Anyone NOT show any Autistic traits as a baby?

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I knew nothing of my early development until recently when I asked my mum.

I was actually very surprised to hear her describe so many things that I understand to be classic signs of autism in infants/young children - from my lack of crying, to my rocking to my bizarre language development/usage through various other signs.

And yet it took until I was 38 to be diagnosed.

Oddly, however, I find I don't mind too much at this stage.

I think not knowing about my autism was helpful in many ways (though extremely stressful!) as it allowed me to really figure out what I can do, what I find extremely difficult, and what I really can't do without having made any assumptions on what I would find difficult because I am autistic. Had I had a diagnosis growing up, I think I would have made assumptions and not tried to do some things so I wouldn't know where my real level of ability lies.

I'm not sure if any of that made sense.

And it's irrelevant to the original post (sorry joe90).

I was told that I didn`t show any signs as a baby either, but when I look at pics of me as a baby and a child, I noticed in some pics I was flapping my hands or not looking at the camera sometimes and had a lost look on my face. No one else noticed. But I was born 3 weeks late and when I was born I wasn`t breathing and almost died! When I was 2 I was so sick and the doctors couldn`t figure out what was wrong with me, so I stayed in the hospital for 10 days with a fever of 106 and i was lethargic. I also got the MMR shots that people have said could cause autism. So I believe either the problem at birth, the shots, or the high fever at 2 years old triggered my Aspergers. I remember age 4 and up, and stating at age 4 I was pretty different, and messed up, and aggressive! Of course I`ve gotten a little better since childhood but not everything has gone away and it might never go away. I know autism doesn`t go away. I`m not aggressive towards people anymore, but I still have frustration issues and sometimes break things, but I don`t hurt people anymore, thank god!

I don't think I showed any until I was maybe one. I had ritualistic behavior, OCD behavior, rituals, wrung my wrists. I think that was it. That is all I know from what I have read from my records. Speech delays don't count and my mom says deaf people are good at puzzles too and I was as a baby. If this is all what the doctors saw and labeled me with autism over this, then no wonder my parents said it was all BS. I also wouldn't tolerate touch from the doctors but I thought wouldn't that be toddler behavior? How many of them don't want to be touched by strangers? Maybe I didn't want to be touched by them. My play skills were also below the age level. I also didn't do eye contact but I don't know if that was autism or because I was deaf and I didn't know where the words were coming from so I kept turning my head and looking around. My parents had to hold one of my favorite toys up to the faces next to their mouths so I see their lips moving. I also couldn't take lot of noise so we always had to leave. But unless I was noisy myself, the noise didn't bother me then. I remember not playing with other kids but yet I wrestled with one of my dad's friend's kid. But this was perhaps due to me being deaf and then all of a sudden everything was loud because I wasn't used to the noise because I lived in a quiet world for so long. My brain was past the stage where babies learn to tune out noise because I was deaf during it so I never learned how. So my parents had to keep taking me back to those places so I can learn and it took years.

But my mom had a difficult birth with me also. Then around nine months I started to get sick. Lot of ear infections and fevers and my normal development declined and I made less and less sounds and then stopped completely.

Speech delays don't count as a sign of autism? But they're in the criteria...

Usually people with mild Aspergers start having problems when they start school. My daughter began showing "problems" when she started school. Before that I noticed certain differences. For example, she preferred playing alone, she did not talk to strangers, she did not manage frustration very well (wanted all things her way all the time, since very little), she got fixations, she had stims... But I always thought that was because she is only child. I never saw it as a "problem".

I started getting ear infections at 3 months and I just had another one 2 months ago so they haven`t stopped

I had numerous ear infections and needed tubes in my ears several times. It's a miracle I haven't a degree of hearing loss. I had my hearing tested more than once. It's elating that my hearing is within normal range, both ears.

Me too!! At age 2 and 6. One time the hole never closed in my left eardrum and got bigger and bigger due to neumerous ear infections following that after the tubes fell out. I got my eardrum reconstructed 2 years ago and so far no ear infections in that ear anymore just discomfort, some pain, and pressure, but not all at once! However I got an ear infection in my right ear 2 months ago after not having an ear infection in the ear for like 11 or 12 years!

Lets see the only trait I really showed was crying whenever being picked up.

