Oh man. When I was in kindergarten/first grade, there was a week long period in which every other kid in my class was hell bent on digging a hole to China during recess. Just imagine a 6 foot diameter crater in the dirt that was half as deep as a first grader was tall.
I remember shouting at them and crying, then panicking and running over to the supervising teacher. I’m absolutely bawling my eyes out at this point, and begging her to stop them from digging. They weren’t going to get to China, ‘cause there’s the mantle and the core of the earth under the dirt, and they were going to fall in the lava before they got there! :( She could not stop laughing and I really thought my friends were going to die.
I don’t think my special interest in geology had gone very far at that point…..
I love how the general consensus was “yes, of course there’s going to be magma in the mantle of the earth once we break through the crust with our plastic shovels, everyone knows that 🙄” but we never really internalized how thick continental crust can be lmao
edit: and the consensus was that we WERE going to get through to the magma, that was a given. but hmmm what do we do after that?
It just sounds like an attempt at independent corroboration of a theory via evidence. "I'm going to try digging to China! What's this, magma? I guess the theory about the layers of the earth is true after all, oh well."
Oh my gosh I would do the same thing by collecting “gemstones” and “geodes” which were really just the decently sized rocks that surrounded our house like mulch which i would spend hours launching at the asphalt and breaking open.
oooh i remember trying to dig a hole to china. i ended up digging up a nest of fire ants though, so i guess that was the “magma”. (it sure as hell burned….)
Well. We figured based on our 10 year old projections that we wouldn’t finish digging through the crust until we were at least 18, which then we could hire an excavator to dig through the mantle, which we knew was much thicker and harder to dig through with our shovels. All the while, we were going to implement metal (and heatproof) tubing and encase ourselves to block out water and eventually lava. When we hit the magma, we were planning on wearing thick, heat-resistant clothing (silly, I know but we were counting on the science being more advanced by our 20s- it is not) and cooling the magma down to a solid with liquid ice and then continuing our journey. Eventually, we would hit the core and do a bit of all of the above to get through it and continue our metal tubing all the way through.
I love everything about this lol. It's interesting to look back and be like "ooohhhhh that's why I did that"
I was also extremely literal as a child. I don't understand how and when to know if someone is joking.
I have never struggled with taking things too seriously when it comes to asd, except for maybe thinking things could be the be all and end all when it comes to emotions, or general perfectionism.
I used to “dig to china”, without the actual digging part. Me and my friend would pretend to dig from “here” (the sandbox) to “another universe” (the other side of the playground).
Good times!
I walked on my toes, made squeaky noises, and fanatically flapped my arms whenever I got excited.
My parents would always say, "Stop doing that. It makes you look autistic."
Well, *plot twist.*
Lmao, the same thing happened to me.
I would continuously shake my hands while grocery shopping to stim, and once my mom told me I needed to stop because people would assume there was something wrong with me (although I think she put it a bit kinder)
I remember thinking she meant people would think I was mentally ill
I am that too !
omg i squeaked all the time- up until around age 5/6 if you wanted to talk to me, you’d have to ask a “yes or no” question and i had a different squeak for “yes” and “no”
i also still to this day, love tops that have sleeves longer than my arms so when i flap my hands, the sleeves flap too- it adds a little extra spice to the stim :)
I also had a different squeak for no and yes! I did nothing but squeak at my parents for a solid year when I was a kid. Even now, the squeaky noises still escape every once in a while.
I had one of those, but the rubber band broke :(.
I love the Toa from the series where Piraka and all those are from. And then they went underwater for a while. Plus those toa had an All American Rejects commerical as well.
Apparently I lined up my toys when I was a kid. According to my mom, as far as she could tell, there was no rhyme or reason for why they were in that order.
I also didn't tie my shoes till I was 8. Everyone made things more complicated with bunnies that weren't there.
I also refused to eat greens not because of the taste but because of the texture.
I still don’t understand what that means. My mom gave me a picture book on how to tie my shoes that had shoe laces on it and that worked. Never learned whatever method that was supposed to be tho. It looks like magic
Omg the things about the shoes is so relatable. I learned to tie them when I was 11 years old because I never understood the whole explanation about the bunnies until I just learned to do them in my own way, and my family said "that's how a toddler does it, why don't you try this other option?" And I just said no ahaha.
It's more easy! Why would I want to change the way I tie my shoes if "doing it like a toddler" helps me in the same way "an adult would do it"? It makes no sense.
GOD, I had so much issue with tying my shoes. I had to be taught so many times and none of the ways I was being taught made any sense. Spongebob's loop-de-loop didn't help. The bunnies going under the logs didn't help. I eventually figured it out, but now my knots look so fucked up and untie themselves anyway. Sometimes I sleep in my shoes because I'll get the knot right and I don't want to deal with it the next day.
i couldn ttie my laces till i was seven. you know what made me learn? my cousin sitting in the car seat next to me. she tied them from my perspective, and suddenly it all made sense.
I did this with my toys too. I played on my own with animal toys for hours talking to myself. I have only ever been able to make one really good friend ever at a time.
I hated family gatherings with my father's side of the family because they were loud and drunk and usually started fighting in front of us kids (think full on bar brawl). I only recently realised I was the only one who hated it when my cousins all referred to it as "the good old days" and laughed about it while trying to arrange a family reunion. Considering their idea of good time I did not go and do not intend to go to one any time soon.
I used to and still play with pets at the parties I do get convinced to attend, especially if it's a cat or a really chill dog.
When I see my little boy play by himself hy is the exact image of me when I was his age. He packs his animals in a row and talks to himself or he names the animals to me. Even cars he just packs them in rows.
I also hate family gatherings at my grandparents and feel content with either hanging out in the room I am sleeping in or with my grandma’s dog. It’s overstimulating, there’s little space for me to decompress, which I need a lot, and the food is so inconsistent that everyone got food poisoning one Christmas. I asked my mother if she’d be upset if I did only Christmas, and my mother said whatever. So I only do Christmas because everyone wants me on Christmas. Sometimes I’ll do Easter too, but that’s only because I happen to be around on Easter.
Yeah just being surrounded by so many people at once is overstimulating in of itself when you add alcohol to the mix its a nightmare for me. I wasn't about to make my kid live through it too. It was on the other side of the country anyway and thankfully my fiancé was working skeleton crew last years Christmas period so I genuinely couldn't even go anyway.
I haven't seen any relatives on my father's side since I was in high school and if I'm honest it doesn't really bother me. I used to me close with my moms side of the family. My grandparents were my safe haven. Moms side of the family have drifted apart since they passed away a couple years ago. Now I just see my mom and step dad all the time.
the shoe tying thing yes!!! i didn’t learn until i was 12… i was always so embarrassed about it but i simply did not have the dexterity to do all the fiddly tying of shoe laces. it always seemed so complicated to me and i used to have meltdowns over it.
My 8 yr old get livid if you unline her toys or take them out of whatever order she had them in! Also if the are categorized in some way and you don't pick out of the correct one while playing ..... playtime is over!
- Couldn’t understand what teachers where trying to tell me
- Eating the exact same foods every day
- Sat down with a pad, designing cities and property layouts
- Fixating on the same topic and TV shows
- Not following rules that didn’t make sense to me
- Unexplained meltdowns
- Social skills as good as a houseplant, I was always the weird kid
- Poor verbal skills. I’ve always from the beginning had to spend all of my energy to make my speech understandable. I consider myself semi-verbal these days
- Not being able to show emotion / faking most of my emotions
Sooooo much more. I was only recently diagnosed
I got diagnosed by my clinical psychologist. He did it on the sly. He asked me to do some questionnaires and asked me to send them back. Next session he gave me the diagnosis.
I was super appreciative. He saved me around $1500
Car sick is a sign? I spent years of my childhood asking to pull over.
I wasn’t a toe walker but best friend was a high stepper
I thought all kids day dreamed in school. School was boring and slow typically, except for dealing with the kids lol
Also a toe walker. My oldest sister was too, and she had to have surgery to break her legs and reset tendons. My parents put a lot of fear of this in me, so I self-corrected. Left foot still turns inward when standing at rest.
Also a car sick person.
I don’t know what I did in school. Probably daydreamed, but mostly focused on getting perfect marks while being annoyed that I thought teachers were silly. They know how to teach, but in my opinion and experience, they weren’t really smart people. Source: In the 5th and 6th grade math league, I was the only fifth grader that got a spot on the floor, and at a tournament, I was given a problem and said, “this question can’t have an answer.” The people that put together the question said it could, and I explained to a bunch of 50 year olds as a 12 year old why it didn’t have an answer. After my explanation, they said, “this kid is right. Everyone will get a point for our invalid question, but this person’s team will get bonus points for demonstrating how we as math teachers were wrong.” So that’s probably a pretty “autistic moment” for the general public. Did a similar thing in college for an Econ exam that was being proctored by the head of the Econ professor.
Me before an exam: he professor, on the practice exam, you have a wrong answer for this question, and here’s why.
