking at me but I'm smiling down at the blocks and not acknowledging her. In some (the minority) I am smiling at the camera or the people around me and looking completely normal.



Callista
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Feb 2006
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Posts: 10,775
Location: Ohio, USA

31 May 2013, 2:34 pm

Re. crying when left by their mother and calming when she returns: This is a test of attachment, and some research has been done on autistic children to determine what kind of attachment they tend to have. Like NT children, autistic children are usually securely attached, and feel distress when their parents leave the room at about the same rate as NT children do. The only difference is that they may not express it as strongly, or may get "stuck" on crying and not be able to calm when the mother returns even though they are plainly feeling better that she is back.


_________________
Reports from a Resident Alien:
http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com

Autism Memorial:
http://autism-memorial.livejournal.com


whirlingmind
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Oct 2007
Age: 56
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,130
Location: 3rd rock from the sun

01 Jun 2013, 4:47 am

Yes Aspies can and do develop typically as a baby.

My eldest, was very clingy, played apparently normally with her toys, responded to her name, made eye contact (and still does, although with others she is much quicker to look away), loved cuddles (still does but will present herself very stiffly to me for a hug these days (which I think its because of sensory issues), she babbled and was quite forward in her language. She went to playgroups and nursery and they never picked up on anything being wrong. She also smiled extremely young like you and actually exceeded her developmental milestones by 6 months (e.g. at 18 months she was doing almost everything on the checklist like a 2 year old). As a young baby she was very miserable and demanding, she did display some subtle signs such as phobias and sensory things but not to the degree that you would think "OMG there is something wrong with my child" I just thought she was a very sensitive child, I did take her to the cranial osteopath at the HV's recommendation in case she had skull misalignment from birth making her miserable (such as headaches), but it didn't help!

My youngest, was quieter than her sister, she seemed a bit calmer. She did all the normal baby things like her sister, and if I look back in her baby "red book" where I remembered to tick her achievements she did lots of things at the normal ranges. She also developed sensory issues and phobias, but again, nothing you would think were red flags for anything. I guess I didn't know anything different though, as an Aspie myself it probably looked more normal to me than to others, I don't know.

Myself, my dad told me that I was abnormally quiet as a baby, and that they thought I might be deaf and they took me to the doctors. Apparently I rarely cried, only if I was hungry or something. I have a photo of me smiling at around 5 months old. I don't really know any more than that, but I did have epilepti-form attacks as a child and my mum told me that as a baby I would do some weird eye-rolling movements which I guess was some early form of those attacks, but my mum didn't take me to the doctors about it (apparently she was living with me in a squat at the time, nice!) My mum isn't the sort of person to notice things, she's rather niaive.


_________________
*Truth fears no trial*

DX AS & both daughters on the autistic spectrum


Kurgan
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Apr 2012
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,132
Location: Scandinavia

01 Jun 2013, 6:49 am

I developed very atypically as a child. I was crawling at 5 months, but couldn't walk before the age of 2 years. I hated being picked up and didn't say anything but ecchoes unless I was talking about special interests for the first few years. I was also solving geometric puzzles at 6 months and could calculate with money at the age of 3 years. I generally had to be watched by a babysitter or my parents a lot, because between the age of 2 and 4, I'd run away if no authority figures were present.

I didn't respond to my name the first few years (I knew that it referred to 'me'—I just didn't know that I was supposed to answer), I'd frequently destroy toys just to see how much stress the toys could handle or to see how they were built. Lastly, I wouldn't play with other kids unless I was the boss.



mikassyna
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Feb 2013
Age: 51
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,319
Location: New York, NY

01 Jun 2013, 7:31 am

I don't know much about my babyhood. All I know is that around 9-14 mos I was hesitant of strangers but then warmed up to strangers. In my foster family I would get jealous and beat another child that the foster mother held. When I was adopted around 14 mos my adoptive mother said I was normal but I didn't point to things I was interested in--she would have to go over to me if I took an interest in something. She said she had to teach me every little thing. I don't know if this was a developmental issue or a traumatic one from changing through at least 3 caregivers early on. I had jealousy issues with their biological daughter. I felt I struggled in Kindergarten socially although the teacher didn't write anything in my report card indicating anything amiss. It was starting in 1st grade through 5th grade that I had problems with getting teased/bullied and had teachers writing in my report cards about lack of self control and problems with interrupting too much.



Joe90
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 26,492
Location: UK

01 Jun 2013, 9:59 am

My mum knew other people with babies when I was a baby, and apparently I showed no signs any different from them (well, everyone's unique in their own way but I wasn't different in a way that stood out from other babies).

It seems I started off with no symptoms, and then the symptoms became more noticeable as I got older. I wasn't a stereotypical Autistic person though, but I must have met the criteria somehow because I was diagnosed before I was 9. But my mum said that they probably wouldn't have been able to define what was actually wrong with me if I hadn't started school badly. Instead I might have just been mistaken for an extremely shy child with learning difficulties, or maybe ADD or something like that.

I don't remember getting obsessions with anything when I was a child under the age of 11. I had casual interests, but any child is entitled to have interests, some even get obsessed, but I didn't get obsessions in a typical ''Aspie way'', like talking about a certain subject non-stop to people, isolating myself just to be alone with my special interest, obsessively thinking about it all the time, and all of that sort of behaviour. When I got to about 11 and a half, I had my first ''Aspie obsession'', which was over a certain person. From then on I had a habit of becoming obsessed with certain people, right to this day (obviously the people I used to be obsessed with aren't in my mind any more, I'm obsessed with new people who I never knew more than 3 years ago).


_________________
Female