I was an early talker
It took a long time for me to learn to walk
I did not start to rock back and forth until I was in school

On a random note...while looking through my baby book I notice a gold star on my birth ID. There's a arrow pointing noting 'for being a good baby at the hospital'. Total aspie from the very start. :'D (My first gold star. My sister never had a gold star on her birth ID.) I rarely ever cried so that's probably why the hospital staff liked me so much. LOL

I don't know if there are any tests to determine Aspergers in babies. (There's one for classic autism; not sure if there's one for AS.) Typically people are diagnosed by the time they reach school age or later.

The only real "sign" for me was that I was extremely quiet and never cried, even as a baby. My grandparents thought there was something wrong with me, but no one suspected autism. I didn't baby talk and immediately jumped to speaking full sentences.

When I got into preschool, I remember being rather indifferent to most of my classmates. I didn't make friends. I only liked playing on the monkey bars by myself, and I remember wondering why the girls my age were so interested in playing house. I thought it was the most boring and pointless thing ever, so I did my own thing.

I was interested in people, but I related to them more as an observer would. A lot of my childhood felt like I was watching a movie. I was there physically, but I felt far away. There was always a limit to how connected I could feel to any one event. It was kind of like I'd already seen everything once before and I was watching reruns. It was hard for me to feel much emotion, even though I recall being a pretty happy kid.

Thinking back, I must have been something like a mini-Buddha. That's really what it sounds like to me. I was always lost in thought, contemplative, and not overly attached to any one thing. I had a transient sort of presence, as if I were just waiting to move onto the next life and not really there at all.

Before I recently started therapy I asked my mother this and she said that I did everything on time or before it was expected (like the milestones). I don't recall reading anything unusual in my baby book but I haven't looked at it in years. My birth was difficult and my mother and I almost died during it. I remember hiding in cupboards and things like that as a toddler. My father has also told me that when I was very young (I think between 1-2) I used to escape from my crib and climb all around when I was supposed to be napping.

Now that I'm thinking about this I do remember walking pigeon toed. I didn't do this all of the time though, just sometimes for fun. I did it until I was 4 or 5. My mother was worried and drove me an hour away to a fancy children's hospital. I remember the doctor taking me into a back room alone and telling me to stop doing it in a mean, threatening tone. Then he told my mom that there was nothing wrong with me. When she repeated that to me I told her "That's what I said" because I had been telling her that I didn't have to walk like that. I didn't do it again after that. I think I'm only thinking about this because I came across an old pic of me standing like that recently.

Last edited by LadySera on 17 Jul 2011, 3:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Unless you had hearing loss as a baby, then it doesn't count as autism because deaf children have speech delays too. They don't learn to speak on their own if they can't hear. Even though I could hear then but I was deaf for about nine months before I had tubes put in and everything was all of a sudden loud and I couldn't take lot of noise. I also had to learn how to talk because I was deaf for so long and passed the development stage of learning to speak.

But mom told me I might have had a speech delay anyway if I didn't have hearing loss but they will never know.

I had tubes put in when I about a year and a half and then they fell out when I was two. They had to take me back to the doctor to put them back in again and then at age seven, one of them was starting to fall out but it didn't. My body decided to heal around it by having skin grow over it and it was giving me pain and ear aches. So mom took me to the doctor again and he cleaned it out except the only problem is, he didn't put me to sleep so I screamed and screamed and mom had to hold me down. I cried too. He even took the tube out and that also hurt.

Then at age 11, I started to have problems with my other ear. Every time water get in there, I get fluids coming out of my ear and it was icky and it get in my hair sometimes. That lasted until I was 14 when I had that tube taken out. That time I was put to sleep and they pulled it out. I have not had that ear fluid problem ever since.


I am lucky I don't get ear infections anymore. My hearing is also in the normal range but I can't hear all sounds lot of people can hear but yet I can hear those high pitch sounds from TVs. I also have difficulty with sound differences because they may sound the same to my ears. I think that is why tone of voice sounds the same to me from a person. My shrink once gave me two different tones of his voice, one was normal and the other was sarcasm but they both sounded the same. I was told on here autistic people don't have that difficulty unless you had hearing loss and I did have it in my infancy and when I was a year old.

Yes, I realize that deaf children have speech delays as well, which is why a lot of autistic children have their hearing tested (well, one of the reasons why) but once deafness is eliminated, how are speech delays eliminated as a sign when they're part of the diagnostic criteria?

After I got my eardrum reconstructed everything was so loud because I got most of my hearing back! I miss having some hearing loss because now I always have to wear an earplug in that ear! My other ear is sensetive too but not as bad.

What u went through sounds painful! They should`ve put u to sleep when the doctor took that tube out!