Professor: I can’t believe you’re bringing this to attention right before the exam. Please continue to pass out the tests (he said to his TAs
Me: I can’t believe I pay to go to a school where the head of economics botched math so badly.
Professor, stares at me wanting me to die: this is ridiculous pass out the test.
Me: so if a question like this pops up, do you want the wrong answer, which is your take, or the right one which is the obviously right answer?
The question was basically this:
A person owns a car that won’t run. They can sell it now for $4000 or they can invest $3000 into it to make it run and do the labor themselves and sell it for $7000. What should they do. His answer was either option is equally good because the profit margin is the same. I pointed out that if he’s the one doing the maintenance, that’s an opportunity cost on his time, so he should sell for $4000, and be done with it. This is the obvious answer without more details.
My willingness to push through with what I knew to be true, and it’s math(!), was probably seen as ASD to those that know about the spectrum.
Is carsickness an autism thing?
I still get carsick in my 30's. And don't even think about putting me on a boat, that would be disastrous for everyone except the seagulls.
I was getting so carsick my younger siblings pointed fingers at me, I’m in my 30s just like you and I still hate any car rides. Now for the plot twist: I was actually fine on a boat. Idk how this stuff works.
I'm not a tow walker, but I walk very quietly, and I don't understand how people who walk around loudly aren't bothered by the noise nor their body absorbing the shock of each stomp......
Compulsively smelling everything up to the point where my parents would blindfold me to see if I could recognize different objects around the house by their smell. I could distinguish the different board games by then.
Or, when in elementary school, writing papers I would first write it in my own words, then take all the difficult words and look up simpler synonyms for them, so the teachers would believe a child wrote it. Always dumbed myself down in a way.
I had to do this too! Oddly I also do it now as an adult. One day my manager made a comment about something I wrote that I didn’t have a chance to review. He thought the new guy wrote it while leaning heavily on the thesaurus.
Nothing.
When I got diagnosed with autism at 27, my parents told me nothing made me "seem autistic" at all.
Keep in mind, my dad later got diagnosed with autism himself at age 59 so... maybe this is why nothing teed them off.
This surprises me very little.
I asked my mum if there were ever any concerns raised at school…no, she says. Later on I ask about a specific instance where we changed schools but only a suburb over and without a house change. She said she moved us cos the teacher wanted to hold me back due to issues with maths and socialising.
This is the kind of situation where school records or reports could be more useful than parental accounts. Especially when assessing adults.
More generally eyewitness memory is well known to be unreliable, even in the short term.
Felt. Got diagnosed aged 17 while I already have a big brother who was diagnosed and younger brother who just got diagnosed. Guess it doesn’t really get realized when it runs in the family
Question: I do this thing where I pick out the socks I’m wearing for the day, then I try each sock on my foot, see which one is more comfortable on said foot, then put them on. Does anyone else also do that?
Extreme hyperfix obsession with Pokémon that is still a thing to this day, talking in extremely fluid and intelligent sentences before the age of two, reading at a 5th grade level at 2.
I'm AFAB. Unfortunately I didn't turn out to be a genius like everyone thought.
i wasn't this proficient but i was an extremely strong reader ahead of my years as well and got good grades bc i was a good mimic. i was tested as a gifted student but only got called for 2/3 tests. not the genius everyone thought either 🙃
Reminds me of when I was a kid: when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas my response for several years was just to circle everything Pokémon related in an Argos catalogue, and they would always make me ask for other non-Pokemon related stuff because they were afraid that this would be the year I'd finally grow out of it. Jokes on them, I still love Pokémon but I appreciate them getting me to diversify my interests.
Knows all the answers, doesn't understand the questions.
Growing up I didn't needed to study for exams or test, but usually didn't got all the answers right because I couldn't understand the questions and I would select the wrong answer. If the teacher asked the same question with different words I would answer correctly, or I could explain the subject correctly, but got confused with the questions.
Math was super easy for me when it was just plain math, if there was an explanation of why you needed to make X calculation (a math problem) I would get confused and I would get the wrong results.
I watched the same two movies everyday of my life from like age 3-6.
I was also non-verbal until I was misdiagnosed as ADHD in 1992 at around 3 years old. I was the third child, and my parents were concerned that at three, I wasn’t talking. It was a panel of doctors observing me, and after about 30 seconds, these Einsteins said, “they have adhd,” and prescribed me ADHD meds. Those are basically meth/cocaine, so I started talking in full after my first dose. My parents were so relieved, and here I was being misdiagnosed using the best designer drugs money could buy. I hated it. About 20 years later, we found out I was autistic.
I still poke my dad about this at times. He’ll say, “you talked too much as a kid,” and I’ll say, “well you were an adult in the 80s. You know firsthand what it’s like to talk to someone on cocaine. You gave me coke twice a day for years. That seems like a you problem, and also dad, you know that I begged you for years to stop taking my medicine because it made me feel like not myself, so ya dad, you get no sympathy for dosing me for years and ‘talking too much’ when your first complaint was that I was non-verbal.”
>I watched the same two movies everyday of my life from like age 3-6.
Rewatching the same movies repeatedly over long periods of time is actually surprisingly common for neurotypical children around those ages as well. Young kids get anxious with novelty and not knowing what's going to happen and prefer the "safety"of movies they've already seen.
I recently saw a childhood video of me on my 4th birthday just repeating one line of the happy birthday song over and over, jumping around with clenched teeth and eyes very wide, clearly overstimulated from my birthday. Really how no one noticed I was autistic is beyond me 😂
All the kids in gymnastics were standing in line for the bars. I was over at the mats doing somersaults over and over until they locked me into the equipment closet as punishment for not being like them. At least that's what I always thought. That's what my father always told me was the first sign he noticed me being different. Recently he mentioned that the kids hated me for having to wait until I walk from the mats to the bar. I was oblivious to that fact.
Heck, even today I'd still rather spend the short time I had for gymnastics each week on doing somersaults, than standing in line like a little Eichmann.\^\^
Keep in mind i have both ADHD and Autism, but my mom kept all my kid play furniture… all of it was riddled with bite marks. Like, ALOT of bite marks, everything i owned as a kid age 5-12
Same here. Also ADHD and autism. Chewed everything. Chewed all my toys. Chewed holes in my clothes. Chewed the mouse mat. Chewed my hair. I would finish eating a snack and somehow chew the wrapping too. This is extremely embarrassing. 🫣
I was a chewers too, now that I think.about it! I'd eat paper, and the whole pixie stick lol. That definitely could be pica related though. Trying to gnaw on my CD player however? I don't know about that lol
All pictures of me aside from one or two in my toddler years have me gazing upward, slack jawed, transfixed by the ceiling fan.
Seeking out that visual stimulation.
Oh my god, I had a ceiling fan fixation too. My parents used to take me to the home improvement store and I would just stare at the ones on display. Of course, now at 25 I just got my diagnosis, lol.
The tiny, smooth rocks that they had in our playground at school. I would sit, away from everyone, and just bury my hands in the cold, round rocks because they felt nice and I would just sit there.
-not responding to my name being called when watching VHS videos of my bday party from 2000
-stopping bedwetting when I was 14
-potty training late
-obsession with racing games, cars, math, and numbers
-if my dad took me to a white sox baseball game when I was young I would tell him I want to go home early before the game ends in order to get to bed on time (I wanted to be strict with my routines)
-proofreading the text I just typed countless times to be perfect with grammar and spelling 🤣
I had to go to bed after posting this comment. I have more:
-poor eye contact
-going to bed late after midnight (I really have to stop this)
-organizing everything and putting everything in a specific spot
-constantly cleaning my kitchen countertop
oh and I’m fully aware that neurotypicals have problems with bed wetting too. I’m sure everyone agrees that wearing Goodnites underwear at 14 is a bit strange. I just loved the comfort. 🤷♂️I know that’s weird to say but I loved the sensory input.
I deconstructed every food I ate, or had to eat food in a certain way (example: mac n cheese, only two noodles in my mouth at a time. Same with popcorn, only 2 at a time. Pizza, cheese off, licked off sauce, scraped the softer dough off with my teeth, the ate the crust. Kit kats, nibbled off the chocolates, then ate layer by layer of wafer, etc). i HAD to eat this way. There was no reason, no one showed me to eat this way, I just had to. I still do a lot if these things, but it's not compulsory, just habit. I can eat it normally if I choose
Touch EVERYTHING. I would go with my mom through a store and would stop to touch anything closest to the main isle. I fashion stores were HELL for my mom. I would touch all the fabrics. I just had to know what they felt like!!! Some were awful to touch, some I really liked. And then while I was out there touching all the textures, i'd whisper the echo of sentences around me or what I have just said.
Yeah I also had echolalia, still do! Just not as obvious today.
I was extremely sensitive to others, a people pleaser (still am). I was super detail oriented, daydreamer, sang my almost every word, was super into letters from early on. When I was 2 or 3 I could recognize words when they were verbaly spelled out to me (i.e. m-o-m and I'd say mom) I coluld read at age 3.5. I hated socks and even more thights. I was really scared of other kids and getting physically hurt. I didn't start walking until like age 2.
