To ask if your DC were diagnosed with ASD as an older child/teen/adult...

[ChristmasPizza]

Did you notice many signs when they were young- toddlers, preschoolers and so on? And what were they? Or was it something that only became apparent in later life?

Did you feel like you always knew they were 'different' to other kids from a young age or were the differences subtle until they got older?

Now you know, what do you look back on and think 'ohhh, that was the ASD all along!'?

DS was diagnosed at 11, but to me he was always just him and I have to say that I didn't really notice until he was about 8 and only when seeing him with other kids (I remember him running around the playground pretending to be a bird oblivious to the other kids). He has always been a "picky eater" and had sensory issues with clothes and became easily overwhelmed, hated taking to strangers but could chunter on non stop about something that interested him. He spoke very early and straight away in grammatically correct sentences with advanced vocabulary, he read early and well. He obeys rules to the letter, struggles to adapt to changes in routine and is absolutely literal. In hind sight I feel a bit stupid not to have noticed and it was school that pushed for an assessment.

It's ADHD in our case. He was diagnosed at 18. He was always just a bit quirky really but now we've got the diagnosis and read up on it some more it's blindingly obvious looking back. How he was at school is so much how I was that I thought it was normal iyswim. His therapist has actually suggested I look into an assessment for myself which is something I'd never considered.

It's interesting you say your DS spoke early amd well, as we have exactly the same thing with our DD.

For us, too, looking back there are signs - 'playing' when the other kids were moving on to just chatting etc, but nothing obvious until secondary school

Autistic adult here not diagnosed until 32.

Off the top of my head here are the autistic things I had/did as a child that no one really noticed/did anything about:

1. Organised the toys on the shelf in Tesco.
2. Pulled out my hair and eyelashes (trichotillomania)
3. Would only wear certain types of clothes and only eat certain types of foods.
4. Was hyperlexic.
5. Would follow rules to the letter.
6. Did not understand other children and had very few friends. Preferred the company of adults.
7. Had anxiety and depression which culminated in a mental breakdown at 21.
8. Loud noises caused me pain.

And yes, I always felt different. I knew I wasn't like everyone else, I just didn't know why.

Mine was the incredible non sleeping child. At two, he could do 24 piece puzzles in 5 minutes. He didn't talk until a couple of weeks after his third birthday, then his horrific meltdowns stopped. He was verbally fluent within a few weeks. He learned to read, write and do simple sums age 3.

He was always a bit quirky, but so am I. He was diagnosed with Aspergers when he was 26.

With child #2 the signs were there early on. He was a fairly miserable baby. Always crying and whinging. His first 2-3 years were very challenging. He was also speech delayed and didn’t really talk much until around the age of 3.5-4. One day he had a meltdown over not having the right coloured umbrella so stood in a downpour and got soaked instead. Then I knew. Diagnosed just after 5th birthday.

Child #1 was much more subtle. Spoke early and seemed bright. But she would scream and scream in the buggy/car. Would even scream when stopped at pedestrian crossings. VERY late to toilet train (but it seemed like a question of won’t, not can’t). Started out as a great eater but it went rapidly to pot as a toddler to the point she’d eat virtually nothing beyond a small selection of safe foods (plus ANYTHING sugary). I knew she was difficult and definitely not like her peers. Social issues started to become more apparent as she got older. School didn’t pick up a thing but I did, and pushed for an assessment. Diagnosed at nearly 10.

Thank you.

My DS is 4. On the surface he seems fine- perfectly behaved at nursery and grandparents, socialises well, great pretend play, eye contact, etc etc.

However he is still having major tantrums (meltdowns?) out and at home when things don't go as he expected, eg today we went through a different door than the usual one at nursery which ended with him rolling around on the wet pavement sobbing and screaming.

He didn't really talk until 2.5 then started talking in full sentences. He's obsessed with one particular topic and he's also obsessed with building things or putting things together eg. really complicated jigsaws.

He won't bow to societal pressure like 'please say goodbye to grandma' he just won't do it if he doesn't want to. Struggles in group situations with other kids unless he knows them well.

He's a lovely kid but challenging and I sometimes wonder if I should be parenting him differently if there is something else going on because the usual techniques don't seem to work on him and I don't want to ask too much of him if it's not just 'behaviour' related.

He definitely wouldn't fit the usual criteria for diagnosis at this age, and maybe it's just normal toddler/pre schooler behaviour but I'm wondering about the future. Several of my adult relatives have/had (mild) ASD and I wonder how life would have turned out differently for them if people had treated them more carefully when they were younger

He definitely wouldn't fit the usual criteria for diagnosis at this age

Says who? I say that kindly. It’s so easy to have a very fixed and limited notion of what autism is, when in fact it can present in many and varied ways, and the clinicians know it too.

