Did you smile in school pictures as a child?

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I am 30 and just now getting the idea that I have dealt with AS symptoms and experiences my entire life. It is exciting to finally understand why I am the way I am and not like other people.

As I am looking back, things are starting to make more sense.

One of them is that in my pictures from school, and baby pictures from photographers, I am rarely smiling or making an appropriate expression.

In baby pictures from age 1-3, the only ones were I am smiling are where they gave me cookies, and I have a cookie in my hand (my mother also told me this.) After that, I have a very solemn or sort of scared look on my face (I do remember the photography experience being overwhelmingly scary). In kindergarten, my mom calls it "chipmunk" face because my mouth is sort of squished up but I have not really managed a "smile". My "fake smile" gets a little better as I get older in sequence in the photos, but there are no genuine big grins. The best is merely a closed mouth little "lets get this over with quickly" expression.

It is strange when I look back on it from this point of view... I was just wondering if others have the same experience when they look back.

Yes until people started complaing that it was a fake smile. Why is it required one smile for photographs anyway? With all the fussing the school photographers did about demanding how I sit and fussing with my hair, It's a miracle I could even fuster up a fake smile. I stopped smiling in my school pictures by late first or early second grade. My brothers never smiled in their Navy pictures, so why should I in my school pictures? My mom's all time favorite pictures of me are ones where I am NOT smiling. Imagine that. Maybe she wouldn't have minded if I had not smiled from the beginning.

My mom also says you can tell I am autistic in some of my childhood photographs because of the fake smile and becuase I have this "look" in my eye. Whatever that means. I remember most of the other kids' parents complaning about their kids' "fake smilies" as well so aparenty this wasn't a strictly autistic thing.

I'm 38 and I was only diagnosed with Aspergers a few months ago, but I've often found over the years, that when I've tried to smile for photographs, it ended up looking like a frown when I saw the finished photograph
I remember other occasions when I've had comments like 'cheer up, it might never happen' when I haven't been aware I was looking miserable. It's only since I've been told that a lack of expression in the face is in an indicator of Aspergers, that it makes sense why these things happened.

I tried.
I couldn't and still can't smile in photographs!

I smiled because the school photographer wouldn't let me go back to class til I did

I smiled in school photos.

I smiled in some of my photographs. Generally because I was pretty much forced to! I never felt like smiling sitting there waiting for the picture to be taken. In some of the photos I'm looking sulky and in one I'm leaning away from everybody in the class because they're all pulling silly faces/flinging their arms out.

Yes. Because I was told to so I was taught whenever there is a camera, smile. But people can tell if my smiles are forced or genuine, even aspies have noticed that too. Even when I was two I have smiled for the photos.

But I hated my smiles because they looked stupid and I hated my teeth so I'd try and smile with my mouth closed and I still hated my smiles. Then I stopped caring in high school about my smiles.

I smiled in my school photographs, but my smiles looked fake.

I do. I look awful when I am not smiling in pictures. We weren't allowed to smile in our passport photos and I look like a criminal in those photos! I don't think that's true for everyone because I've seen photos where people weren't smiling and they didn't look like criminals.

I smiled for school photos, but only because a) my mom would get really mad if I didn't; and b) the whole process was over much faster if I did. The smiles look really forced, though.

Yes, but they are fake just as the vast majority of my smiles are.

I know of at least three school pictures in which I didn't smile - one of my preschool pictures, my first grade picture, and my seventh grade picture. I smiled in all the others and never really had a problem with it, though I did worry slightly if my smile would make me look dorky or something.

Yes, but only when I was told to. I always hoped that the photo would be taken without my fake smile. Unfortunately, I was always wrong. To this day, smiling makes me feel uncomfortable.

I've always smiled in all of my pictures because I liked taking pictures, even as a baby. I still do.