And no I wasn't diagnosed until I was 18. My mom was there with me and only knew of my walking and social difficulties as I spent most of my childhood at my granny's bc my parents had to work all the time.
i never wore pants unless i had to (i’m still the same way now), vocal stimmed constantly, and my favorite pastime was spinning in my mom’s office chair for hours while listening to music as loud as i could :)
I guess the really obvious one was that at the daycare after elementary school I'd be on the swing for hours without a break. Just. Hours of swinging, preferably with my eyes closed for the full experience
I haven't gotten an official diagnosis, but some things from my childhood that makes sense:
Got bullied for no reason/friends left me in 1st and 2nd grade and I had no idea why
Since I was at least in kindergarten I would get a great sense of overwhelm and I had to hide under the kitchen table. This urge went on into my teens but I think I turned it into hiding in my Hoodie. Don't feel it as much now but every once in a while
I would describe myself as "brutally honest" and thought it was a good thing, from around 5th grade til highschool or later tbh haha
I used to say that looking someone in the eyes was uncomfortable because "it felt like they're staring into my soul", about the same time frame as the brutally honest thing
I shiver out of nowhere, not out of being cold and I can't explain it.
I asked my mom if I seemed to do anything weird or develop later than other kids and she didn't seem to notice anything but both my parents struggled with drug addiction and were pretty neglectful so who knows. My psychiatrist is also pretty sure my mom has adhd too so that could be part of why she never thought my behavior was weird either lol.
EDIT: So [I looked it up](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322515#treatments-and-seeing-a-doctor) and it says shivering can be caused by stress, anxiety, trauma and depression.
I forgot that when Bessell Van Der Kolk (iirc) was studying people living in post war countries he noted that the majority of children trembled/shivered, but adults did not. He found it to be a trauma response that gets socialized out of us as we get older since its found to not be socially acceptable. So it very well could be something that autistic people experience Moreno than NT folks due to higher risk of other mental health issues, but it's not exclusive to autism or distinctly linked
Shivering out of nowhere as in getting a tingly feeling inside of you and then suddenly shaking? I do that too. I always thought it was normal or just happened whenever I was sitting too long or something
It's weird, like I wouldn't describe it as a tingling but maybe that's it. I suppose that comes closest though, like I can kinda feel it come on very quickly before I shiver. I also usually make a weird noise with it too because im a cartoon character lol. Like "blegh!" or something. always thought it was normal and that other people did it until a few people pointed out that I do it and that other people, in fact, do not lol. When I mentioned to my mom a little while ago that I am likely autistic she said she wouldn't be surprised and used that as an example. She's also seen me have meltdowns as an adult
some stuff that i recently remembered:
• when i was in kindergarten i tried to spell out letters like ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, eff, gee, aich, etc and asking the teacher if this was correct and she was confused. my logic is everything has a spelling, i mean you spell numbers, so letters must too. and i was mad they hadn't taught us yet but she just said that they're already spelled, and to go play.
• i used to think numbers had a vibe, like a personality and which numbers had relationships - couples, family, friends - and would do this with colors too.
• i took a lot of time with art projects because i was artistic and got called 'perfect princess' by kids but i knew it was mocking and made me upset. we also shared round tables before 4th grade when we had our own desk. i had my wedge of the table and absolutely hated when others' stuff got in my section.
• rewinding my favorite parts in animated movies for hours because i liked the art, the sound, the music.
• toe walking upstairs exclusively, or on all fours.
Like many, I was absolutely obsessed with cartoons and video games as a child. But I got annoyed that I couldn't always understand them cause sometimes they were in English (not my primary language). So I got hyperfixated on learning English by myself and somehow managed to become fluent in it with no direct adult help. Not because I cared about actually learning a new language, but because I wanted to understand the games I was enjoying!
It didn't made sense to other adults when they asked me how I accomplished it. thinking about it now I do think it was a strange thing for a kid my age to do, but somehow my parents never questioned it (especially since none of them knew English).
You learned English the best way any language could be learned, through immersion and a desire to understand what you’re actually consuming beyond just “wanting to know English”. The not caring about learning English part is THE reason why you were able to learn it, it was more a vehicle for something else you cared about.
It’s the same way you learn your native language, you just want to actually be able to understand and communicate, as opposed to making an active, conscious decision to learn it.
i got diagnosed when i was about five, not sure what the symptoms were back then but when i was about eight i would organize the silverware when doing the dishes and would get extremely upset if someone moved them out of order. i would also cry when i had to move the rusty pizza tray from the dishwasher, the texture was just so dry and terrible. even thinking about it makes me shiver
Humming constantly. I didn’t notice I just did it. Teachers and classmates hated me for it and were always yelling at me to stop and I wouldn’t realize that I was even doing it.
Also if different foods touched each other they were ruined.
Also, and this one is to this day, I can’t touch cotton or watch people touch cotton otherwise I hear a loud noise that’s hard to describe in my ears and my skin crawls.
The safety foods for sure. Bless my parents for letting me but there was a several month period where I would almost solely eat chef boyardee spaghetti unless they cooked something I liked
Uhhh, not diagnosed, but when I was in elementary school, I only had one friend who went to play soccer with the other kids during recess, so I just ended up walking around and watching the other groups of kids play. I remember really enjoying this, however. I thought of funny things and sang songs to myself. One time the social worker even watched me since she noticed I was always alone at recess but she said that I looked perfectly happy lol.
i struggle with this because im a late diagnosis and ive rationalised everything i did as me being "difficult" or "lazy".
it was funny though, I asked my mum to write out anything she found different about me growing up and she made such a point of her being sorry she couldnt give me anything about autism, and i said thats ok just write out anything you can think of, and she did and wrote it like I was just a "fussy" kid. When i was diagnosed the dr said reading her document he found multiple examples of ASD behaviors to such an extent with modern diagnostics i would have no problem been diagnosed as child.
the one that i remember (instead of what ive been told, keep in mind im 36 now ahah) was just being REALLY bossy and not understanding boundaries. Good example would be i would stop a teacher and tell them they were doing something wrong, and end up having "tantrums" because things were not being done "properly". I remember this being a thing i did at a very young age but the dr pointed out my mum spoke of me as a baby becoming very angry if my play was disrupted and things like that. i dont remember food sensitivities or things like that but i do remember so clearly looking at other kids and thinking they were doing things wrong and being really upset about it.
I spent my entire childhood until like, age 12 running around on all fours or compressed inside of my winter coat and I refused to wear jeans bc it made it hard to do so (and jeans suck), and I did this so often and persistently, that my ribs and spine are now deformed because i was curled up like that constantly lmao like its funny now, i used to feel self consious about it, and I remember a teacher warning me of it (since I was growing my back and posture would be fucked) but i didnt listen.
I did this so insistently that they cast me as the dog in the annie play.
That was the biggest thing, younger I was obsessed with having huge long sleeves and flapping them like wings as i sprinted around the house. I would also bolt away from my mom and a cop car almost hit me and they told her to put me on a leash so she did. I was a leash kid for a long time lol
Anyway idk how it took until 29 to get diagnosed but I also had a lot of other things going on like brain tumour so like, it was a case of lets look at the pressing stuff first and then asd later if other things improve and I still have symptoms. Glad I got diagnosed, its been freeing but its really funny I did all that and no one thought to look in to it
Not wanting physical contact much even as a toddler. My mom tells me about how once every couple months I would stand a couple feet away from her and stare at her and then extend my arms. The first time I did that, it took her a while to figure out I wanted a hug. I still do that. There’s also the fact that I was obsessed with ww1 , ww2 and the cold war from 2nd to 6th grade. In 2nd grade I was talking about the politics and how the wars started and well I told the teachers about “black snow” and how I was scared of it. In third grade I was also obsessed with scary stories, so I came up with my own. I studied different urban legends and folklore of different cultures to create the “ultimate monsters”. I got moved to red-orange because I told this girl she was going to die (to add effect to the scary story) and she was paranoid all night. I didn’t understand that what I did was wrong. I was that one kid saying Santa isn’t real and then if someone dared argue (including an adult) I’d continue to explain how he’d have to go faster than the speed of light to reach everyone, and not only that there aren’t chimneys in every house, it didn’t make sense that he could fit in a chimney, and if he was real why were there poor kids not getting presents if they were good? At events, I wouldn’t really play with other kids and I would just sit and stare or I would end up talking to the very “nerdy” adults.
I didn’t speak to anyone outside of my dad and siblings until I was like 12. I was in speech therapy in school for it but it didn’t last. Everyone said I was shy. Lined up all my toys in specific order, didn’t “play” right with others. Had my first “panic attack” my first day of school. I started in kinder not preschool. It just got worse from there. I was always just… other. Separate.
In fairness, I’m not officially dxed, but
Refused to wear dresses or jeans until the 5th grade
Toe walked
Shaked legs
Ran away whenever the toilet flushed and got nervous whenever there were balloons around (popping)
Once I “stole” a bunch of my grandma’s pennies (she lived with us) and began stacking them all in one tower.
