the physical signs of aspergers

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I'm not too skinny or overweight. I'm in the normal range for my height, which is 5'6.

I've read some of these threads and have so many of these signs/symptoms/characteristics. One I have seen here, but not mentioned in this thread, is walking "toe to heel" and then sort of lifting your heel higher than usual so you're raising and lowering your height. Does anyone else do this?

Also what about other tics like hand flapping?

okay so I have been doing a lot of research on this for awhile because I noticed something was different about my daughter I thought that she might be eccentric or something because she is smarter than everyone her age but she has issues with communicating amongst many other things like toe walking temper tantrums like none other and issues with loud noises the feeling of clothes etc... the more I researched the more I realized she might have aspergers which came to my other realization i might be an aspie as well. It was a very comforting feeling to know there was a name for how I felt my whole life and had no idea what was wrong with me i just thought i was different, as too the physical traits about it I too have a very large head most my life ive been called a bratz doll you know the barbies with huge heads and tiny bodies.... never thought anything of it until reading these posts. I am very clumsy and been told my whole life im accident prone. ive never been any good at sports id avoid P.E at all costs in school for fear of being made fun of and also having anxieties about making a mistake while everyone would be watching.People have always commented on how I walked or ran. I have the shoulder problem where i slouch a lot and people have commented on my odd shoulders once again never thought anything of it. I also have the worst strength its difficult for me to lift hardly anything even milk jugs i have no upper arm strength what so ever. I dont know if this has much to do with it but i have allergies to a ton of stuff,have digestive issues and asthma as a child also had some heart problems... through this site and research on my own ive came to realize that possibly my father and brother have aspergers too.

Slightly large head here as well - doesn't help that I'm skinny and have huge hair.

Yeah, I agree. My ex's sister has been working with young people with autism for 12 years. I haven't been able to get a formal diagnosis but it is her opinion that I am on the spectrum. She said it was my pattern of eye contact was slightly unusual and that when doing emotional expressions on my face it would seem slightly delayed (and this is before we go into special interests, meltdowns etc). Some Nts are more sensitive to this than others and explains why there are a few people who have taken an instant dislike to me even though I don;t think i've done anything wrong.

Who bumped this stupid topic?

Wow that's me right there. I have bony wrists which I hate cause they make me look anorexic even though I'm not. I'm not even super skinny, just average with bony wrists. And I am short, large head, high wide forehead, and my eyes are also slightly close together and yes I have the intense dreamy deep set eyes.

As far as symptoms, I hand flap in private (but been hand flapping since before I was a year old), I have repetitive routines, problems with digestion, feeling bloated, tons of allergies, difficulties making and keeping friends since I started Pre-K, problems making eye contact/hand gestures, body language and the list just goes on. What really affects me the most is my social problems though. Cause the hand flapping and other stims I can control pretty well when I'm around people. But I would get depressed a lot as a teen because of my social difficulties and my mom never took me to speech therapy or to get an official diagnosis. The only diagnosis I found out a while ago is that I'm low on Vitamin D which I heard is very common and if not ALL people with Aspergers are low on Vitamin D, might be the reason for my bony wrists...

Hmm. I'm not sure what all of these features are, but I do have some of them. I have bony wrists (which I like) and a short distance between ribs and hips (which I don't like). I definitely have the high forehead as well. I also have the digit ratio where my ring finger is longer than my index finger. I am very petite (under 100 lbs and under five feet- but I do have some curves.)

I was a gymnast when I was younger and despite the difficulties people here have had with gymnastics, I highly recommend it, specifically to young AS girls. I'm not that athletic, but I think all those years of gymnastics did mute some of the AS physical symptoms and helped me convey more "expected" body language. When I quit gymnastics as a teenager, I became more physically awkward and struggled more socially. I started taking some adult classes a few years ago and noticed that my body language improved in social situations.

For example, some of the first things you learn in gymnastics are proper shoulder angle, keeping your neck and shoulders aligned with your hips, and what to do with your arms when walking/running. I think the shoulder angle is a big one because shoulder angle is a nonverbal cue about how open you are to getting to know people.

