i had symptoms as a toddler. first day of pre-school, ( i know there's a thread for that but there is more coming) i remember clearly the line of tiles separating the classroom from the toilets. i remember what the toilets looked like, and spending a lot of time watching the teacher and hoping she would cross that line of tiles. when i asked my mother about it, she laughed and told me i had to be pulled out of preschool the first week, because i pooped in the middle of the classroom, and then it came back to me: the teacher had said: "noone goes to the toilets alone". so i waited until she went , she never went. accident happened. at home noone noticed anything special about me , then at 6 i went to school, got slapped on the first day for reading while the teacher told us a story. i was supposed to "listen"and i was following on the book as she spoke, and she called me repeatedly, but i said"just because i'm not looking at you doesn't mean i'm not listening", she came over and slapped me. i think i told those stories somewhere already, but they seem like signs to me. i was fine though, until i was 8, then i was not fine anymore. talking to nobody almost, no friends at all, watching kids in the schoolyard and wondering if i was very ugly or smelled really bad or what was wrong with me. i got slowly better until high school, had to be homeschooled then because i was really in bad shape, bullying had reached levels i couldn't stand anymore. then i went back to school and got better again. it goes by phases i think. depending on the environment.i'm not sure the AS gets better or worse, i think the environment pushes us too hard at times, and then we recover until the next occurence.