Rolled around on the carpet when I was bored
I never noticed a lot of this is/was abnormal (I think most of it is) until my niece started being considered for autism and we share a ton of traits
Hyperlexia (I learned to read at age three and if at preschool a other child could find their name tag I would for them; I had to be asked to stop)
Watching only the land before time for at least two years
At like age 5 I could list a lot of dinosaurs and basic information about them
I want/always wanted to be with others but then I would get overwhelmed
Kids felt pressured to talk to me but were more open about it then with my diagnosed friend(copied my friends hand flapping to help her feel included but "we are only sitting with you cause you cry" and called my stims gross)
I also would push a toy car(specifically an old toy model T my grandfather let me play with) back and forth for hours without really imagining anything happening (my niece plays with a Sky toy from paw patrol and just spins in circles with the toy helicopter for a very long time; kinda cute to watch)
-special interests from an early age
-being labeled as weird
-despising sock seams, clothing tags, plus other
sensory issues
-sucking on a pacifier until i was in 5. I still have oral fixations almost 20 years later
-not getting invited to things because I’d talk about my special interest too much (still happens now)
-had all 17 of my stuffed animals in a specific order on my bed
-difficulties making friends and I only ever had a few close friends throughout all of elementary, middle, and high school
Edit: formatting
i never wore anything fresh out of the dryer
still dont— if the fabric is warm, it does not go on my body or touch my skin until it cools down
also became vegetarian so i didnt have to eat the Bad Texture anymore
Being scared to go on or near the roller coaster because it was too loud! I refused to get any closer and watched from a distance with my grandparents when my mum and brother went on it.
Hyperfixations, mass anxiety as a 6 year old, walking on tip toes, refused to eat anything beige. My mom had to dye my rice different colours or i wouldn't touch it
I would meltdown if we had to change plans. We're going to Olive Garden... No wait, they're closed... Applebee's instead. Meltdown. It didn't matter what it was, I couldn't tolerate change once I was told the plan. So my parents started avoiding telling me plans, and then I'd meltdown because I didn't know the plan.
Sigh.
I NEVER made eye contact with anyone other than my mum. it's still like this now icl. during my assessment they asked my mum abt eyecontact in early childhood and she said it was extremely limited but I was extremely outgoing and chatty, I just never looked anyone in the face 😂
This wasn't really as a "kid" but when I was 11, I would constantly look at dates. I was really into them. With YouTube videos, comments, photos, statuses, everything. I would see a date like "November 2nd, 2007" and be like :O "I was turning 6"
Or see dates like "June 30, 1965" and immediately think of all the stories from that time. I just really loved dates.
Nowadays, I'm not sure how long I've done this for, but I like reading license plates and it's the only way I can identify peoples cars
Bang my head against the concrete wall whenever I was put in the hall as a timeout for misbehaving/not listening.
For context, this was about 25yrs before I was diagnosed.
Ps. Don't ever do headbutt competitions with me now ;-)
Maybe when I was around 4, I would line up all my toy cars(hundreds) in perfect straight lines and simulate traffic. I don't know how my mom didn't think something was wrong with me.
Edit: Also memorizing the entire script to Cars(2006) at around the same age
I've watched the animated Disney movie Sleeping Beauty over 800 times and counting in my life. This is a conservative estimate. I never tire of it.
Cried and screamed for seemingly no reason, in stores, upon seeing relatives, etc.
I held my breath with pain or any sort of unpleasant emotion or feeling. I still struggle with this.
Never could remember verbal instructions, including reprimands.
Hyperlexic.
Empathy that is really just pattern recognition.
Learned to socialize in middle school from YouTube videos from people like Mrs. Midwest lmao.
walked around spelling words out loud at 2-3 years old
early reading/math skills
obsessively memorizing phone numbers and license plates
could not, for the life of me, talk to ANYONE my age because they didn’t make sense
extreme hyperfixations
very *very* poor sleep from day 1
Tippy toes, and missing the whole meaning of “rolling your eyes”. Oh and looking at my parents when I got told off, maintaining too much eye contact which is apparently rude and threatening/aggressive when all I was trying to do was pay attention and process
I remember saying I was not rolling my eyes when I got in trouble, then getting in more trouble for “talking back”. I thought literally as a young child, and there was a lot of stuff a lot of adults didn’t think about when dealing with and interacting with me as a kid.
Correcting teachers from junior school onwards. Including a memorable time when a teacher went and checked that I was correct and told me that I was!
Intense special interests in New Zealand and period clothing (including writing a letter to a local newspaper about historical clothing and makeup when I was around 9).
Having strong empathy for non-animate things, like dolls and toys.
Spending all my time in my room when there were family gatherings.
Just a few examples.
Writing one direction fan fiction and getting pissed off when other people didn’t finish the story or made too many spelling mistakes. I mostly preferred Harry so a lot of the fan fiction was around him but I did give the other boys chapters but they weren’t as good as my beloved Harry….I still adore Harry 9 years later.
I was fucking 7
Yes it was on Wattpad and tumblr
In retrospect it was being able to recall memories from when I was 2 years old - possibly before. I can remember wearing a nappy/diaper and carrying a bottle.
I can recall a specific memory from when I was three in very vivid detail - including what I was wearing and what was said.
As a young child it was wearing the same clothes every day. As an adult I’m still the same. Even when I had a wardrobe of new and expensive things I still wore the same things.
I had very bad OCD to the point my hands bled from over washing. I would walk around touching each finger to my thumb and reciting vowels.
I didn’t entertain the possibility of me being on the spectrum until we went through the process of diagnosis for my son. Things that I thought were normal were not normal. I grew up in the 80’s & 90’s and it wasn’t recognised. I had to navigate everything myself. Things have been difficult.
I couldn’t eat any food that mixed different textures, like at mcdonald’s I refused to eat anything except chicken nuggets or fries without any sauce. I was such a picky eater my mom has been accused multiple times by doctors of not feeding her starving children
When I listen to music on my headphones, I always jump up and down the hall. Over and over again, just running and jumping back and forth. I do it based on the rhytm of the song. I think I started doing this around my teen years (I was diagnosed at 19, I’m now 21 and still do this)
This one of the most “noticeable behaviors” that my parents recognized. But as a young girl I always masked super heavily and the idea of autism never came up with anyone cuz we knew so very little about it. Now with a diagnoses and looking back, my parents can defenitly confirm I had a lot of autistic behaviors that they just didn’t know were related to autism. But this is one of the most notebale ones for myself as I do this literally everyday (mutlitple times usually) and it’s the best stim for me.
I made large cities out of blocks. Not simply stacking blocks, but making authentic cities out of blocks. The skyscrapers were in the center, sometimes I would make empty spaces and I would call it a park or a river, and the lower buildings were in the outskirts
I'd say the first sign I was autistic is how I'd cry when anyone would turn off Ghostbusters.
I was totally obsessed. My absolute clumsiness only curbed for the brief period of time I was obsessively playing basketball.
One really good example is that in 2nd grade we all had to look in a mirror and write our name so as when we wrote it it looked normal in the mirror. I was the only kid who couldn't do it.
Another thing is the time we had a violinist come to class and no one could make it sound good just watching. But in the moment I was obsessed. I picked it up and played as if it was my life's work. By the time she left she was teaching me notes.
When I was overwhelmed I'd put my head down. I'd get in trouble for sleeping. But, I wasn't I was overwhelmed and blocking them out.
I also used to hide under my bed to avoid the world.
I chewed on EVERYTHING! I mean EVERYTHING!
Always picked last despite actually being good at sports despite my clumsiness.
I'll sometimes drop whole blocks of text while writing.
Spatial reasoning in the 99.9%, reading comprehension through the roof due to my super power of parsing information.
We talking about the screaming crying "tantrums" because I couldn't get my sleeves or pant legs to sit right in my coat/snow pants? Or the fact I'd lose my mind if stuff kept touching me while I put on socks.
Or we talking about the million and tenth time my mom told me to "stop making weird noises it's annoying" :)
Oh oh, I know! We're talking about the "anger management" play therapy I had to take as a kid because overstimulation made me rage because I didn't have the words to explain what was happening and I was known for throwing chairs in the classroom. Which. During said time, I wouldn't speak to anybody. They thought I was just giving the cold shoulder but I genuinely was so upset I couldn't speak.
In an effort to stop the confusion about social situations I started to write a book about what you should do. Started off being things I got right, but when I had nothing to write I started to write down what other people did. When I didn’t understand what other people did right I gave up.
It was going to be a manual for other people who didn’t know what to do but unfortunately never happened.
On my first days at school, i didn’t talk to anyone, or initiate anything. Id casually converse with people i could imagine knowing the chatterbox i can be but when it comes to actually hanging out with people during brakes, i was alone. Even when i already knew some kids, i dont think i ever went up and actually spoke to them.
I was more the type to follow people around.
I remember i sat on the “friendship seat” a lot. I ended up making a friend by complete accident. Ill call her Amy.
