Childhood

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My early childhood is almost a complete blank.
Mum told me recently that I didn't scream at all as a baby. They had doctors pinching me trying to make me scream.
I also hated being touched. They say I talked a lot before I started school, then I became very quiet. I left after lunch on the first day, I'd had enough, and it didn't get better after that.

I said this already, but I guess it bears repeating so everyone here can tell I DO actually belong here (dx still pending as far as AS goes).
Here goes: As a toddler,I started to walk & talk normally according to my parents (sorry little concrete memory before 3 years old, except one very vivid adult-style dream)but as soon as my sister was born, I completely stopped. I wouldn't speak again until after 3 years old. I remember climbing in my Sisters' crib once, but that is it. I think I was actually trying to BECOME her, if that makes any sense..
When I started to talk again, I seemed precocious, learned to read & then advanced very quickly. Taught my self to speed-read, etc.
But I must have seemed like a changeling to my parents. My father lost interest in trying to teach me sports. (ie, Football) because anything small & fast coming at me caused me to duck. I talked like I was conducting "business transactions" when I spoke to adults or children. Or forgot to modulate my voice in my favorite place(s): Libraries. I was a total klutz. High speed motion (skating, ice-skating, other) freaked me out. I eventually learned to ride my bike, but it took a few extra years.
I did have friends, but sometimes ran into problems. I was of course, a natural target for bullying. But at times, & without warning, could lash out at someone doing that.
In School, I showed ADHD symptoms or sat in my own world
. Sometimes I acted out, but more often was quiet & reserved.
I think you get the general sense here. ( I hope so, anyway)

Sincerely,
Matt

Even without the social interactions of preschool or school, autism can still be detected in young children. All social interactions will be affected, including those of the child and her parents or caregivers. The child may not respond to name, may not notice parents approaching, may not anticipate to be picked up or fed, may ignore parents like they are not there when they are inches away, may not use gestures, may not speak any words or babble or whatever are the normal speech mannerisms, may not spontaneously communicate at all even when sick or injured, may not do much of anything spontaneously like moving around the room, may stim constantly, may do all kinds of repetitive things like play only one game everday for a year, may have extreme insistence on sameness, may have inexplicable meltdowns often, etc etc etc.

It took me a few years to learn to ride a bike too. I got one when I was 7, and the training wheels didn't come off until I was 10. I was always very klutzy and uncoordinated. I have no athletic ability whatsoever.

I had a minor head injury when I was 3, and I don't think it was bad enough to actually cause any serious brain damage, but I've always wondered. I fell off a riding toy, hit my head on the brick porch steps and had to have a few stitches. It took a few adults to hold me down on the table to get the stitches, because I was fighting and screaming the whole time.

I don't remember not wanting to be hugged or held. But I absolutely hated having my hair brushed. I was never into "girly" things.

I had very little social interaction before I started school. I was always around adults so I behaved like a little grown-up. I NEVER felt like a child. I felt like I was an adult too, in a child's body.

Sometimes I did things just because I knew it was how people expected a child to act...like when I opened Christmas presents, I would put on an act like I had seen kids do on TV, acting really surprised and happy, but I didn't feel that way inside. It was just an act. As I got older, I lost the desire to put on an act like that. Then they got mad because I didn't show enough enthusiasm over my presents.

I had a lot of conflict with my dad because he wanted me to be more social and outgoing. He was always prodding me to talk more - "Speak!" He interpreted my natural reserve as snobbery and lectured me about it a lot. If people came over, especially if they had kids my age, he expected me to be really friendly with them. I never knew how to act. Again those were times I had to "pretend" to be a child and just tried to do the things I had seen on TV.

Pretty much no matter what I did, it was wrong. I was told I was being rude, stuck up, lazy, too hard to please, etc. It just seemed like I had a natural talent for making people angry. But I was also considered well-behaved because I was so quiet. I never knew what to do. If I talked, I made people mad. If I was quiet at the wrong time, I still made people mad.

I was pretty much the poster child for Asperger's Syndrome. I didn't speak until I was four or five.

Hmm, I forgot this. Or rather I repressed it.
Haircuts: Horror! I couldn't stand anything buzzing near my ears. My father used to try & cut it. It was a BATTLE. Sometimes I even won. My hair was long, wild & unkempt many times. I actually got the dreaded Bowl Cut a few times. I'd scream, fuss, even try to bite. I think they were afraid to take me to the barbershop when I was little.
If left alone, in my early years, sometimes curiosity could get the better of me. I'd dissasemble things. One time, the folks left me alone in our VW Microbus. I took the door apart on the inside with a dime & thumbnail. Couldn't get it back together either! They were so shocked, I don't think I even got punished for this one. My father was actually impressed for once (he loved tinkering on autos as a hobby.). He was less fond of it when I destroyed model train engines.
My friends were not allowed over, though. Not sure why, might have been me.
Also, I stimmed. A LOT. Even when punished, I kept it up, but got smart enough not to do it when the parents were around.

Sincerely,
Matthew

How I acted during childhood is something I analyzed shortly after being diagnosed with AS as an adult. I wished I could go back in a time machine and meet myself as a young child in the '60s and early '70s. Then it dawned on me, I could---in a way. I gathered up my fathers 2-3 hours of 8mm home movies taken after I was born. I took them to a specialist to transfer them onto DVD. Then I watched. Interesting, some definite AS signs were quite noticeable. And as my AS specialist/therapist noted upon watching them, I was a very ritualistic young child with definite signs of AS. You can tell that bright lights bothered me, for example. I walked with a different gait.

Then, I took audio tape of me as a young child and let a speech therapist (who works with a lot of AS children) listen to them. She said, "The child on this recording displays the typical language traits of a child with AS." She noted the way words were spoken and the rhythmic nature used were typical of AS children's speech patterns. I then told here the child was me.

So, from an early age, the AS signs were present in me.

How young are people able to remember stuff anyways? I think I have very few memories before the age of 5 and the ones I do have I only know they were from then because we moved when I was 5 and I kind of remember the old house.

I remember a lot from about age 3 onward. I have a few memories before that, even as an infant.

I don't know. There are some photos so I know I went to kindergarten, but I don't remember it at all. Up to ten years I have only the vaguest idea I even existed. I remember a handful of uncomfortable events, but mostly I only know I was ever a child from what other people have told me, and photos.

Oh, and mum said I was afraid of other children.

Me, too. I didn't like to be touched, hugged or kissed by anyone at all. I even hit people if they tried to. I also avoided eye-contact and turned my head away. I also was very quiet. And I didn't like to put on clothes, especially winter clothes. I also didn't like for my nails to be cut.
I tried to be sociable when I entered the kindergarten but everybody rejected me there so I stopped trying for other children to befriend me.
I started to learn to read very early by myself and wanted to learn a lot.
Those are things I don't remember but which I've been told by my family.

My mom tels me I was a Good Baby. But I think she misundersood my "goodness". I was very quiet, and non-verbal.
Like Dianthus, I remember age 3 & up with frightening clarity. Befiore, its only fragments of me trying to do things. And that annoying dream, which some new Ager might think means I've been re-incarnated. I don't think so, I think I culled those from TV shows my folks watched.
I know I had terrible seperation anxiety once in School. And Anti-social traits (meaning everything under the label from loner to destructive..). The school made my folks hold me back a year because of this..

Sincerely,
Matt