What were you like as a baby and child if you were diagnosed with autism as an adult?

[AutisticLegoLover]

I think my mum feels bad that she didn't know. It was never considered that I might be autistic back then in the 70s/80s.people would ask her and my dad why I did the things I did. The main thing that mum remembers is my weirdness about presents. I didn't know until fairly recently that my dislike, no, huge anxiety, about opening presents in front of people went back to early childhood. People used to ask what was wrong with me and my parents would feel embarrassed and have no idea why I wouldn't open presents. I will open presents now but only from my mum and dc. It still causes huge anxiety if I don't know what it is.

As a baby I cried a lot. The HV told my mum I was spoilt due to having lots of people fussing over me and therefore I wanted constant attention. Now I realise I was probably completely overwhelmed and wanted to be left alone.

At my own party (I think I only ever had one birthday party) I hid under a bed.

I hated those big mascot type things or people dressed up with their face totally covered. I still feel completely freaked out by furry costumes and covered faces you just don't know what's underneath and I can't try and read their face to figure out what they are saying.

At school mum would get phone calls to say I was crying in the playground. I don't remember that. I strongly remember wondering why other children didn't like me or did like me then dropped me quickly. I would often feel left out and very lonely. An outsider. We moved a lot though and that might be some of it but I felt desperately homesick all the time.

I only ever preferred one or two friends and still do. Big groups are not my thing. I despised group work at school and college and worked best when seated alone in silence.

I sought the company of older children or adults rather than peers and as a teen and young adult preferred the company of boys/men. I found them less complex and complicated.

I was quite restricted with foods and would eat things in a certain way or order.

I didn't like to be hugged. Compliments were met with suspicion because I couldn't tell if people were being genuine or teasing me. Jokes went over my head. People joking with me would be met with serious explanations or I'd try and apply logic and just not get it. As a teen my boyfriend lived in Oldham. I was asked in the pub one night what was the best way to Oldham. I gave a detailed set of instructions including motorway junctions. The guy looked at me very amused and said "no, with both 'ands!" and demonstrated holding breasts laughing raucously. I was mortified.

Can anyone relate to any of this?

I’m nearly 50 ,been waiting for diagnosis 2 years ,should be later this year .
my parents were to wrapped up in themselves to notice me .
developmentally ,I was very late to walk ,talk ,stand and I never crawled ,
she would sit me on the floor ,go do her housework and come back and I’d still be sat there ,having not reached for anything or shuffled off somewhere ,I just sat .
she loves to say what a good baby I was
as a child she couldn’t cope with my screaming before school ,so she dropped me at an aunties house ,who didn’t mind the screaming ,and she looked after me at lunchtime as well as talking me to school ,this was for a couple of years ,auntie had a daughter my age ,apparently I never once spoke to either of them .
at school age 5 I was always in trouble for stealing food out of children’s lunch boxes ,I was the last to learn to read in my class ,I remember because there was a chocolate banana sweet for everyone once they could read ,mine sat on the desk on its own for weeks .
I could go on ,but it’s actually really upsetting,and it will be interesting to see if i actually get a diagnosis of autism ,or if they think it’s childhood trauma .
I have 2 children with diagnosis of autism ,and all the things the school said was autism in my youngest child ,I also did at school .so who knows .

I had no friends at most of the schools I went to ,and as a 13 year old my only friends were an elderly couple and their dog ,who I visited for a cup of tea at weekend.
i managed 1 friend at university,but didn’t cope with any of it .
mental health has been very poor ,with suicide attempts and self harm and eating disorders,but in the 1980s ,no camhs ,so just sent home from hospital after attempts .
wet the bed untill age 13
wet pants at school all throughout primary ,angry mum having to bring clean knickers in to school every week ,
I was frequently left alone to attack my dog age 5/6 ,how the hell he didn’t attack me back I’ve no idea .
age 6 I was hiding wet wee sheets and empty bowels of cereal under my bed in case she found them .
there is definitely trauma there ,but if I’m honest,I do think I’ve got autism as well ,I just don’t know how to pick between the two ,what is what

As a teen my boyfriend lived in Oldham. I was asked in the pub one night what was the best way to Oldham. I gave a detailed set of instructions including motorway junctions. The guy looked at me very amused and said "no, with both 'ands!" and demonstrated holding breasts laughing raucously. I was mortified.

