Just discovered I was autistic as f**k when I was 4-5

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I was feeling nostalgic and found a big folder of old stuff from the attic. I then came across a load of documents that were written about me when I first started school. I had never read them before, and I was rather surprised at how autistic I was.
While I am aware that some of my behaviour was disruptive, but I had no idea that I lacked eye contact, flapped my hands, blew in other children's faces, and yelled out inappropriate remarks and lacked self-awareness, got highly anxious of change, covered my ears at music, and stood alone squatting in the playground. I am surprised that they did not just diagnosed me with autism there and then.

I showed no signs to cause concern as a baby, and I reached all my milestones at the average stages. The good thing was I grew out of a lot of that behaviour by the age of 6, and became a sociable child.

I feel depressed after reading that. I hate myself as a 4-year-old.

Please don't hate your 4 year old self -- you were four!! That is a very, very young child, and all your behaviors were a direct result of your autism. That's not something you can help, especially not at the age of 4.

Everything you list are symptoms of autism (which you later were diagnosed with). You wouldn't hate a person for trembling, having anger outbursts, changes of personality and walking strangely if they had Parkinsons, would you? You would be compassionate and sorry for their difficulties.

Try to apply the same compassion to your 4 yr old self; that was a little girl with autism, and nobody around her even knew that, least of all herself. Think of that little girl. How hard her little life must have seemed to her! Doing and feeling these things that even she couldn't figure out the 'why' of.

Give that little girl a big warm hug in spirit. Feel sorry for her struggles; it couldn't have been much fun being her in a world where nobody even came forward, identified her situation, and then helped her -- not for years to come, anyway. There's a reason for that too -- it was the early 90s and Asperger's and high functioning autism still wasn't on a lot of people's radar, not even the professionals'.

Try to love the little girl you were and remember she was misunderstood even by herself, and now that you know what was really going on, YOU can understand her properly.

Like BirdInFlight wrote, too many people beat themselves up over behaviors that they don't mind (too much) in others. What you described isn't even very embarassing ... for a child. It is human to be more critical about ourselves than about others. Try to remember why you showed those behaviors and try to come to terms with them. The most likely result will be that you were simply a kid acting as kids do. Tell your younger self that the humiliation you both feel about her behaviors is unfair to her because she was simply being herself. Then do the same for yourself.

You might just end up meeting a new friend from your long lost past.

But I was diagnosed with mild Asperger's when I was 8, and most mild Aspies don't get recognised until later on. But I displayed the behaviour of a more classic autistic child for about 2 years of my life. Before I was 4 I displayed no ASD behaviour.

Perhaps you did display ASD behaviour but you were being yourself too much to notice/remember.

You shouldn't worry about it though, it's just behaviour from when you were a kid, no one really cares about kids random behaviour because they're kids. Kids are super random, just look at that 4oD 4 year old show, they are completely baffling haha. If anything, you'd probs just get seen as an orchid child.

I never meshed in with the kids at my primary school either and I was the class weirdo but I don't really care because it just tells me I was an individual and not the same as everyone else. No wonder I got people being jealous of me.

My mum told me that my aunt had trouble mixing when she first started school and was put in a special group to learn social skills. And also she used to rock backwards and forwards right up until she was about 15. She was never diagnosed with anything, but to this day she is socially awkward and gets anxious and depressed, and doesn't like change. She can also be naive, even though she's 50 now, where as I'm not as naive. So that has made me feel like I'm not the only one in the family with 'issues'.

From my understanding with autism in general is that there's always someone else in the family that has the traits too. Usually much older, maybe even a grandparent or great grandparent.

You never know maybe even one of your parents have it but learned to mesh as an NT.

Glad you feel better at least but it doesn't matter if you're the only one anyway.

I know I didn't show any peculiar behaviour as a baby/toddler because the documents also included what I was like as a baby, to which my parents had replied that I was like any typical baby, which was why both my parents were confused and shocked by how I started off at school, suddenly showing every autism symptom except repetitiveness, lining up/stacking toys, and special interests. Otherwise, every other symptom was present. But for some reason I grew out of most of them rather quickly.

I did have an older sibling, who is NT.

My Mum said that I showed symptoms of autism when I was little, but in the 1960's it still wasn't all that known so I was never diagnosed so I didn't get the help I needed, when I was about 4 or 5 and going to school I did some "Weird" things too like when someone had MY favourite easel I used to chuck a wobbly and rip their painting off the easel, or if they sat in my corner I would squeeze in behind them and push until they moved.

as Bird in flight says don't hate your 4 year old self she was a little girl who grew up and knew why she did those things.

I was diagnosed at age 40. I never showed many of the classic behaviors but I did live in my own little world and missed all sorts of social cues all my life.

It would be very interesting the read the reports from back then I know they probably have to say a lot since I had to do speech and occupational therapy, I have a pretty good memory too and I was a weird little kid in hindsight. I wasn't diagnosed until I was like 15 tho so I wondering what it said and what they knew back then. My mom said I was a very quiet baby, I do know that.

Look at it this way--it shows how much you have improved!
One of the hard parts about autism is that there is a lot of denial, so that it can be very hard to say exactly where you are at any given age. People just hope that it will go away on its own.

I'm still learning new things in my 50s. I just bought some chocolate cookie making supplies for the Holidays!

I felt better when I read my reports from when I was a bit older (7+), where the teachers wrote that I got on better working in groups than on my own.

Sorry, it's just that reading about my social improvements and skills makes me more happier than reading about intellectual improvements and skills. I'd rather be dim but popular, than clever and unpopular.