Photos from Childhood suggest I am not Autistic

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I suppose this is my question. With a young child (under 2 years), would you expect this type of engagement.



He was extremely authoritarian and I was scared of him growing up. I was quite a handful for my mom. As an example, I remember her taking me to the shopping mall and hiding in the clothes rack, waiting for her to find me. Or, her taking me to the shoe store and having me run around the store crying hysterically because none of the shoes felt “perfect”.

Then, she would say, “Rocket, wait until your dad gets home”. That would get my attention. LOL.

Because of that (authoritarian father), I had assumed in my young adulthood that the root of my issues was psychological caused by poor parenting. I am no longer convinced that is the case.



Did you have that “look of engagement” in any of the photos?



Those are awesome pics. Thanks for sharing. Does your son have that “look of engagement” with his sisters? I have the feeling that the “look of engagement” in my photos was because it was my brother. As he was constantly around me growing up.

Even now at age 51, to a considerable extent, I can either pay attention to facial expressions (as in playing poker), or pay attention to the content of what a person is saying. It's very hard for me to do both, unless I perhaps know the topic of conversation very well.

So, maybe at ages 12 and 18 months you were largely pre-verbal, and thus you were paying attention to your brother's facial expressions.

I used to think the same thing. My dad was very authoritarian and also physically abusive. He was brought up with strong religious beliefs about women and children submitting to male authority. Also his father was abusive, and so was his father's father, no telling how many generations that went back. So I just assumed it was all psychological. Even after I got my ADHD diagnosis it didn't really click with me that we might also have neurological problems running in the family. Now I am wondering if there are genetic neurological deficits at the root of it all.

I agree that you were cute and I agree with Callista that if those pictures were the exception and not the rule than that doesn't mean anything. If your school records and memories of other adults and your own memories are of you acting autistic and you only look engaged in these two photos and not the others than there's no reason to doubt your diagnosis.

Looking at my pictures at that age, I'm not smiling or engaged in any of them but in a couple of the older ones I look very engaged and NT. Those are still the exception and not the rule when I was older. For example, there are some photos of me at about 8 years showing off a picture I drew to the camera and smiling and standing next to my sister, in which I look very NT but in other photos of me at the same age I look spacey or very awkward and in some I've actually got a string in front of my eyes and I'm hunched over it. In the ones where I'm even older, about 11 years and older I'm usually trying to smile and be social, to look engaged but often look awkward or have a strange exaggerated posture. I've only scanned one album so far so I can't show you the eight year old photos I was talking about but when I finish scanning the others in I will if this thread is still up.

I might challenge your therapist when she talks about “severely autistic children." Yes, such kiddos might have more severe sensory issues than you and I, although even that's not necessarily the case.

But there often seems to be an unstated assumption that there's some kind of proportional one-to-one correspondence between how different a person is and how much societal nonacceptance he or she receives, and that really isn't the case. It has happened numerous times in my life that I have made a conscious decision to try but not overtry, maybe I'm slightly different, but I'm hugely excluded.

In fact, it's been a major challenge in my life on how to contribute and make a damn difference when I've been rejected and excluded so many times. And I'm open to the idea that many of the times of rejection are luck of the draw, and that life is streakier than commonly acknowledged just like poker or baseball.

The first photo should be captioned "my first murder victim". The one in my profile has a similar "person sprawled on the floor looking dead" next to me. (Cut out for space and privacy reasons)

I don't have pictures of me smiling at a person but I do have a few where I look at the camera rather cross-eyed, and two others where I am pointing at something off screen.

I had a funny set of photos where I am starting at a gutter, fascinated by something, while my godmother is trying to get me to look upstairs where my family are waving. Later on I finally caught on and am looking up, but now my godmother is staring down into the gutter.

Of the ~ 100 pictures I scanned, those were the only two where I had that “look of engagement”. I am smiling in others. But I suspect those pictures were taken by my dad (who would literally hold the camera for minutes, demand that we smile, and wait for the perfect shot). Which might explain why many of the pictures have me doing a “fake” smile.

Unfortunately, the school records are rather sparse (for example, it doesn’t include the incident where I kicked the administrator in the thigh in the second grade because she wouldn’t let me use the phone to call home – LOL). Similarly, there are not a lot of adults around who can provide accurate recollections of my childhood (before I turned 5). My parents are still around. But their memory is fleeting. Fortunately, I have a fairly good recollection after turning 5.

I will probably search for more pictures. I am also hoping I can find the old movies.

Please do post your pictures. I like to “compare notes”, so to speak.

There is a photo of me as a baby under 24 months smiling right at the camera. Then as I get a bit older I stop looking directly at the camera. There are even photos of me twisting my fingers up as if stimming. Many photographs have me having a koala-cub grip on my mother.

