"Catching" Asperger's?

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My mum has some autistic traits (prefers an evening in reading rather than going out, takes things VERY literally), but apart from a coupla other things she is definitely NT. However, when speaking to her recently she said that as a baby I was VERY outgoing and personable...that it was INCREDIBLY easy to make me laugh and her friends got a kick out of making me laugh, that there was a test to see if the child was developing a healthy relationship with the mother in which a nurse took me from her and made me cry (?) and if the child looks for the mother things are OK...apparently I looked for my mum and started screaming and reaching for her and just generally going apeshit, which was MUCH BETTER than what most babies did. However, my mum says that my personality seemed to have changed after getting my MMR boosters (which are thought to cause autism). On one hand, I don't think I can just be given an "autism shot", especially since my mum has a few AS traits as well. On the other hand, it's strange that 75% of children with AS/Autism don't respond to their names as babies and I was as people-oriented as I was, only to turn out as...well...me. Can anybody else shed some light on this? Any similar experiences or theories?

don't know...

have tried approaching my parents about my childhood... aside from some issues at school and such... they seem to think i was normal.

i never had many friends but i did always have like 1 or 2...

hard to say.

The possibilities of why Autism does what it does are countless. I still cannot see Autism as a disease as much as I see it as a different interpretation of the mind and how things collate. There was this article on Autism being caused from possibly an excess of testosterone, it made a good amount of sense to me.

As for catching it? I don't know, I don't think that is possible. Every case is different. If you don't follow the lines of AS but you ARE AS that should really only mean you're even more AS than the standard. Haha.

When I got my MMR, thats when my mum said I started showing symptoms of aspergers, and when I got my backup jag I started showing symptoms ADD aswell.

I think the MMR is linked somehow, but its a debate that continues to go on

People have the MMR at a specific age that autism becomes apparent.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php? ... icle/2703/
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... _n16476252

The MMR/autism link has been thoroughly discredited.

For what it's worth, I got unusually upset when separated from my mother at that age too.

The "very outgoing and personable" bit isn't inconsistent with AS either. The psychologist who observed my behavior when I was in kindergarten noted that I was not at all shy, and that I frequently approached and spoke to other children, "usually in a loud voice". This doesn't mean I was socially clueful; it just means I hadn't yet acquired the shyness and social anxiety that frequently occur as secondary issues to AS. (It *was* noted that I had a prolonged period of parallel play, and that most of my play with other kids took the form of me recruiting them to act out some scenario I'd imagined, demanding that they do it exactly my way; it wasn't real interactive play.)

Regarding those shots (that had mercury, right?)...is it possible that it's an auto-immune thing that's causing the problem? Like if you're genetically wired to have an immune reaction to something in there (like Mercury) maybe it could cause it, even if "technically" it's not the shot that's doing it?

I thought some kids with AS do suffer from separation anxiety? In that they get very upset when their moms leave. Perhaps they are afraid that they won't come back?

Looking back at my son, he cooed at a normal age, smiled at a normal age, sat up around 4 months, crawled at almost 6, walked at almost 11. He even wistled at not even 4 months and would wistle in response to someone else wistling!

One thing he would not do, is make gestures. He would not follow a pointed finger, he would not point at a picture, infact, he did not like looking at pictures. As a baby he also NEEDED a certain pan flute CD played, accepting no substitutes!

I don't think he would have responded to his name, that has always been an issue I remember as a toddler and young boy, you had to call out to him 4-5 times escalating the volume and tone everytime before he would respond. Eventually around 7 I became horrified to realize he would only respond to his name if he was "commanded" like a dog, and even then not all the time. I worked with my family to try and "correct" the problem because it seemed inhuman to do that to him. (We did not know he was AS at the time).

However, I know he did smile, and he did not want to be separted from myself or my mother as a baby. I think it is very hard to go back and reconstruct things, at the end of the day, we are what we are.

One theory I have heard though, is that people with an ASD may have a condition where they don't produce an enzyme or something normally, so over time, damage is done to their nervous system. It depends on how compromised this production is that leads to the onset and severity of the ASD. This would explain why some children seem very normal up to around a year old, even as late as 3 years old, and then something just seems to "happen".

If all the things are allright, them, all the things are allight. But, if some things are not all right, the, even allright things won't be seen as they are.
If things are all right, there is no necessity of a "mental disorders" diagnosis. but if things are not ok, some "disorder" traits will be revealled.

I personally don't think that AS can be caught. Either a person has it, or they don't.

My son hit all of his developmental milestones on time prior to age 3 (which I've read is common for Aspies).