When is AS first noticeable in reality?

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In some literature, it says that Asperger's syndrome is noticeable at about 3 years. I assume that is because unlike classical autism, there is no language delay.

It's also often said that in retro-perspective, parents can identify some few traits that they may have considered strange only before.

I doubt that it is true that AS doesn't show in smaller children in alarming/extremely odd ways though.

How is it not alarming if a child:
Has daily tantrums.
Needs to follow a strict routine
Can't stand many smells, tastes, touches, sounds, sights.
Does not do eye-contact.
Does not point or follow.
Walks on toes/in another strange way.
Displays repetitive movements and actions.
Doesn't seem to listen to their name/commands often.
Doesn't play with toys.
Doesn't initiate/respond well/appropriate to social contact.

I know there are the 'terrible 2' and there's a period of shyness with strangers - but the rest?

How come paediatrician consider all the kids like this normal? Do they just ask 'does the child talk?' Really, I'm awed because:

I know they ought to check for lots of these traits that then can be quickly connected to ASDs. And then to AS. They did have to check for a lot of these things back in 1988 even. (I don't know about before, because I was born in 1988.) But they just... didn't, often. Do they today?

So I want to hear your experience, what your parents may have told your about yourself and what parents can tell about their children with AS?

My son was a few months old when I first started thinking something might be up with him. He was very sensitive to certain touches, sounds, smells, had to have his sleepers on just so, had to have constant movement, etc., etc. He hated being the slightest bit wet or messy, the second something "happened" in his diaper he wanted to be changed.

I lived with my parents and he didn't call any of us anything until he was about two years old. No mommy or nana or papa or anything like that. My parents were both teachers, so my mom, especially, was figuring something was up. He had tremendous difficulty with transitions or change, especially when he was focused on something that he liked doing and could do for hours. He was finally diagnosed in first grade, ten years ago; we were very lucky because the pediatric neurologist my clueless family doctor sent him to was South African and had trained in Europe, where AS was well-known for decades prior to it being officially recognized on these shores.

Well, I never crawled properly. From what my parents tell me, I used to sort of drag myself along the ground, so they noticed something was up then.

And I never used to really play with toys; I had some toy cars which I would line up in order. As I got older, I began to play with them in the more conventional way, but these two things had alarm bells ringing in my parents' ears even before the more serious problems became apparent.

I never crawled much, either. I was very active and on the run at an early age. I was very interested in books and music practically from the time I was born. My mom said I could identify a record from its pattern.

I exhibited the symptoms you list from a few months old already. However, my family blamed me for them and have continued blaming me for them all my life. It didn't occur to them then (or later) that there may be some problem. They are the "you'd snap out of it if you weren't selfish" kind. I don't have any contact with family nowadays.

We noticed there was something odd with my son from about 6 weeks on. He wouldn't sleep, he cried nonstop, and he gagged a lot. Things got worse and I couldn't even get an answer for it until he was 15 months old, when I finally got a real evaluator to check him over. Before that all you hear is "each baby develops differently, it's just colic, it's just fussiness, ect". It was very frustrating. But I had a sense, when he was born with low blood sugar and a giant head, that he was probably going to turn out a lot like me anyway.

Oddly my childhood was mostly typical. I was somewhat of a prodigy, able to play violin at 2 and read by 3, but I was not abnormally difficult and was very verbal from a young age. Too bad child prodigies don't often turn into successful adults.

My brother (who meets AS criteria) was actually more immediately noticeable as odd than I was (I meet autism criteria). Mainly because of the fact that he screamed continuously as an infant if anything even minor changed around him. Whereas, while I was also noticed as odd (had difficulties with things like eating, speech-as-communication, receptive language, etc), I was extremely passive in many ways and thus didn't stand out as a disruption until later.

Final notice topic

I was always viewed as different, and when people notice you are different, it seems they do not want to let you forget. They do not want you to think it is somehow acceptable. And it might be contagious, or dangerous...or both. One is too many.

For many people, dealing with someone who is not within the norm is too exhausting. I could see this in my own family, but not on their faces, which gave no clue. (I cannot read faces anyway.) I could also see it in how employers and fellow workers reacted to my presence.

I am glad this ignorant attitude is on the decline, and will be eventually eradicated.

The only obviously autistic trait that was obvious in my early childhood (before Kindergarten) was me liking to organize or stack things, such as stacking paper cups into pyramids and other arrangements.

Birth. It's just that children with AS usually interact with the family, just no one else (generally); those with autism don't interact with anyone (generally). Hence, it only shows up later when children are put with their "peers".

Although many of the things on the list are also on my list, they aren't all. Like toe walking... I don't think I ever did that... but don't know, nobody ever mentioned it. I do remember that until I was 8 or 9, whenever I was barefoot, I would stub my toes.

Back in the late 60s, short of retreating into my own world and disappearing like an LFA, it would have been virtually impossible to really think there was anything wrong with me.

I walked at 6 months, my mother believes this is because my older brother and sister were constantly tugging at me to come along with them. My tantrums were attributed to my red hair. My food sensitivities, mostly to potatoes but to things I didn't "want" to eat were attributed to simple fussiness. My clothing sensitivities and skin irritations were mostly attributed to allergies and we simply avoided wearing such clothing. I had a favourite dress that my mother would have to wash in the middle of the night because I would wear nothing else. I had a toy truck that I can remember to this day. I had an obsessive behaviour of putting cigarette packs on my arm, like armbands, but most of these things were just seen as "cute". It didn't help that I was a striking child with brilliant red hair. I mean how could there be anything wrong with me, I was unique.

What is interesting is that the good things about me, my single-focus-ness, my above average IQ, my weird sense of humour, my creativity; these were just wonderful things any child would be blessed to have.

I have to wonder if, in absence of the stimulation of my brother and sister, I might have retreated into myself, but my siblings prevented it from happening... is that even possible?

My mother tells me of little things that I would do that looking back are frightening, but nobody seemed to think anything of them at the time. I would undress and go out in the snow. I would throw myself down stone staircases just for fun. I loved wrapping myself in the curtains, etc.

Looking back, it's no small wonder to me that I was simply an interesting child as opposed to someone who wasn't functioning quite rightly. Was I too smart, too verbal to have anything wrong with me? My father, when I was little was away often, he was in the air force, and my mother was a full-time mom of three kids all within 3 years of each other, she was too busy to notice anything wrong. The closest anything came to being noticed, my brother was diagnosed as hyperactive and put on ritalin. He told me last year that from the first dose of ritalin until his 13th year when he was able to get them to stop giving it to him, he remembers nothing.

Perhaps it is simply testimony as to high I function... How highly would I function had everyone actually known there was something actually different about me? It is potentially something someone might want to investigate... How many high functioning Aspie Baby Boomers are there from whom we can learn coping mechanisms and tools to help Aspies function with some of their idiosyncrasies?

Nobody noticed... I think because nobody had anything to look for and there really wasn't anything specific, just a whole collection of little things.. None of them in and of themselves was ever intense enough for someone to say... Hey... what's wrong with your little girl?

And today... unless you catch me fiddling one of my rings or my bracelet, you'd still not know unless I told you.

Interestingly enough... without knowing it, I've always known... does that make sense to anyone but me?

I knew before my son was even born that he was different. When he actually came, that just put the big gold star on it. He would scream non-stop if he wasn't held a certain way. He hated for anything in his surroundings to change. He would only be soothed by singing "The Ants Go Marching" over and over and over and over again. He loved repetitive sounds and never seemed to tire of them. He wore buckets on his head all of the time. Not typical behaviour at all.