how did your autism show itself in childhood

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colliegrace
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04 Sep 2023, 12:13 pm

What autistic traits did you have as a young child?
When I was looking into autism before diagnosis and interviewed my mom on my early childhood, I was surprised to find that she identified "not pointing at objects to indicate interest" and "not responding to name" were traits I had as a infant/toddler.

I also was extremely talkative and would walk up to total strangers to info dump about my special interests. Tended to say things that were socially inappropriate at ages I should have known better, according to my mom. Lots of executive dysfunction became apparent when saddled with chores.

As I got into teenage years, couldn't relate to peers. Mostly interacted with kids far younger than me


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04 Sep 2023, 1:04 pm

Toe walking, sensitive to noise, fussy about food and being able to smell 'off' milk are what I recall from childhood. As a teen it was the usual social awkwardness, saying the wrong things to people, being 'too' honest, rationalising social stuations, nerdy interests, shy with girls.



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04 Sep 2023, 5:36 pm

Toe-walking, info-dumping to random strangers, executive function deficits, meltdowns from a variety of causes, lots of awkwardness, etc.


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colliegrace
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04 Sep 2023, 7:21 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Toe-walking, info-dumping to random strangers, executive function deficits, meltdowns from a variety of causes, lots of awkwardness, etc.

I'm 99% sure I had meltdowns in 1st grade


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RAADs: 104 | ASQ: 30 | Aspie Quiz: 116/200 (84% probability of being atypical)

Also diagnosed with: seasonal depression, anxiety, OCD


honeytoast
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04 Sep 2023, 9:45 pm

Meltdowns and hand flapping


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markitzero
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05 Sep 2023, 12:38 am

For me I don't know all of it but here are the ones I do know remember
-Delayed on speech
-routines
-poor motor skills and low muscle tone
-Touch sensitivity "had to do sensory brushing"
-Hearing sensitivity "Grandpa had a ultra sonic anti-pest device for his garden I could hear from my house across the street."
-Sight sensitivity " able to look back on it now some mixes of colors were to much."
-From what my mom has said in the past I wanted to get hugs from people.

My special interests with computers and tech didn't come into play until I was able to take apart things and got exposed to computers later on. My family didn't get a family computer until the era of AMD K6 and windows 95

I don't remember what stims I had when I was a child. But I think I may remember one in a way I know when I was a kid in the garage my dad had a lot of washers and a bolt rode and a the nuts for it. I took the bolt rod and put some of the washers in the bolt rod and out nuts on each side and I would watch the washers go down the bolt rod and I liked the noise.


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IsabellaLinton
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05 Sep 2023, 12:59 am

- very picky about everything: sleep conditions, sensory, clothing, food, touch, toys.

- stimming all the time, to the point my mother said I looked "ret*d".

- meltdowns and bad moods if I was pushed out of my comfort zone.

- imaginary friends.

- spent all my time alone or hiding in small spaces, climbing trees etc.

- zero eye contact.

- speech issues and selective mutism.

- strong attachments to animals and inanimate objects over people.

- moved like a robot, very rigid.

- got sick from the smell of food cooking.

- could identity and remember things by smell.

- wore sunglasses even in the winter, the rain, the dark.

- very strong need for routine and tradition.

- watched only a few TV shows.

- very interested in reading, research, and quiet pursuits.

- afraid of social situations.

- couldn't sleep at other people's houses.

- very literal.

- echolalia.

- difficulty with inferences and idioms.

- blunt and curt with people.

- spastic at times.

- no sense of self or gender.

- very cerebral.

- poor short term memory.

- pedantic and hyperlexic.

- inability to travel or deal with new environments.

- weird routines like praying to Santa Claus.

- anxiety disorder.

- scopophobia.

- synaesthesia.

- unusual fears and phobias.

- SA.


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FleaOfTheChill
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05 Sep 2023, 2:04 pm

I was a toe walker, would go mute, was withdrawn/in my head, unusual gate, not exactly hand flapping but a hand thing I did (i stimmed in other ways to, but people called me out on the hand thing the most), poor eye contact, I had sensory issues and clothing )shoes to) was a nightmare there for a bit, strong need for routine, I used to arrange the crap out of things, food issues, the list goes on.



TheOutsider
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05 Sep 2023, 4:04 pm

Stimming, monotone voice, lack of eye contact, inability to make friends, inability/unwillingness to initiate conversations, obsession over special interests... just to name a few.



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05 Sep 2023, 5:34 pm

An absolute loathing of anything that went on my feet. Socks? Kill them with fire. Shoes? Who needs shoes if you can just build up hearty calluses? I still prefer the barefoot life, but I have a weakness for cute socks nowadays.

I used to get in trouble a LOT for "sticking my tongue out". Not that I ever remember doing it, and would be completely hurt when I'd be accused of it. Hooray for stimming!

Proprioception? Never heard of her. But I frequently made close relationships with door frames, table edges, etc.

Toe-walking... T-Rexing...

Singing. Always. If there was a way to express a thought or feeling or idea with a song, that would be my preferred way of doing it. I'm so glad I didn't know Skinny Puppy back then, or people would have been WORRIED. Anyway, I'd get in trouble for that one a lot in school, too.

