What To Look For In Photographs Of You As A Child

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I wouldn't mind sharing my images, but I haven't scanned them. Think rail-thin three-year-old on Christmas morning seemingly dumbfounded and confused by it all and staring at the only interesting thing or person in the room. As for the professional photos, well, let's just call it my trip down the rabbit hole. If you flip through the 12 images quickly, they are also a little (painfully) funny.

Not a problem, for me, anyway. Thanks.

You are most certainly NOT oblivious now, KK. You are one of the wisest Wrong Planetians around.

The one telling thing appeared in a movie taken by my grandpa:
A plane was passing by overhead, and I was covering my ears from the noise
with a look of pain or irritation on my face.

Other than that, photos of me as a child normally showed a great big smile.

I don't think you can get much from this.
Photos are too static to tell much about autistic traits.
Most autistic children who look normal physically look normal in photos.

@ btbnnyr -- I think it's not so much physical appearance that's the thing, more that physical facial expressions or postures may convey things. For example, if there's a group photo, like a family picture, and everyone is smiling and with their arms around the next person in the shot, but there's one child who is leaning away from the others, looking away from the camera, looking uncomfortable.

Sure it may just be something else in that moment, but the general idea is if enough of these old photos show a behavior, it can be helpful to a diagnostician even though they can't base their diagnosis heavily on merely what they notice in the pictures, it would go without saying.

Or there is a series of pictures that show a progression of some kind. Video or old home movie footage can provide a more dynamic display of someone actions, reactions, any physical discomfort.

The people looking at these pictures or video would of course have to have the ability to interpret body language and various emotions in facial expressions, but then, if they are qualified to assess and diagnose, they will probably be able to see these things.

Both my therapist years ago and my diagnostician more recently actually asked to see old family photos I have, and they both told me the photos were revealing and useful to them.

So it's not unheard of that this can be the case.

I had both photographic and video evidence.
In practically every photo my eyes look strange.
They look like they've been painted on (btw, this hasn't improved much - which is why I hate photos where I'm looking at the camera)

In the video evidence, taken at a family wedding when I was around 13, I am obviously stimming (flapping my hands and clapping - which I got chastised for afterward - apparently I 'ruined' the wedding video).

Mom and dad were good at getting to pose for pictures, so there were not to many candid moments they captured, the ones they did get tended to show me with a gaping jaw and a blank look on my face. My grandma got a photo of me with toys lined up on a table. Another thing I noticed is that the overwhelming majority of my childhood photos depict me alone. I can count on one hand the number of pictures I have that show me with kids other than cousins. There could have been more opportunities, but mom was always leary of taking me out for fear of me melting down. A fourth thing that photos depict for me is that whenever I was in the house, I tended to be barefoot or wearing some kind of plush slippers because shoes and socks were always difficult for me to manage.

And speaking of shoes... photos show that I was wearing shoes with velcro straps until I was 5th grade thanks to motor dyspraxia.

+1 about the lights. In my childhood pictures I am often looking away or shutting my eyes, but this is entirely about the flashlights. I have no idea how I would have appeared in photos if I'd grown up in the era of mobile cameras. As things were, I developed a pavlovian fear of cameras - and I was very aware that I looked strange in the pictures, which caused anxiety every time someone brought out a camera, which in addition to the flash made me look even more uncomfortable.

In the pictures that were taken outdoors in natural light, and spontaneously, I look pretty normal, I think.

I've got hundreds of photos of me as a baby and child, but in most I am full of expression. You wouldn't think I'm on the spectrum at all.

I wouldn't mind seeing them if you ever scan them.

Thats a good point , I don't think any of my photo's are candid , they are all "say cheese"

In contast there are very few photos of me, as by the time I'd reached around seven or so I pretty much refused point blank to have my photo taken. There aren't even any school photos of me, once I turned ten years old because I stated very clearly that I didn't want any taken. The few photos of me in later childhood that do exist were mostly taken without my knowledge and then I'd get very angry afterwards, when I was informed about the photo being taken.

I have a lot of photos of me from when I was little. In most of them I'm either not smiling, or I have a very fake smile (like someone told me to smile and I didn't want to). In the candid ones, I usually have a very blank expression on my face.

It was my candid photographs which taught me (I like the term Pavlovian, too) at about age three years that cameras flash bright lights at me and sometimes make squealing sounds when the batteries recharge. After that, I would close my eyes or look away, with a grimace. When I was an older child, I would refuse to allow my photograph being taken.

Now that I think about it, it was a few months ago that I read that dilated pupils are now sorta, kinda, considered another characteristic among autistic children. Boy howdy, it was true for me. In all my annual childhood school photographs at about age five years to age 14 years, my eyes looked like I was constantly loopy on something. Friends, coworkers and even teachers would comment about it. By the time I was about age 25 years, the dilation went away on its own; maybe because I began needing glasses.

Sooo, I suppose I was more sensitive to flashing bright lights than others because of my perma-dilation. Cameras were evil for a number of reasons: bright, loud and intrusive.

I guess you'd think I wasn't on the spectrum just from looking at my childhood photos because I'm smiling and really happy-looking in most of them. I actually showed facial expressions. How peculiar.

Actually, until I almost a teenager I looked very different as a kid than I do now, and if I didn't otherwise I wouldn't even know that's supposed to be me. Maybe I got replaced with someone else by aliens or something.