I've fallen for more things like that over the years than I care to remember

Sorry for not coming back to the thread and thank you for your replies. I am sorry that you experienced.the things you did
My mum used to ask the health visitor "why is she like this?" but can't explain what "this" was. I was her 4th and with a fairly big gap. She tells me the rest of the family were fairly horrified she was pregnant again. That explains some of the continuing attitudes in the family towards me. I felt adored by my maternal grandparents though especially my grandmother. She was the most horrified apparently 🤷🏼‍♀️

Some of what you mentioned sounds familiar. Being a demanding baby, being isolated and ostracised at school, no real friends, preferring the company of adults and especially preferring male friends rather than female. I had a lot of obvious traits of autism such as selective deafness, rocking back and forth when I concentrate, tics, self harm, avoiding social situations with more than a couple of people, anxiety, etc. None of this was flagged as autism, I was just assumed to be “nerdy” or “a loner”.

I was also hyperlexic, I could identify the alphabet at 18 months old and by age 4 I could read. School work was easy, I have a huge capacity for memorising facts and spellings. This made me very unpopular. My interests and clothing choices are more stereotypically male, again this made me unpopular. At 17 I attempted suicide because of social rejection and isolation. In fact I have a history of depression due to social isolation which stretches from age 12 to the present day.

When I asked my parents why autism was never considered they said “because you’re too clever to be autistic”. NT people think that someone who’s more intelligent than them can’t possibly be autistic.

I was actually fairly “normal” as a baby. I walked/talked etc on time. I also appeared fairly “normal” at primary school and didn’t really have any friendship issues or anything like that. Things only really became apparent when I got to secondary school, when being social and fitting in becomes very important. My year 2 teacher apparently brought up the possibility of me having Asperger’s to my mother, so I would’ve been six. I wasn’t aware of this at the time. I have no idea why this teacher thought that, perhaps she’d seen similar behaviours in other kids she’d taught previously. I was maybe a little “quirky” at primary school but I was never bullied for it.

I obviously don't remember being a baby or the earliest years of my life; but my mum said I was a very unhappy baby and always cried. She says she was unable to ever comfort me. She recalls neighbours would knock on the door to ask if she could hear me crying?! If I was alright and why she wasn't dealing with me! I look at pictures and honestly I look miserable and rundown.

As a child I had one very close female friend and didn't enjoy being in large groups. Still don't. I prefer male company to females, especially in group scenarios.

I didn't play with toys like other children. I liked to line my belongings up and admire them. My mum used to love Christmas time and buying presents for my brother and sister but said she hated it when it came.to me as there was no toys she felt able.to buy for me as she felt I wouldn't be interested so I always ended up with books and clothes.

I was sexually abused as a child but didn't tell anyone. It never occurred to me perhaps. I had a conversation with my mum as an adult about it and other things I went through in childhood and she said I had never told her. I was shocked but when I had some time to think on it I realised it was typical of me. I live in my head and forget others don't and so am.surpised when people don't know things about me. I don't tell people anything so they wouldn't know!

This thread is so interesting and I hope it gets more answers!!
I don’t remember anything from when I was little (I also have aphantasia which means I can’t visually remember anything which I’m sure doesn’t help and means I take what other people consider far too many photos of my little one now).
In primary school I didn’t really have friends and I remember sitting on the wall and playing odd pretend play games in my head with myself. We moved onto another playground as we got older and there was no wall so I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore and wished we could go back to the other playground every day. I ended up walking around with another girl who didn’t really have friends but I don’t know if we were friends or not. I remember going to another girls house for tea but sensing that it wasn’t her choice to invite me as there was a weird atmosphere. I also remember going into a room in the classroom with a woman quite regularly but nothing was ever said to my parents so I don’t know if the teachers suspected something was ‘wrong’ with me.
High school was definitely harder though. I don’t think I was ever really bothered about fitting in at primary school but I also don’t remember being bullied there. People tried to bully me in high school by saying things about my hair, my quietness ect. But I don’t think it ever bothered me as much as they wanted it to as they were much meaner to other people. I was pretty much inaudible when answering the register and I only spoke to my few friends and I was very, very attached to my best friend. It was odd who I was able to speak to and after looking into it I’m pretty much certain that I had selective mutism. There’s probably more I could write if I really think about it 🤔

I remember very little about my childhood. Like a PP, I have aphantasia so I don’t see memories visually, plus I struggle with linear timelines so everything gets all jumbled up in my brain. However, from a mixture of memory and what I’ve been told:

I was a quiet baby who slept well and met my walking/talking milestones. I didn’t cry a lot but didn’t take much comfort from people, either; my mum jokes that she could have left me with a stranger on the street and I wouldn’t have cared. I was never bothered about playing with other children and preferred to be alone. In fact, my mum admitted she spent a long time worrying that I was lonely.