Crying because fireworks hurt. Crying because the vacuum cleaner hurt. Crying because if a person closed the door too hard, it hurt.

I didn't play with toys so much as I collected them, I guess. That's what my mother had to offer for my evaluation.

It's been fun looking back and understanding all of this, haha.



MagicMeerkat
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07 Sep 2023, 5:32 pm

My biological mother was what at the time in the late 1980's-early 1990's considered "mentally ret*d". But probably really no one really just gave the poor woman a chance. She was a lounge singer at a local bar. She met a man there and apparently he raped her. 9 months later I come along. But even when she was still pregnant people were saying things like "Oh the baby's going to be ret*d too! She should have an abortion!" I didn't get aborted but I did get removed when she proved she really wasn't suited to be a parent by basically forgetting I existed. Back then, there weren't Safe Havens or Baby Boxes, where you can drop off a baby up to a certain age off at a hospital, fire department, police department no questions asked and they'll do all the work to get the child into foster care and hopefully adopted. I always wondered if she knew she wasn't fit to be a parent was was TRYING to get someone to take me. She apparently would leave me on doorsteps and people's yards.

You could tell there was something "not right" about me practically since birth. I didn't cry, I screamed. My adoptive mom (my real mom) to this day swears up and down I was going to make everyone in the house (and possibly anyone in a five mile radius) go deaf. I do have auditory processing disorder where I can hear, but I just can't make out what words a person is saying all the time. My mom thinks I'm deaf and that I did it to myself as a baby. I had a lot of traits similar to an infant with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (hey she met the guy in a bar) but at that time (and even today a lot of social workers are warry of telling a potential adoptive parent the child may have it because they think it will hinder their chances of getting adopted.

But anyway, I screamed at any change of temperature, texture, smell, sound. I didn't like to be touched or held. And according to my mother, if you took it personally, I was a "very mean baby". No, I was an autistic baby who wanted her bodily autonomy.

I also didn't learn how to walk until I was almost two years old. Everyone always commented on my "odd gait" (I don't know if that's really autism or the scoliosis and dislocated hip I was born with that was never really taken into account until I was already an adult).

My mom's description of when I did finally learn to talk varies depends on who's asking. To one person she will say I started babbling at the age babies usually start but to a psychologist she will say I didn't talk until five. My mother had a head injury as a child that messes with her memory. But the main thing is I didn't really speak on my own, I just copied what other people were saying. Which isn't a good thing. I didn't have my own words and had lots of fears I just couldn't verbalize. I couldn't express myself in ways I needed too. Everything I said was something I had either heard someone else say or read somewhere. I just was super skilled at it. Whenever I had to write an essay or something for school I always needed help in "how to word it". Even for telephone calls for a while I needed help on "how to word" what I was supposed to say.

Special interests were my strongest trait and I was always content to play alone. I only wanted to play with other children if it was something related to my special interests.


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rse92
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08 Sep 2023, 8:58 am

Extreme hyperlexia. Was reading roadside billboards when i was one year old. Was reading college level textbooks before I went to kindergarten. By the time I went to kindergarten I had literally encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs, constellations, the Gemini space program, and Greek and Roman mythology. My dad (a history teacher) gave me a high school textbook on American presidents; by the time I was four, I could (and often did as a party trick) recite all the presidents in order, and i also knew the dates of their administrations, their vice presidents, their political parties, who they ran against, their state of birth, and their wives' names.

I had fewer social issues than many autistic kids for a number of reasons, but some sense of otherness which could be expected for a child who sat alone during reading class doing my own thing or reading the sixth grade material.



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17 Oct 2023, 1:13 pm

Up to the age of 5-6 years I did a lot of stimming both verbally and physically especially when I got excited by anything. My parents didn't associate this with autism but asked me why I did these things and pointed out to me that they found it weird. So I tried to restrain myself and to behave more normal. Instead I started the habit of biting my nails.


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jamie0.0
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17 Oct 2023, 8:56 pm

I'm struggling to identify my own, alot of what I did in childhood I thought of as normal, when I was abnormal enough to get tested.

Some things I did that may have lead to conclusions include

Echochella, I did a fair amount of this as a youngster, but I never linked it to my condition untill recently, some words are just fun to say

I was very blunt as a child, even when it would get me in trouble. I always thought it was worth speaking henstly instead of masking behind some kinder words

I got in trouble a lot for acting inappropriate, stimming in places where i should not, being honest when expected to lie. Not abiding by the social rule book. Inappropriate giggling

Some of these may not be linked to the condition. But, when asked to evaluate what made me different from the other children, I do often wonder how much of a part the condition plays and not just individual differences.



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17 Oct 2023, 10:00 pm

colliegrace wrote:
What autistic traits did you have as a young child?
I was an obnoxious little know-it-all.  I could go into greater detail, but you would get a better idea by binge-watching "Young Sheldon" on Netflix.


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blitzkrieg
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18 Oct 2023, 6:05 am

Info dumping on people, sensory overload, withdrawing in group settings, picky eating etc.