Few symptoms until puberty

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I started puberty young (period age 11), and before that I don't remember displaying many aspie traits, other than needing things to be perfect, being obsessed with puzzles and logic and a few other odd quirks, being quiet, not understanding tasks the teacher gave me, and not knowing how people are meant to swing their arms when they walK and not being able to walk til I was taught at 2 and a half years old.

Then apparently from the age of about 10 I didn't like to be touched or hugged (and still don't, age 22), was became withdrawn and started displaying a big lot of aspie traits. After years and years of feeling like an alien on this planet, I'm finally going to the doctors on thursday.

But I'm confused about my symptoms and when they started. I don't think I was a really really unusual child, and was never disruptive until high school when the only disruptions were to my friends' concentration rather than the whole class.

Now I'm affected greatly by the lack of social skills/desires, the confusion when people don't explain things properly or ask me a question that seems ambiguous, the dislike of gossip, chit chat, and anything that doesn't relate to my interests.

Perhaps it was just more hidden when I was young because young children aren't allowed to go out all the time, and then when adolescence hit, it became obvious that I didn't want to go out and socialise?

What do you think? I've read that usually symptoms are worse in childhood because you can't hide it, but I was very mentally mature and definitely hid things to try and not look thick. My symptoms got worse after primary school. Does this make sense to anyone?

I have read somewhere that symptoms can worsen through puberty but then most likely "stable-out" once the hormones do aswell. I have no idea why you suddenly displayed more traits and stayed that way, though.
It's quite confusing
I guess people can regress, though.

What about your ability to know what to do and say in social situations? Your (in)ability to form friendships? Thats what made it much more pronounced in me as a child.

I had friends at primary school, and was invited to peoples' houses in the week. I was generally very quiet unless I knew and trusted someone. I was always (I think) polite, and had a strong moral code so because I'd been taught the right and wrong ways to act I stuck to them rigidly.
I started to get bullied when I was about 9 or 10 by two girls, which lasted for about 2 years on-and-off which made me miserable, and then it was time for secondary school.

I had a few friends at secondary school, but never felt close to anyone and rarely saw them out of school, and liked to spend lunchtimes in the library or homework classroom. Two boys used to pick on me, things like throwing away my work, kicking my saxophone case, and other people were equally immature, tipp-exing out my work etc, but none of that bothered me and I just moved school to get away from the immaturity.

At high school I had probably 2 friends, who I suspect were only my friends at the time because they shared my obsessions. I generally drifted around groups of people, not really feeling like I fit in, spending my time working in the library etc.

I don't know if something went wrong somewhere down the line, or whether it was always there and brought out more by the stress of teen years.

Well, you weren't quite like me, but then that proves nothing, the traits manifest themselves differently in different people.

I was too much into my own world to benefit from it, but I guess when you're very little, socialising is a more structured, easy to understand thing. Some of the trips to friends houses are even organised by parents. Politeness is enough to get you by, whereas when you hit your teens the rules of politeness, or etiquette, are no longer the rules people go by and you may even be ridiculed for following them.

It does sound like at a particular stage in your life, circumstances made it easier for you to get by, and then when circumstances changed you started experiencing difficulties. I don't think anything about you changed at all, by the sounds of things.

Are you going by your own memories or have you asked your parents what you were like? They may remind you of things that you don't remember, especially things that happened when you were very young.

For instance, I can't ever remember doing the stereotypically aspie thing of taking EVERYTHING literally, but my mother has been able to come up with many instances when I did as a young child.

My mum can't think of anything that she thought was particularly worrying. She said I've always been 'quirky' and 'eccentric' in my own little quiet ways.

Apart from the walking late, she can only think of a couple of things that were a bit strange. The first was that when I was 2 I used to have completely out-of-the-blue and unexplainable tantrums where I'd go completely mad kicking doors, throwing toys at things and screaming when usually I was a quiet child. She put it down to it being the terrible twos which is possible/probable.

Another thing was that whenever anyone got a camera out I'd go completely beserk for no reason, but that's probably just a weird kiddy thing and I got over it.

I remember something that she doesn't, which is a time when I was quite young and in a music show, and we were directed to march across the stage, and my teacher pointed out to me that I was marching with my left arm swinging forward as my left leg went forward. I just couldn't work out how to march like everyone else as what I was doing didn't feel wrong, but must've looked stupid. I also use my knife and fork the wrong way around and can't seem to figure out how to cut food. I still get told off for 'tearing' my food and not cutting it.

I remember little quirks, like going out with a pen and notepad and writing down all the number plates of the people in my road, and I have very very clear memories from a young age, mainly of very complex emotions that I couldn't express. I always had a problem aswell with replaying bad incidents in my mind. I can remember an instance when I was about 5 and I really wanted some crisps, so I asked this girl and she gave me 20p and I bought some, and then I can't remember what the circustances were but there was some confusion and the girl wanted her money back otherwise I'd get into trouble, and the anxiety/embarrassment/terror of that situation replayed in my mind for years. I still have this trouble now, with basically every social situation where I think I may have said or done the wrong thing.

I don't know whether any of that really relates to Asperger's, but I'm just so confused because most of the traits of Aspergers didn't show until towards the end of primary school but haven't left me. I just wonder whether it was because I felt safe and familiar at school when I was young, and as you say, socialising is more structured at that age.

I've always believed that puberty is a critical time for someone on the Spectrum. Things change in everyone (ASD and NT alike) and the natural ASD aversion to change is part of the issues that arise. Knowledge of what's happening is always imporant but for us it's especially so. It might not stop certain things from happening (like not wanting to be touched) but the understanding might help that sort of problem improving later in life.

There are no hard and fast rules to this of course - as Sarah rightly pointed out the traits manifest themselves differently in all of us. Not one of us is exactly identical.

I had symptoms in early life but my physical problems (sensory processing disorder, stimming, agitation) worsened in puberty.