Without realising what they were, my mum has talked about my sensory differences going right back to infancy. A complete aversion to certain food textures; revulsion when touching fabrics such as velvet; being terrified of loud noises, e.g. having to remove me from birthday parties when everyone sang Happy Birthday, or the other kids were screaming and laughing, etc. I was really fussy about clothes even as a toddler and would have a meltdown if they weren’t quite right.

In primary school, I had a small group of friends in school but would only ever see them one-on-one outside of school. I hated group dynamics so I think I tried to control them, which led to my friends falling out with me for being bossy. When my mum would meet up with her friends, I remember desperately not wanting to go and play with their children so I’d hang around the adults with zero comprehension of how annoying that must have been.

Secondary school is where it totally unravelled. I didn’t understand the politics of friendship groups and I started being horrendously bullied (physically, verbally and psychologically). I was accused of being posh – I’m absolutely not, but I have a strange transatlantic accent and I speak overly formally, with little to no slang. Very, very common for autistic people. Finally, aged 16-ish, I drifted from my friendship group because they were all so sick of my hyperfixations and lack of reciprocal interest.

Funnily enough, my younger brother was assessed twice for ASD and ADHD in childhood but was never diagnosed with anything. Looking back, there were so, so many signs in me but nobody was looking for them in the 90s and early 00s. Behavioural presentation aside – the physical signs were all there too! Toe-walking (which I still do, and I’ve only recently realised it’s why I wear through the sole of every shoe at the ball of my foot!); tongue thrusting; physical tics that drove my mother to distraction; all childhood photos of me doing the Chandler Smile; T-Rex arms, which I now realise I’ve always disguised by clasping my hands together just below my ribcage. Every photo in existence shows me with my hands in front of me, like I’m holding a tiny invisible handbag 😂

I’m dyslexic and dyspraxic (diagnosed in adulthood and apparently have a high IQ so apparently I found ‘strategies’ to deal with it). I am going to get an autism investigation soon. For me:

1. Easy going, quiet baby
2. Learned to walk late.
3. I was speaking by 9 mths and conversing by 1.5 (my DD who is autistic also did this, my DS also does this but psychologist doesn’t think he is - so probably nothing to do with autism).
4. I learned how to read by myself by 2 by extrapolating meaning as I was read to. DD also did this. Apparently it’s a sign of some forms of autism.
5. Absence seizures. I was always in my own world. It can be a sign of autism but dd, who is autistic, is extremely present.
6. I always found it easy to recognise other people’s emotions & relate to people but found it exhausting as I often had to internalise their experiences to do it. DD finds it difficult. Her psychologist thinks my experience is more common for girls with autism than my dd’s.
7. I don’t think logically I think laterally / associatively. While DD thinks extremely logically. Apparently female autism can present in either way.
8. I am warm, friendly, find it difficult to make friends but when I do I tend to keep them. If you saw me you wouldn’t dream I was being investigated for autism as I don’t hit any of the stereotypes except being a bit anti-social / quiet sometimes.

I was born three months premature. I walked on tiptoes. I used to have three dummies (one in mouth and one in each hand) and that persisted until I was around four. My mum described me as a young child holding my arm over my eyes to “hide” from visitors/unfamiliar people.

At primary school I was bright but quite mute. I went home at lunchtimes because I loathed the playground so much. Would dissolve into tears at loud voices or shouting. Very socially unaware - would walk and bob around on the balls of my feet. Stimming. Massive anxiety almost all the time.

And that’s before I even got to secondary school.

As a baby/toddler: extremely self-contained and self-sufficient. Apparently I would play alone in my room quite happily for hours on end. Prone to nuclear-level tantrums. Very verbal from a young age - advanced vocabulary and extremely talkative.

As a kid: gifted in a number of areas. Painfully shy and still pretty self-contained. Read a lot. Played a lot of imaginative games, but only if I was the one constructing the imaginary world. Didn’t know what to do with myself in group situations like birthday parties so stuck to the sidelines observing and feeling weird. Tended to have one intense friendship at a time. Friendships often ended unexpectedly for reasons I couldn’t understand. Mum once had a call from the school (primary) because I was so upset by a falling out that I had locked myself in the toilets and point blank refused to come out. Nervous tics/coughs. Very poor sleeper due to anxiety. Toe walking when I was around 6. Used to spin around on my knees for fun….

Diagnosed at 40!

Oh, and between 8 and 10 I decided I should have been a boy because I didn’t understand how girls worked at all: cut all my hair off and basically pretended to be a boy full-time.