My husband has a large head and is NT. Myself and my daughters have AS and only my youngest has a slightly large head, myself and my eldest have small heads. (But we're not like those shrunken heads from the Amazon

Well it's easier to tell with some people. For example, I was watching a video where one of my favorite singers was on and I thought that he may have Asperger's because 1) He says he is introverted and 2) I could just notice it in the way he fidgets with his hands

No, I can't recognize a person with AS just basing on how they look, and people can't say I have AS just basing on how I look.
Autism/AS has no physical features, maybe you can notice that someone with autism has a weird posture, or gait, but even many NTs have weird postures and gaits, and they don't have AS.

I can sometimes pick up on it if I'm talking to someone. My direct supervisor and the guy in the cubicle across from me are almost certainly on the spectrum.

Very true.

I do find it irksome when people seem to make up all these physical traits just because they may have that physical trait what anybody could commonly have. There has even been a mention on WP that having brown eyes is an Autistic physical feature. How can that be so, when brown eyes is common in a lot of people? I always thought blue eyes was more common in British/white people, but actually I have met more British/white people with brown eyes than any other eye colour. My eyes are blue that I don't correlate that with being an Aspie. I correlate that with coming from a family where blue eyes is rife. If a lot of Autistics had red eyes, or purple eyes, or some other unique eye colour, then it would make sense to say that there is a connection between this colour eye and Autism.

Interesting question! This is just about myself and what I've observed... Even when I feel pretty content, I look nervous. I fidget with my hands or jewelery or hair and I have a hard time making eye contact when speaking. It just feels too personal for me, like all my inner thoughts are revealed through my eyes.
I have very good posture, I walk extremely fast, and I veer out of the way of other people.
Maybe something like this is what you notice in other people?

Hi!

Are you allowed to share here in the forums what parenting forum you're referring to?

I do firmly believe that there are people with Asperger's that have facial features that are strikingly similar to each other.

My son is one of them and that's why I pick up on the "look", because they look like my son (or my son looks like them). Not all people with Asperger's have "the look" but some do.

Please let us know the parenting forum you're referring to (if it's allowed), and the pictures especially. I'd love to take a look at it.

If it's not allowed, can I ask you to please PM me with the information?

Thank you so much!
Diane

I've noticed something childlike and smooth about the face a lot of the time and an overall naive look. Clumsy gestures and of course something unusual in the tone of voice or volume of speech. All this probably applies to me (and I've even been told I look "innocent").

I'm new to this site. I don't think we can really tell people with Aspergers by look in a lot of cases unless its gait. When I was younger I held myself more noticeably but now my gait is just very normal looking in most circumstances (maybe a bit strange for some dance or bent over row exercises), I might run funny but probably in a normal way rather an aspergers way. My user name reflects a little concern I have of the linking of Aspergers to Autism, Autism to me is usually folk with severe social problems and sometimes more apparent physical features of the face than Aspergers.

I have normal sized head I believe, and normal forehead though not sure what a high forehead looks like, I don't have a problem with eye contact though on pictures I struggle to force myself to smile, or know where the camera is so it would look like I am not making eye contact if I am not looking at the right place but isn't a total reflection of how I usually look in that regard. I used to take things more literally when younger but not really so much now, however if given a task to do I would just do what is asked without assuming sub parts not explicitly stated if it didn't occur to me that a sub task was to be done, part of this is lack of experience in certain tasks, the other part is maybe a lack of intuition. I can read body language quite well, and bar thugs or drunks I can usually put folk in their place if their being a bit off. The biggest problem I have is with some folk who are not diagnosed with asp, who I believe have it more severity than myself, they think I take things literally (and try to make jokes that are weird, one great example of this one guy taking stuff literally I wish I remembered what he said it was pretty stupid) from them when in fact its because they don't have the usual intonation etc of other people (as verified by a relative of myself and a person that works with one such person that annoyed me that they take things literally and lack intonation). My body langauge can be stand offish but this is mainly a defense mechanism and not my inherent sociability as It's not social interaction as such that worries me but rather being judged for things out with my control and common experiences, once I have those things sorted which they should be soonish I can go back to the person I was high school which was outgoing. I struggle to tell when adult females find me attractive or if they just like me as a friend or a bit of both, but can tell when adolescents like me (which is no use as Im not a creep) as their plainer with their emotioIns. Beyond that one area I'm generally good at reading people.

