Things I have noticed about this forum

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In regards to 7 and the inside jokes thing, when I wrote that I was thinking of the "Save Ferrets!" movement that seemed to occur randomly, I think it had something to do with the user Save Ferris, perhaps someone misread their username, and it became a running joke? I'm not sure. Could someone explain that one to me? Please? I feel silly for not understanding.

As for 6, when I first joined this forum I noted that some users spoke in unusual ways, some of which might have to do with verbal repetitive tics or echolalia. Other times it's the way sentences are structured, like others have mentioned this is probably due to the variation of backgrounds that users come from (country, class, ect.)

Some users put the same emoji after a particular number of lines, and always seem to follow the same patterns when writing posts.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... taxSpeaker

In regards to 2, sometimes I think I ask a question too many, and instead of answering my question they change the subject. This is less an observation about the forum, but more and observation about myself because perhaps I go too far sometimes...

This thread was originally split from the thread "Say something rude to the person above you". 1Biggles1 started it by saying that SaveFerris's name made him think of ferrets. People kept joking about this, so the off-topic posts were split and developed into their own thread for joking about ferrets.

We all had a good fun run with the "Save Ferrets", but that actually is not a real common type of thing that happens here. Its surprising that there aren't more inside jokes than there are.

Ah, I thought it might be because of something like that.



Out of curiosity, what would be considered early childhood? Age wise, that is.

Relax, you don't come off as a troll. I'm also most likely not on the spectrum (I used to think I was, but now I'm almost certain I'm not) and I think most of your points are spot on, especially regarding NTs (in general) being evil and out to get those on the spectrum.

I did consider the fact that you might just be making a joke, because not flapping my hands would be another way of being unflappable, but I wasn't sure so I also considered the possibility that you seriously misunderstood Kraftie, so I thought I'd answer the question anyway just for safe measure.

Although, in fairness it can be hard to read tone through text at times. Then again, it can be difficult to read tone via physically speaking as well. My friend and I always joke about how it would be easier if life was more like the Sims and there was some kind of bar floating above someone's head saying how they are feeling, as there would be less room for error that way.

It's actually surprising how much our perception of facial expressions changes when you include hand movements in there. Sometimes we play this game where we try to draw particular emotions, the catch is that you can't draw hands, only the face. It made emotions such as surprise difficult, and disgust was a hard one because we were only drawing emoji like faces rather than more detailed human like ones.

There's also this other game we play, where one of us says an emotion and the other has to act that emotion out, afterwards the person who chose the emotion takes a picture, and we both look at it and decide how much it actually matches the emotion that they were trying to act. Usually it doesn't because we're terrible actors, lol.

How is that even possible? If they didn't have them before, then they have something going on but it's not autism.


I am getting confused now when people say autism symptoms because do they mean real autistic traits or just traits that look like autism but that is not what is going on?

Some people develop sensory symptoms and social anxiety symptoms, and even stims and such which could manifest themselves later in childhood or in adolescence.

Sometimes, it's true, there's a "female" autism presentation which features seemingly "normal development" in childhood, followed by more overt symptoms later.

When I say "early childhood," I mean (for the latest) the preschool years.

I would say that in most cases, autistic symptoms manifest themselves in infancy or toddlerhood. There are cases of "regressive" autism where there is a "normal" infancy, with some skills developing, followed by a "regressive period where skills are lost--occurring some time in toddlerhood.

I believe even the DSM-V states that autistic symptoms must commence by the preschool years.

Jokes ? You were all joking ? I was thought it was a serious discussion

My suspicion is that, for many of these people, they did have these symptoms in early childhood, but the people who might have noted the signs didn't note them. Unless they actually specifically noted the absence of these signs.


My diagnosis says that my signs were noted before the age of five and documented in my elementary and middle school years, so presumably that's what's meant here.

Yes, it could happen that way, too.

Especially in girls, it might not be noticed.

When a child is autistic when young, they usually don't play appropriately by themselves, or with other kids. They, say, constantly spin a car around, instead of rolling the car like he/she is driving the car.

There is a relative lack of "pretend" play. They might not enjoy playing games like "house." (I don't mean "playing doctor," by the way).

Personally, I didn't mind playing house, but that was at the age of eight or so. Although I certainly preferred the games my best friend at the time and I took part in, where we introduced each other to our own intricate imaginary worlds. They were well thought out, we even made promotional leaflets for particular events that occurred there.

However, in early childhood (2-4) I was more shy and reclusive. I may still have documents somewhere about what I was like at that age, and what stands out to me the most is the part where I stopped communicating. After I left school, I looked over this leaflet that they had put together which noted my progress throughout school, and since the preschool was linked to the primary school, they had notes about what I was like in preschool as well.

The leaflet starts out with me attempting to write, there are a few badly drawn pictures, and the teacher's notes such as "I think that's a beach?" For several pages it appears that I'm making real progress with my writing, until I start going backwards on this progress.

At first, it's merely minor and I'm just writing slightly less than before, but as you turn the pages I start to write less and less, and the letters became less neat as if I gave up caring. This keeps going until on one page I've just put a squiggly line and left it at that. On that page there's a note about how I've been referred to a speech therapist, and how they are going to map my progress. Apparently, according to the notes about me, I had stopped all forms of communication, and often played alone and usually with the sand pit. Until I stopped doing so, because apparently I started to feel uncomfortable around the other kids.

The teachers writing my notes start to show real annoyance at me, and pointed out how I used to sometimes walk off during lesson time, and showed a lack of concentration and interest in what I was doing. Except when I wasn't meant to, such as instances where I apparently snuck off to try and alter my art project when we didn't have art lol.

However, they did note that the only time I appeared more happy and communicative was in music class for some reason. My teachers were unsure as to why that was, but they were upbeat regardless because it showed that I was making progress in that regard.

Apparently, I identified the feeling of cold before the feeling of heat, and struggled for a little bit to find the words to describe heat, until I eventually did a little while after I had identified cold, and the last colour I identified was dark brown because I got it confused with black, which is understandable. This was before I stopped communicating though.

What would playing "house" be? Playing with a dolls house? Or pretending you're in a little house? And playing doctor would be pretending to be a doctor? So the pretending games involve pretending to be a different person or pretending to be in a different situation, kind of like role playing? Sorry if these are silly questions, I just had trouble understanding the "pretend playing" questions in the online autism tests and it's making a bit more sense now.

I'm not really sure how I played at a pre-school age and I'm an only child so I was on my own a lot anyway. I've been told I didn't like touching certain things with my hands, so I refused to play with plasticine etc at nursery. But I don't know what else I was doing. I can remember pretending to be sitting in a truck going somewhere with my parents, and we would talk about the imaginary place we were going to, so I did like some pretending (can't remember how old I was).

Now I kind of like understanding how other peoples' brains work and what their perceptions are so I like trying to think how I would feel if I were them.

Playing house is pretending you're a family. One kid is the mommy, one kid is the daddy, all the other kids are the children.

Playing doctor involved one kid being a doctor and another kid being a patient. Sometimes, it was straightforward. Other times, it was a euphemism for sexual-type exploration.

Preschool kids, at times, explore each other's bodies, much to the consternation of parents. That's called "playing doctor."

Or, if you were like me, then you played the family dog. You knew all the roles were taken when you were the dog, lol. Sometimes I played the dad because my friends were an all girls group, so no one wanted to be the dad, so I was usually stuck as the dad, except when someone else had that role- then I was the dog.

Oh! Thanks for the explanation! I don't think I've ever played house or doctor . Playing the role of the family dog sounds fun though .

The best game as a child was making forts and then hiding from parents in them. I'd quite like to nip back in time and do that again.