The meltdown you describe over a different door sounds very typical, in that autistic kids can go into a tailspin when their fixed routine is disrupted.

Late talker

Special interests

Demand avoidance

All autistic traits. Plus a family history of autism… it’s definitely something worth investigating.

Ds was diagnosed at 15 and there were definite traits from a young age. His reception teacher told us when he was four years old that something was 'different' about him. Looking back I think he could have got his diagnosis far far earlier than he did...I really wish he had.

I got my autsim diagnosis this year age 46. My earliest memory is being dragged into school at 5 years old, screaming in fear. I had huge meltdowns as a child due to sensory processing issues. And I've had significant MH difficulties my whole life, including an eating disorder. I wish I'd got my diagnosis earlier too.

It's ADHD with traits of ASD here and DC was diagnosed when they were 12, looking back there were many obvious signs but primary school never raised any issues (even when we were struggling at home). It become more apparent when they were around 9 years old and Y7 was very hard for our DC.

@Jellycats4life you're probably right, I guess I was going off the NHS list of signs and most of them don't seem relevant but maybe they're just the most obvious ones.

I've only got one relative with ASD who's younger than me so I was able to see how they grew and developed until they finally got their diagnosis in their teens, by which point it was very obvious. They did have more classic signs of not being able to fit themselves into conversations easily, not picking up on social cues etc from a young age though.

My other relatives are older than me so I don't know much about their childhoods, or how they were as kids, but from what I can gather no one noticed anything until they were at least teens. My grandad was never diagnosed but as we learned more about it it because very obvious, and he spent his whole adult life being seen as eccentric and odd. Hopefully things would be different if he was a young man today.

DS is 13 and on the diagnostic pathway. I have always described him as a happy east child, because he is. But I have also always managed him very well - I didn’t actually realise that I was doing it until I read another thread about parenting strategies for parenting an autistic child and I do most of the things suggested. Because we have coped very well and he is happy I have accepted his quirks.

He has never had huge meltdowns, I tend to always let him know the daily and weekly plan, we stick to it and I give him count downs or timers for when an activity will change.

He has sensory issues with clothes and noise so I cut out labels, buy soft clothes and we avoid loud noises. Haven’t been to a fireworks display in 13 years now.

He loves school, because he loves it he is very good at it so his teachers love him. But he is massively struggling socially and cannot understand social dynamics which is we’re the wheals have finally come off and why he is now on the pathway. A teacher asked me why he doesn’t have a diagnosis for autism and I had a lightbulb moment.

DD is 9 and was diagnosed with Autism last year. She was my first, so I didn't have a NT child to compare her to and like a lot of ND girls, masked very well. With hindsight, her style of play as a pre-schooler was unusual. She would spend ages arranging her toys, carefully creating detailed scenes with them, as though setting up a 'game' but would never actually get around to playing with them the way other kids do. The arranging was the point of the game for her. Her play was (and still is) all about collecting, arranging and organising which I've now learned is very common with ND kids. As a toddler she would sort all her duplo or megabloks by colour, rather than building things with it.

She talked late, she was over 2 years old, but once she started we couldn't believe how quickly she began talking in full sentences and using a lot of long words. People would often comment that she talked "like a little adult".

She learned to read and count and very early, and since starting school she has always exceeded age-related expectations in all areas of the curriculum. But she took a lot longer than other kids to learn to do basic things like dressing herself, brushing her own teeth, putting her shoes on.

My eldest DD was diagnosed with ADHD at 18. Looking back, as a child, she had major meltdowns and struggled to manage her emotions. As she went into teens, she got caught shop lifting and there were some other risky behaviours. She is completely unable to control her spending and is now at Uni struggling to manage on the money she gets.
She d describes having always felt a bit disassociated from life, as if it is not really real.
My youngest DD has massive social anxiety and is very very clever and a total perfectionist. She did not walk until late but never toddled', just got up and crossed a room and sat down again. We think she is autistic and she had taken herself to get GP who had told her to self refer to a local mental health charity for support but any diagnosis would need to be private or a long wait.I think she has ASD. School have never helped as her grades are always A* and she masks enough to fool them. We are currently driving home from a few days in Germany. She refused to eat several meals because she did not like the layout of the restaurant. She just wants to sit in the car. She had lots of sensory issues, mostly misophonia which also makes it hard to travel with her.
I have long suspected DH has Asperger's and now can see strong traits of ADHD in myself and my father. I just always thought we were a slightly eccentric family. I can look back on school reports and see that I was considered a bit of a chatterbox who' could do better' if I applied myself.