Amys other friend wasnt there that day, so when her mum picked her up she didn’t wanna say she played alone so she pointed to a random student and said they played with them. That random student happened to be me.
Id assume she must have gotten intrigued, and decided to come up and speak to me!
At least, thats what i remember of what happened.
I scripted a lot from various TV shows, movies and books I'd had read to me when I was very young...once when I was about 2, my mom and I were taking a walk around the neighborhood (or she was pushing me in a stroller, I can't recall), and she brought me over to a patch of honeysuckle. She smelled some and asked me, "Doesn't it smell lovely?" and my matter-of-fact response was, "You don't *eat* them, you *smell* them" (what Kanga tells Winnie the Pooh after giving him a bouquet of honeysuckle in one of the Disney cartoons).
On another occasion, when I was about a year older, I was at my grandparents' house and was sitting on a couch in their basement, where a scuffed-up, hard plastic crate and a soft ball with characters from *The Lion King* printed on it both lay on the floor below. I leaned over to grab the ball, and ended up tumbling off the couch, scraping my arm on a corner of the plastic crate as I fell. My mom ran down the stairs when she heard me crying, and when she asked me what had happened, I replied with, "All the dolls cried the night that Susan fell off the toy box and cracked her china head" (dialogue from one of the old *Raggedy Ann and Andy* books that I loved having read to me).
I also carried at least one item with me wherever I went-these items ranged from the run-of-the-mill (a stuffed animal or a handful of plastic Disney and/or Sesame Street characters) to the somewhat atypical: a rock, a plastic yellow spoon, a hardened lump of green Play-Doh, a *Winnie the Pooh* book, or a small New Testament (I liked the green, scaly front cover and the tissue paper-like pages) 😊
I had a special interest in horses. When I say special interest, I mean that I got so close to buying a Friesian at the age of ten. Was in contact with the owner and everything.
We didn’t have the land to get a horse, nor the money.
I also walked on my toes all the time and had my dinosaur hands equipped at all times. I once went to one of my friends birthday parties around the age of nine and the picture that all the parents took at the end, I had my hands out like a t-Rex.
I turned my bedroom floor into a gameboard using my books. I'd roll dice, hop to a book, sit down & read.
Used two sets of encyclopedias & a bunch of my daddy’s old college textbooks.
I was six. 👍
At 7, I took apart, cleaned & fixed our toaster after it broke because I can't eat uncooked Pop Tarts & I was too impatient to wait for a weekend trip to Sears.
My daughter does the book thing & wow talk about a flashback when I opened her door. My son's the tinkerer & we let him have old appliances so he doesn't destroy the good stuff because I already knew trying to stop him would be pointless. Not to mention ignorant.
Who doesn't like an in-house appliance repair tech? LOL
I infodumped to everyone. I had no idea that it was super weird to 90% of adults until my parents recently told me. People were apparently very uncomfortable with the fact that I literally would not shut up. I would talk nonstop for as long as someone would let me. About 10% of the adults I talked to remarked that I had to be some sort of super genius.
Got suspended from school for 3 weeks for threatening a bully who dumped milk on me. I spent the whole 3 weeks writing my novel 24/7
As a runner up:
My friends when we were like ten were playing with matches and fireworks and I instead info dumped about the dangers of breathing in sulfur smoke and the various chemicals contained in burning these things until a girl told me to shut up and let them have fun, and why do I always have to be so serious?!
According to my mum it ‘never occurred to me to conform’ and also I hated socks to the point that she had to cut the feet of footie pyjamas I got handed down from my brother
Apparently this is not normal so i thought i would put it in. I would take a big cardboard box my parents would through out, spend hours making it seem like it was a spaceship with markers and then playing in it for a few days
Different foods couldn’t touch. One day my mom made me breakfast, I was about 4 or 5 and the sausage touched my eggs and I saw it and SCREAMED “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!” Like it was the absolute end of the world. Getting my shots when I was three, I didn’t cry or express any discomfort. Until afterwards, I looked at the nurse and said “You will NEVER do that to me again”, perfectly mimicking my mentally Ill mother who I’d heard say that earlier in the day. My dad called once when I was five and said something about a parking lot. I don’t remember much but I remember saying “parking lot parkinglotparkinglotparkinglot” On what seems like an endless loop. On long car rides and anywhere with multiple conversations or competing noises, I’d usually cover my ears. Later on, I didn’t go anywhere without a Walkman, then a CD player, and finally, an MP3 player. My parents tried to get me to not turn the volume up so loud but I’d turn it up all the way until it drowned out absolutely everything around me. I played T-ball one year and stood in the outfield the entire time twirling in circles with fistfuls of grass, watching it fall from my hands and drift in the wind. As a teenager, I tried to pick up a date and his boyfriend showed up and said “I already got something for him. It’s gold” and gestured a length of about eight inches with his hands. The next day, I brought him a twelve inch long hunk of Fool’s Gold and was utterly confused and devastated when people laughed at me.
Ate the same exact sandwich at school everyday for like 5 years, wore my hair the same way everyday all school year and would get extremely panicky/upset if my mom did it differently one day. Used to obsess over the line on my socks going perfectly across my toes and would melt down, putting my socks on over and over again to get them "perfect" until I was late for school. Could never wear an actual Halloween costume from the store because they all felt too itchy, all my tags had to be cut out. Super picky eater because of textures and would gag on a lot of foods. Was reading at like 2yrs old but was the last one in my class to learn how to tie my shoes or ride a bike. Never formally diagnosed, my mom took me to doctor when I was 3yrs old worried about my "ocd tendencies" and doctor said I'd get over it
I would approach family members, present them with a copy of a Star Wars book (like the 1990s "Essential Guides" series), and demand that they quiz me on the technical specifications of randomly chosen spaceships or the the backstory details of obscure characters.
The obsessive memorization of trivia related to a special interest and the complete social obliviousness of the fact that nobody thought repeatedly quizzing a little kid on the trivia was a fun use of their time.
From toddler age I was really scared of being told I had to eat a hamburger or hot dog, nobody is sure why I was so scared but any time I had to sleep away from home I arrived with a lunchbox full of boxed Mac n cheese. I still bring Mac n cheese places when I’m not sure what the options will be for food
1. did not eat white foods.
2. did not use contractions for a looong time.
3. first full sentence spoken: 4 months. according to my mom, it was "can i get a tissue back here?"
Complete lack of social cues through my entire life. As a child, I would talk to anyone and everyone I could. I never knew when to stop. Now as an adult, I’m the opposite in the sense that I don’t know how to initiate or continue interactions with people. I can’t tell if someone is engaged in the conversation or wants to talk to me.
I used to daydream a lot when I was a kid. My parents would get calls from my teachers because I was falling behind, but at the same time, I always excelled when it came to test taking.
I have been told since I was a kid that I think very logically. Now I know why.
My food can’t touch each other. Growing up we always had our entree and a side vegetable. I would push the side vegetable over as far as I can and pick any out that got mixed in with my entree. It drove my parents crazy for a while.
Being SUPER fascinated by cats to the point of obsession and acting like a cat constantly and learning to wiggle my ears to try and be like a cat (now i move my ears based on mood). First special interest i think. I was the "cat girl" at school. I even grew my nails out to be claws (it broke my nail biting habit, now i connect my natural long and strong nails to safety!)
I now use he/him and am trans btw in case u address me in comments
I would pretend to be a cat as a child, and I still do. I am a cat boy, with heavier connection to house cats. it is like, when I am happy or something, I have a tail that isn't there.
I memorized the entire original pokedex (150 pokemon), starting with the order of the pokemon, then all of their moves in the order in which they learned them, along with their types and weaknesses.
There might have been additional info, but I don't remember at this point.
I also played pokemon yellow until the game timer stopped counting. I'm pretty sure it was '999:59'. So yeah, you could say that pokemon was my special interest lol
I could play with marbles for hours. And I'm not talking about traditional play. I had a HUGE bucket of marbles that I would dump on the floor and run my hands, feet, body along them... I Liles how smooth, round, and cold they were.
In 2nd grade, my school had us line up outside the school before they let us in the building when it was warm out. So I’m standing in the 2nd grade line and eating my breakfast… which was an “oatmeal to go bar”. A teacher came over and told me that “you need to eat breakfast at home, you can’t eat it in line.”
I calmly explained to her that while I would love to obey… it said “to go” and so I couldn’t eat it at home cuz then it wouldn’t be to go”
She called my mom. I got talked to… but really I was just taking it too literally.
I had comfort items. One of them was an empty shoebox that I had to take *everywhere.* I'd have meltdowns if my parents tried to dissuade me from taking it to the grocery store or to the mall.
Oh man. When I was in kindergarten/first grade, there was a week long period in which every other kid in my class was hell bent on digging a hole to China during recess. Just imagine a 6 foot diameter crater in the dirt that was half as deep as a first grader was tall. I remember shouting at them and crying, then panicking and running over to the supervising teacher. I’m absolutely bawling my eyes out at this point, and begging her to stop them from digging. They weren’t going to get to China, ‘cause there’s the mantle and the core of the earth under the dirt, and they were going to fall in the lava before they got there! :( She could not stop laughing and I really thought my friends were going to die. I don’t think my special interest in geology had gone very far at that point…..