Strange thing happened in childhood photos too I would face the camera but int he photograph I'd be looking to the side. Maybe I just moved around too fast. I hate posing for photographs. I don't know what to do so pull a silly face and I don't like keeping still for long.

I was thinking about this “look of engagement” a bit last night. I have read “testimonies” from other WP adults who have used their cognitive abilities to overcome this social affect (albeit with lots of focus/concentration and practice). That they can effectively use eye contact and engage almost like an NT (again, with lots of focus/concentration).

As such, I was wondering whether this "look of engagement" would be absent in all candid, non-staged photos? Or, would you NOT be surprised to see this "look of engagement" in candid, non-staged photos as a person transitions from a toddler (say < 3 years) to a child to a teenager to a young adult to an adult? If so, at what stage in life?

I would say, if you were under 2 years of age and you looked engaged, you were engaged. Even babies 6 months of age could legitimately be engaged. I don't think a parent could prompt a very young child to "look interested in your brother." Perhaps, if you were 3 or older, and you were prompted to look engaged, you would be responding to the cue, while not being "engaged" by default.

I was quite a handful, too, especially during my nonverbal phase (i.e., before age 5 1/2) I used to scream upon walking into stores. I used to scream all night, many nights. I used to vomit constantly. I used to knock items off shelves everywhere. My mother remembers this, but doesn't remember when I started walking. I definitely had a severe neurological problem which was partially resolved, somehow, by the time I acquired speech.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 30 Apr 2014, 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think engagement with a sibling like that is unusual. I was always a lot more responsive to my same age cousin I was with all the time growing up. much more with him then anyone else

In pictures prior to three years old I never smiled.
I told my mother and she said she had noticed it as well. She says that I used to smile and laugh normally but that I never smiled in photos. I had some sort of expressions (my mother can identify my expressions) but I never smiled or laughed.
Then in pictures after three years old I usually smiled.

Everyone has at least a few photos of them looking spaced out as a baby, and I'm no exception to that. But generally, I was a very happy, sociable baby and you wouldn't think I was an Aspie at all. In most of my photos I am looking at the camera and smiling and looking like I'm bouncing with joy (by the way my arms are). I have one photo of me on my dad's lap, at about 10 months old, and I was looking at my brother and his friend, who sat next to us, like I was interested in them and wanted to play. I also have a photo of me at two years old, sitting on a big Winnie the Pooh statue thing with my brother at an amusement park, and the background looked really noisy and busy but straight away my body and facial expressions scream out ''I am having a good time here!''

I didn't show any peculiar behaviour when I was under 4, and even if I did display any ASD traits at all, they probably just blended in with typical baby/toddler behaviours and so went unnoticed by my parents and the carers at preschool. It wasn't until I was nearly 4 and a half was when I did suddenly show noticeable peculiar behaviour all in one go, which got everyone surprised and I had to have plenty of visits to the doctor and psychiatrists to see what was wrong. At first the teachers and doctors thought my behaviour was caused by child abuse at home, but when they got proof that it wasn't, they then started to look at how my development was at school. It took until I was 8 years old to actually discover that I had a mild ASD, because most of my traits were still mild enough to blend in with typical child behaviour. I got a diagnosis when I was nearly 9.

Sounds like you and I both had similar experiences growing up. I could have written that almost word for word if asked to describe my childhood.




Yes, he will engage with his sisters. He's very comfortable with them, but won't interact with other kids. I don't think it's all that unusual for young children to show some interest in their siblings, ASD or not.

Also, unlike classic autism, it's rare for someone to be diagnosed with AS before age 3. The symptoms just aren't as apparent at that age. The average age for an AS diagnosis is actually 11. Examining photos of yourself between the ages of 12 and 18 months probably isn't going to be a reliable way to confirm or deny your AS diagnosis.

After I was first diagnosed I did the same thing as you, try to confirm it. My mother actually saved all my report cards and school documents from when I was a child. Looking through them, they were full of comments about how I didn't interact with other kids, struggled in groups, a note from my kindergarten teach to my parents asking if they thought something was wrong with me, etc. I think these types of items are going to be a much better way to confirm your diagnosis than baby pictures.

In my young childhood photos I am not looking to the camera,
am not looking at people either.
There was this photographer coming taking photos of father, mother, brother and me,
when I was about 2 years old and I still remember this day because I had a stim putting the nail of my index finger into my mouth between my teeth and my gum, (I still do it,
it gives a certain feeling in the mouth) and there are all photos with me and the finger in my mouth and mother holding my arms down and there is not one photo in the row where I do look into the camera or look at my mother as she is holding my arms down.
And I am not smiling, except for one photo age before 1 being on a swing, but I do not smile into the camera, but I smile, I love to swing.
There are many photos me crying and having a red head from crying.

Op, you can ask your parents if you were engaging at that moments with your brother in a reciprocal way, looking into his direction does not mean engaging in a reciprocal way.

Dismissing a diagnosis based on a photo is somehow weird.