The things that give me away a bit to some folk with incredible pereception ,however I even belief that part of that is due to confidence too,that I would be more willing to ask them if they liked me etc if I felt proud of myself). I am good at making small talk but not opening up, I dont open up because of a sense I havent yet fulfilled my potential, thus I could begin to make friends but I don't then develop them because If I asked the usual type of questions people ask of each other when it comes back to "what do you do..." or " you ever been to ibiza" etc I'm just terrified of saying nothing,so I stick to small talk, kind of the reverse of a lot of people with aspergers. The more give away signs is an ever slight unsymertic smile with no teeth showing when I try to smile forcibly. I worry a lot more about things and all the things that could go wrong, it doesn't help that much that my parents are over protective and forever telling me I "see" things differently, I think they overstate it, just like the media, but I know I do see things differently, the difference IS I see both the individual bricks and the wall, but my parent thinks/can only perceive the detail I see not the big picture, admittedly they admit to themselves that though they have normal neurology they tend to have traits of autism, what is funny is I don't have traits of asepergers beyond certain areas,Like I don't mind change, in fact I want change in my life but I also worry about that said change such as failing or confirming my parents fear correct, plus the practical things I have to do to partake in something like travelling to a place in a city i have never been etc, how to rent a flat etc. I struggle to stick to a plan of events, which apparently Aspergers people we are either like that or totally rigid in our events. Giving me a total blank page for something is bad though, I like to have some guidlines I can work to, whilst enough freedom to research different directions for a project, limited freedom rather than total rigidity or structure suits me best.

I seen a thing saying people with Autisim, not aspergers, often have big eyes and big heads, wide mouth, well my mouth is narrow in width and height, my eyes are slightly more wide but small in the vertical direction unlike the sort of look they had (the sort of look that people used to disparagingly call "spastic" or ret*d, the association of Aspergers with looking ugly or slow or both is rather unhelpful in the extreme as I look normal-attractive beyond a lack of bone thickness, height and small writs but they are sort of in proportion with my height just my lower arms and upper arms are less than they should be). I look a bit young but thats a good thing but not child like beyond my small height and stature, that said my body shape is like a mix of endo morph and mesomorph in my legs (but skinny ankles and calfs though I believe my Calfs can become quite big the way they look...), I have mesomoprhic upper body but small shoulders and skinny arms yet broad shoulders, if I am making sense. I also seen a video with a girl with Aspergers, at the end of the interview because it was clear she was high functioning the interviewer said "oh you would be really good with people with aspergers, our camera man is really good with people with Aspergers (the camera man has Aspergers)" as if having mild aspergers and looking attractive, acting basically "normally" with almost imperceptible differences in behaviour means you don't really have it or your better than people with more severe aspergers. This worries me because in Nazi germany they sometimes made exceptions for Jews (such as George Sorros) they liked in the Nazi party who where members of the nazi party,and its the same logic being applied here. Fundamentally I see Aspergers as usually something very mild and linking it to autism or people with more extreme aspergers isnt that helpful and seems dangerous. It is also wrong to even link more extreme Aspergers with autism or to suggest even all people with autism have large eyes etc, just seems a bit like comparing a lot of high or mid functioning people to like invalids or people with severe downsyndrome.

I hated the fact an interviewer in a video said "whats it like living with autism, my brother has autism" asking a high functioning aspergers person that is like asking any one with a mild difference what it is like to live with spinabifida based on the logic, oh somones not normal, all not normal people are the same thus having garrets syndrome is just like having spinabifida. Sorry if my examples seem slightly silly but I hope I convey the message I am trying to about said interviewer asking people with Aspergers about autism, and the cliched "dont you have a great talent", we are not idiot savants either....