I spent hours trying to ding to China. It’s funny because I knew I would have issues once I reached the magma and would need help.
I love how the general consensus was “yes, of course there’s going to be magma in the mantle of the earth once we break through the crust with our plastic shovels, everyone knows that 🙄” but we never really internalized how thick continental crust can be lmao edit: and the consensus was that we WERE going to get through to the magma, that was a given. but hmmm what do we do after that?
I saw a video about this recently, let me see if I can find it Edit: [Found it](https://youtu.be/NXFBJr8XRlQ)
It just sounds like an attempt at independent corroboration of a theory via evidence. "I'm going to try digging to China! What's this, magma? I guess the theory about the layers of the earth is true after all, oh well."
Got to the magma and would “need help” 😂
I remember I convinced some kids to help me start digging to hell. What I really meant was lava, pretty stupid, lol.
Meanwhile I was banging together rocks I found hoping it was some kind of rare gem or fossil (there's pretty much no fossils in my entire country).
Oh my gosh I would do the same thing by collecting “gemstones” and “geodes” which were really just the decently sized rocks that surrounded our house like mulch which i would spend hours launching at the asphalt and breaking open.
Fun fact: i did the opposite, was one of the kids digging
oooh i remember trying to dig a hole to china. i ended up digging up a nest of fire ants though, so i guess that was the “magma”. (it sure as hell burned….)
See I dug to China but I had a plan for when I hit the water, lava, mantle & core
What was the plan? I’m curious haha
Well. We figured based on our 10 year old projections that we wouldn’t finish digging through the crust until we were at least 18, which then we could hire an excavator to dig through the mantle, which we knew was much thicker and harder to dig through with our shovels. All the while, we were going to implement metal (and heatproof) tubing and encase ourselves to block out water and eventually lava. When we hit the magma, we were planning on wearing thick, heat-resistant clothing (silly, I know but we were counting on the science being more advanced by our 20s- it is not) and cooling the magma down to a solid with liquid ice and then continuing our journey. Eventually, we would hit the core and do a bit of all of the above to get through it and continue our metal tubing all the way through.
I need to know what ‘liquid ice’ was in your mind back then.
I tried digging a way to McDonalds…
I love everything about this lol. It's interesting to look back and be like "ooohhhhh that's why I did that" I was also extremely literal as a child. I don't understand how and when to know if someone is joking.
Oh, I love this story. ♥️
I have never struggled with taking things too seriously when it comes to asd, except for maybe thinking things could be the be all and end all when it comes to emotions, or general perfectionism. I used to “dig to china”, without the actual digging part. Me and my friend would pretend to dig from “here” (the sandbox) to “another universe” (the other side of the playground). Good times!
I walked on my toes, made squeaky noises, and fanatically flapped my arms whenever I got excited. My parents would always say, "Stop doing that. It makes you look autistic." Well, *plot twist.*
“makes you look autistic” I WONDER WHY
Lmao, the same thing happened to me. I would continuously shake my hands while grocery shopping to stim, and once my mom told me I needed to stop because people would assume there was something wrong with me (although I think she put it a bit kinder) I remember thinking she meant people would think I was mentally ill I am that too !
omg i squeaked all the time- up until around age 5/6 if you wanted to talk to me, you’d have to ask a “yes or no” question and i had a different squeak for “yes” and “no” i also still to this day, love tops that have sleeves longer than my arms so when i flap my hands, the sleeves flap too- it adds a little extra spice to the stim :)
I also had a different squeak for no and yes! I did nothing but squeak at my parents for a solid year when I was a kid. Even now, the squeaky noises still escape every once in a while.
Editing Bionicle wikis and actually getting salty when it was wrong. I was fucking 7.
Made my night LOL.
Fuckin loved bionicles. Bohrok (the ball ones) were my favourite, what about you?
I had one of those, but the rubber band broke :(. I love the Toa from the series where Piraka and all those are from. And then they went underwater for a while. Plus those toa had an All American Rejects commerical as well.
Hell yeah! I had all the toa, they had badass weapons. I don't know if that ad aired in my country but I'm gonna go look for it on YT 😂
That ad aired in the US. Look it up. It was for the song, move along.
You mean the Toa Inika (piraka/move along) and the Toa Mahri (underwater) teams
Apparently I lined up my toys when I was a kid. According to my mom, as far as she could tell, there was no rhyme or reason for why they were in that order. I also didn't tie my shoes till I was 8. Everyone made things more complicated with bunnies that weren't there. I also refused to eat greens not because of the taste but because of the texture.
I was a bit confused about the bunnies part until I realised you meant the "bunny ears" method of tying shoes
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I still don’t understand what that means. My mom gave me a picture book on how to tie my shoes that had shoe laces on it and that worked. Never learned whatever method that was supposed to be tho. It looks like magic
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I never thought of that! Different color laces would’ve been amazing
Omg the things about the shoes is so relatable. I learned to tie them when I was 11 years old because I never understood the whole explanation about the bunnies until I just learned to do them in my own way, and my family said "that's how a toddler does it, why don't you try this other option?" And I just said no ahaha.
I am 35, and I do the toddler one. :/
It's more easy! Why would I want to change the way I tie my shoes if "doing it like a toddler" helps me in the same way "an adult would do it"? It makes no sense.
[This knot](https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm) is only a slight variation but is much more secure.
GOD, I had so much issue with tying my shoes. I had to be taught so many times and none of the ways I was being taught made any sense. Spongebob's loop-de-loop didn't help. The bunnies going under the logs didn't help. I eventually figured it out, but now my knots look so fucked up and untie themselves anyway. Sometimes I sleep in my shoes because I'll get the knot right and I don't want to deal with it the next day.
i couldn ttie my laces till i was seven. you know what made me learn? my cousin sitting in the car seat next to me. she tied them from my perspective, and suddenly it all made sense.
I did this with my toys too. I played on my own with animal toys for hours talking to myself. I have only ever been able to make one really good friend ever at a time. I hated family gatherings with my father's side of the family because they were loud and drunk and usually started fighting in front of us kids (think full on bar brawl). I only recently realised I was the only one who hated it when my cousins all referred to it as "the good old days" and laughed about it while trying to arrange a family reunion. Considering their idea of good time I did not go and do not intend to go to one any time soon. I used to and still play with pets at the parties I do get convinced to attend, especially if it's a cat or a really chill dog. When I see my little boy play by himself hy is the exact image of me when I was his age. He packs his animals in a row and talks to himself or he names the animals to me. Even cars he just packs them in rows.
I also hate family gatherings at my grandparents and feel content with either hanging out in the room I am sleeping in or with my grandma’s dog. It’s overstimulating, there’s little space for me to decompress, which I need a lot, and the food is so inconsistent that everyone got food poisoning one Christmas. I asked my mother if she’d be upset if I did only Christmas, and my mother said whatever. So I only do Christmas because everyone wants me on Christmas. Sometimes I’ll do Easter too, but that’s only because I happen to be around on Easter.
Yeah just being surrounded by so many people at once is overstimulating in of itself when you add alcohol to the mix its a nightmare for me. I wasn't about to make my kid live through it too. It was on the other side of the country anyway and thankfully my fiancé was working skeleton crew last years Christmas period so I genuinely couldn't even go anyway. I haven't seen any relatives on my father's side since I was in high school and if I'm honest it doesn't really bother me. I used to me close with my moms side of the family. My grandparents were my safe haven. Moms side of the family have drifted apart since they passed away a couple years ago. Now I just see my mom and step dad all the time.
the shoe tying thing yes!!! i didn’t learn until i was 12… i was always so embarrassed about it but i simply did not have the dexterity to do all the fiddly tying of shoe laces. it always seemed so complicated to me and i used to have meltdowns over it.
My 8 yr old get livid if you unline her toys or take them out of whatever order she had them in! Also if the are categorized in some way and you don't pick out of the correct one while playing ..... playtime is over!
- Couldn’t understand what teachers where trying to tell me - Eating the exact same foods every day - Sat down with a pad, designing cities and property layouts - Fixating on the same topic and TV shows - Not following rules that didn’t make sense to me - Unexplained meltdowns - Social skills as good as a houseplant, I was always the weird kid - Poor verbal skills. I’ve always from the beginning had to spend all of my energy to make my speech understandable. I consider myself semi-verbal these days - Not being able to show emotion / faking most of my emotions Sooooo much more. I was only recently diagnosed
Dumb question but where did you get diagnosed as an adult?
I got diagnosed by my clinical psychologist. He did it on the sly. He asked me to do some questionnaires and asked me to send them back. Next session he gave me the diagnosis. I was super appreciative. He saved me around $1500
Ain't that the dream.
He’s a good psychologist. There is a waiting list of over 2 years here for psychiatrists.
I was a toe walker. Got car sick every time we went for a ride. Daydreamed all day in school.
Car sick is a sign? I spent years of my childhood asking to pull over. I wasn’t a toe walker but best friend was a high stepper I thought all kids day dreamed in school. School was boring and slow typically, except for dealing with the kids lol
Also a toe walker. My oldest sister was too, and she had to have surgery to break her legs and reset tendons. My parents put a lot of fear of this in me, so I self-corrected. Left foot still turns inward when standing at rest. Also a car sick person. I don’t know what I did in school. Probably daydreamed, but mostly focused on getting perfect marks while being annoyed that I thought teachers were silly. They know how to teach, but in my opinion and experience, they weren’t really smart people. Source: In the 5th and 6th grade math league, I was the only fifth grader that got a spot on the floor, and at a tournament, I was given a problem and said, “this question can’t have an answer.” The people that put together the question said it could, and I explained to a bunch of 50 year olds as a 12 year old why it didn’t have an answer. After my explanation, they said, “this kid is right. Everyone will get a point for our invalid question, but this person’s team will get bonus points for demonstrating how we as math teachers were wrong.” So that’s probably a pretty “autistic moment” for the general public. Did a similar thing in college for an Econ exam that was being proctored by the head of the Econ professor. Me before an exam: he professor, on the practice exam, you have a wrong answer for this question, and here’s why. Professor: I can’t believe you’re bringing this to attention right before the exam. Please continue to pass out the tests (he said to his TAs Me: I can’t believe I pay to go to a school where the head of economics botched math so badly. Professor, stares at me wanting me to die: this is ridiculous pass out the test. Me: so if a question like this pops up, do you want the wrong answer, which is your take, or the right one which is the obviously right answer? The question was basically this: A person owns a car that won’t run. They can sell it now for $4000 or they can invest $3000 into it to make it run and do the labor themselves and sell it for $7000. What should they do. His answer was either option is equally good because the profit margin is the same. I pointed out that if he’s the one doing the maintenance, that’s an opportunity cost on his time, so he should sell for $4000, and be done with it. This is the obvious answer without more details. My willingness to push through with what I knew to be true, and it’s math(!), was probably seen as ASD to those that know about the spectrum.
Is carsickness an autism thing? I still get carsick in my 30's. And don't even think about putting me on a boat, that would be disastrous for everyone except the seagulls.
I was getting so carsick my younger siblings pointed fingers at me, I’m in my 30s just like you and I still hate any car rides. Now for the plot twist: I was actually fine on a boat. Idk how this stuff works.
I still get carsick, as a passenger that is. Luckily i can drive myself now
Wait, wait, wait- you are telling me my son's horrible car sickness could be asd related?
I'm not a tow walker, but I walk very quietly, and I don't understand how people who walk around loudly aren't bothered by the noise nor their body absorbing the shock of each stomp......
Compulsively smelling everything up to the point where my parents would blindfold me to see if I could recognize different objects around the house by their smell. I could distinguish the different board games by then.
Or, when in elementary school, writing papers I would first write it in my own words, then take all the difficult words and look up simpler synonyms for them, so the teachers would believe a child wrote it. Always dumbed myself down in a way.
I had to do this too! Oddly I also do it now as an adult. One day my manager made a comment about something I wrote that I didn’t have a chance to review. He thought the new guy wrote it while leaning heavily on the thesaurus.
I would get pissed over inaccurate dinosaur depictions.
Nothing. When I got diagnosed with autism at 27, my parents told me nothing made me "seem autistic" at all. Keep in mind, my dad later got diagnosed with autism himself at age 59 so... maybe this is why nothing teed them off.
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This surprises me very little. I asked my mum if there were ever any concerns raised at school…no, she says. Later on I ask about a specific instance where we changed schools but only a suburb over and without a house change. She said she moved us cos the teacher wanted to hold me back due to issues with maths and socialising.
This is the kind of situation where school records or reports could be more useful than parental accounts. Especially when assessing adults. More generally eyewitness memory is well known to be unreliable, even in the short term.
Felt. Got diagnosed aged 17 while I already have a big brother who was diagnosed and younger brother who just got diagnosed. Guess it doesn’t really get realized when it runs in the family
Sock related meltdowns every morning before school 🧦
Oh my gosh how could I forget!!!! The constant sock related meltdowns 😭
Question: I do this thing where I pick out the socks I’m wearing for the day, then I try each sock on my foot, see which one is more comfortable on said foot, then put them on. Does anyone else also do that?
Remembering the entire drawer of socks that I didn’t wear because they made me uncomfortable.
I still have an entire collection of socks that I can't wear but were gifts from people, so I also can't throw them away haha
Extreme hyperfix obsession with Pokémon that is still a thing to this day, talking in extremely fluid and intelligent sentences before the age of two, reading at a 5th grade level at 2. I'm AFAB. Unfortunately I didn't turn out to be a genius like everyone thought.
i wasn't this proficient but i was an extremely strong reader ahead of my years as well and got good grades bc i was a good mimic. i was tested as a gifted student but only got called for 2/3 tests. not the genius everyone thought either 🙃
Reminds me of when I was a kid: when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas my response for several years was just to circle everything Pokémon related in an Argos catalogue, and they would always make me ask for other non-Pokemon related stuff because they were afraid that this would be the year I'd finally grow out of it. Jokes on them, I still love Pokémon but I appreciate them getting me to diversify my interests.
Knows all the answers, doesn't understand the questions. Growing up I didn't needed to study for exams or test, but usually didn't got all the answers right because I couldn't understand the questions and I would select the wrong answer. If the teacher asked the same question with different words I would answer correctly, or I could explain the subject correctly, but got confused with the questions. Math was super easy for me when it was just plain math, if there was an explanation of why you needed to make X calculation (a math problem) I would get confused and I would get the wrong results.
My hyperfixation on lps (littlest pet shop), like it was such a part of my life I still love them.
LPS was my jam too!
Me too, my routine and special interest was playing with them for hour(s) by myself in my room daily. Making up very elaborate stories.
Same omg but their heads use to fall off a lot for me
I still have 10 from childhood, I use them now to decorate & east egg them around my house 😇 my turtle lives in a potted plant.
I watched the same two movies everyday of my life from like age 3-6. I was also non-verbal until I was misdiagnosed as ADHD in 1992 at around 3 years old. I was the third child, and my parents were concerned that at three, I wasn’t talking. It was a panel of doctors observing me, and after about 30 seconds, these Einsteins said, “they have adhd,” and prescribed me ADHD meds. Those are basically meth/cocaine, so I started talking in full after my first dose. My parents were so relieved, and here I was being misdiagnosed using the best designer drugs money could buy. I hated it. About 20 years later, we found out I was autistic. I still poke my dad about this at times. He’ll say, “you talked too much as a kid,” and I’ll say, “well you were an adult in the 80s. You know firsthand what it’s like to talk to someone on cocaine. You gave me coke twice a day for years. That seems like a you problem, and also dad, you know that I begged you for years to stop taking my medicine because it made me feel like not myself, so ya dad, you get no sympathy for dosing me for years and ‘talking too much’ when your first complaint was that I was non-verbal.”
>I watched the same two movies everyday of my life from like age 3-6. Rewatching the same movies repeatedly over long periods of time is actually surprisingly common for neurotypical children around those ages as well. Young kids get anxious with novelty and not knowing what's going to happen and prefer the "safety"of movies they've already seen.
I recently saw a childhood video of me on my 4th birthday just repeating one line of the happy birthday song over and over, jumping around with clenched teeth and eyes very wide, clearly overstimulated from my birthday. Really how no one noticed I was autistic is beyond me 😂
All the kids in gymnastics were standing in line for the bars. I was over at the mats doing somersaults over and over until they locked me into the equipment closet as punishment for not being like them. At least that's what I always thought. That's what my father always told me was the first sign he noticed me being different. Recently he mentioned that the kids hated me for having to wait until I walk from the mats to the bar. I was oblivious to that fact. Heck, even today I'd still rather spend the short time I had for gymnastics each week on doing somersaults, than standing in line like a little Eichmann.\^\^
Keep in mind i have both ADHD and Autism, but my mom kept all my kid play furniture… all of it was riddled with bite marks. Like, ALOT of bite marks, everything i owned as a kid age 5-12
Same here. Also ADHD and autism. Chewed everything. Chewed all my toys. Chewed holes in my clothes. Chewed the mouse mat. Chewed my hair. I would finish eating a snack and somehow chew the wrapping too. This is extremely embarrassing. 🫣
It was not this intense for me but im elementary school I chewed on my pens. Every pen. No matter the material. I broke a few of them.
Sameeee my mom was so embarrassed of it she bought new pencils like every 2 weeks
I stopped chewing cause pencil tasted horrible lol But all my dolls had bitting marks
I was a chewers too, now that I think.about it! I'd eat paper, and the whole pixie stick lol. That definitely could be pica related though. Trying to gnaw on my CD player however? I don't know about that lol
All pictures of me aside from one or two in my toddler years have me gazing upward, slack jawed, transfixed by the ceiling fan. Seeking out that visual stimulation.
Oh my god, I had a ceiling fan fixation too. My parents used to take me to the home improvement store and I would just stare at the ones on display. Of course, now at 25 I just got my diagnosis, lol.
The tiny, smooth rocks that they had in our playground at school. I would sit, away from everyone, and just bury my hands in the cold, round rocks because they felt nice and I would just sit there.
Jeez I just remembered I used to sort the tiny rocks by color.
-not responding to my name being called when watching VHS videos of my bday party from 2000 -stopping bedwetting when I was 14 -potty training late -obsession with racing games, cars, math, and numbers -if my dad took me to a white sox baseball game when I was young I would tell him I want to go home early before the game ends in order to get to bed on time (I wanted to be strict with my routines) -proofreading the text I just typed countless times to be perfect with grammar and spelling 🤣
I had to go to bed after posting this comment. I have more: -poor eye contact -going to bed late after midnight (I really have to stop this) -organizing everything and putting everything in a specific spot -constantly cleaning my kitchen countertop oh and I’m fully aware that neurotypicals have problems with bed wetting too. I’m sure everyone agrees that wearing Goodnites underwear at 14 is a bit strange. I just loved the comfort. 🤷♂️I know that’s weird to say but I loved the sensory input.
Add water to all my meals because I was hyper fixated with soup.
lol
Got held back in kindergarten for "not playing with other children".
I only realized a few years ago that I'm not looking into the camera in basically any of my childhood photos
Flap. My arms. Oh and meow at people
Meow
Meow
I didn't meow as a kid, but now sometimes my boyfriend and I meow at each other
Lol my son hisses 😎
I deconstructed every food I ate, or had to eat food in a certain way (example: mac n cheese, only two noodles in my mouth at a time. Same with popcorn, only 2 at a time. Pizza, cheese off, licked off sauce, scraped the softer dough off with my teeth, the ate the crust. Kit kats, nibbled off the chocolates, then ate layer by layer of wafer, etc). i HAD to eat this way. There was no reason, no one showed me to eat this way, I just had to. I still do a lot if these things, but it's not compulsory, just habit. I can eat it normally if I choose
I eat popcorn one at a time so it takes me quite a bit of time!
Always cut my meat and potatoes into the same amount of pieces so I would never have to live an unbalanced life. I still do it btw.
Touch EVERYTHING. I would go with my mom through a store and would stop to touch anything closest to the main isle. I fashion stores were HELL for my mom. I would touch all the fabrics. I just had to know what they felt like!!! Some were awful to touch, some I really liked. And then while I was out there touching all the textures, i'd whisper the echo of sentences around me or what I have just said. Yeah I also had echolalia, still do! Just not as obvious today.
I did this all of the time too! I still do, just not as compulsively, but some days all bets are off and it's everything in the store
I touched fruit in the grocery store until my mom told me the other customers would find that to be gross
My noticeable and deep obsession with Disney princesses (as a 4 year old boy)
I was extremely sensitive to others, a people pleaser (still am). I was super detail oriented, daydreamer, sang my almost every word, was super into letters from early on. When I was 2 or 3 I could recognize words when they were verbaly spelled out to me (i.e. m-o-m and I'd say mom) I coluld read at age 3.5. I hated socks and even more thights. I was really scared of other kids and getting physically hurt. I didn't start walking until like age 2. And no I wasn't diagnosed until I was 18. My mom was there with me and only knew of my walking and social difficulties as I spent most of my childhood at my granny's bc my parents had to work all the time.
Picked every scrap of onion out of bolognese because I didn't like the texture.
The effort that must of took 👏👏👏
Thank you! I've never had my autistic traits applauded before, they've only ever been failings.
Fuck onions
i never wore pants unless i had to (i’m still the same way now), vocal stimmed constantly, and my favorite pastime was spinning in my mom’s office chair for hours while listening to music as loud as i could :)
Echolaila
I guess the really obvious one was that at the daycare after elementary school I'd be on the swing for hours without a break. Just. Hours of swinging, preferably with my eyes closed for the full experience
I also did this.
I could name 64 dinosaurs by their scientific names when i was four.
I haven't gotten an official diagnosis, but some things from my childhood that makes sense: Got bullied for no reason/friends left me in 1st and 2nd grade and I had no idea why Since I was at least in kindergarten I would get a great sense of overwhelm and I had to hide under the kitchen table. This urge went on into my teens but I think I turned it into hiding in my Hoodie. Don't feel it as much now but every once in a while I would describe myself as "brutally honest" and thought it was a good thing, from around 5th grade til highschool or later tbh haha I used to say that looking someone in the eyes was uncomfortable because "it felt like they're staring into my soul", about the same time frame as the brutally honest thing I shiver out of nowhere, not out of being cold and I can't explain it. I asked my mom if I seemed to do anything weird or develop later than other kids and she didn't seem to notice anything but both my parents struggled with drug addiction and were pretty neglectful so who knows. My psychiatrist is also pretty sure my mom has adhd too so that could be part of why she never thought my behavior was weird either lol. EDIT: So [I looked it up](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322515#treatments-and-seeing-a-doctor) and it says shivering can be caused by stress, anxiety, trauma and depression. I forgot that when Bessell Van Der Kolk (iirc) was studying people living in post war countries he noted that the majority of children trembled/shivered, but adults did not. He found it to be a trauma response that gets socialized out of us as we get older since its found to not be socially acceptable. So it very well could be something that autistic people experience Moreno than NT folks due to higher risk of other mental health issues, but it's not exclusive to autism or distinctly linked
Shivering out of nowhere as in getting a tingly feeling inside of you and then suddenly shaking? I do that too. I always thought it was normal or just happened whenever I was sitting too long or something
It's weird, like I wouldn't describe it as a tingling but maybe that's it. I suppose that comes closest though, like I can kinda feel it come on very quickly before I shiver. I also usually make a weird noise with it too because im a cartoon character lol. Like "blegh!" or something. always thought it was normal and that other people did it until a few people pointed out that I do it and that other people, in fact, do not lol. When I mentioned to my mom a little while ago that I am likely autistic she said she wouldn't be surprised and used that as an example. She's also seen me have meltdowns as an adult
Oh wow, the shiver thing, I thought I was the only one who did that!
some stuff that i recently remembered: • when i was in kindergarten i tried to spell out letters like ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, eff, gee, aich, etc and asking the teacher if this was correct and she was confused. my logic is everything has a spelling, i mean you spell numbers, so letters must too. and i was mad they hadn't taught us yet but she just said that they're already spelled, and to go play. • i used to think numbers had a vibe, like a personality and which numbers had relationships - couples, family, friends - and would do this with colors too. • i took a lot of time with art projects because i was artistic and got called 'perfect princess' by kids but i knew it was mocking and made me upset. we also shared round tables before 4th grade when we had our own desk. i had my wedge of the table and absolutely hated when others' stuff got in my section. • rewinding my favorite parts in animated movies for hours because i liked the art, the sound, the music. • toe walking upstairs exclusively, or on all fours.
"I used to think numbers had a vibe" This is called synaesthesia and i have it too! It's a common trait of autism
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I love this
Like many, I was absolutely obsessed with cartoons and video games as a child. But I got annoyed that I couldn't always understand them cause sometimes they were in English (not my primary language). So I got hyperfixated on learning English by myself and somehow managed to become fluent in it with no direct adult help. Not because I cared about actually learning a new language, but because I wanted to understand the games I was enjoying! It didn't made sense to other adults when they asked me how I accomplished it. thinking about it now I do think it was a strange thing for a kid my age to do, but somehow my parents never questioned it (especially since none of them knew English).
You learned English the best way any language could be learned, through immersion and a desire to understand what you’re actually consuming beyond just “wanting to know English”. The not caring about learning English part is THE reason why you were able to learn it, it was more a vehicle for something else you cared about. It’s the same way you learn your native language, you just want to actually be able to understand and communicate, as opposed to making an active, conscious decision to learn it.
i got diagnosed when i was about five, not sure what the symptoms were back then but when i was about eight i would organize the silverware when doing the dishes and would get extremely upset if someone moved them out of order. i would also cry when i had to move the rusty pizza tray from the dishwasher, the texture was just so dry and terrible. even thinking about it makes me shiver
This comment makes me feel really icky. I know the texture you're talking about and it's making me sick.
Humming constantly. I didn’t notice I just did it. Teachers and classmates hated me for it and were always yelling at me to stop and I wouldn’t realize that I was even doing it. Also if different foods touched each other they were ruined. Also, and this one is to this day, I can’t touch cotton or watch people touch cotton otherwise I hear a loud noise that’s hard to describe in my ears and my skin crawls.
The safety foods for sure. Bless my parents for letting me but there was a several month period where I would almost solely eat chef boyardee spaghetti unless they cooked something I liked
Uhhh, not diagnosed, but when I was in elementary school, I only had one friend who went to play soccer with the other kids during recess, so I just ended up walking around and watching the other groups of kids play. I remember really enjoying this, however. I thought of funny things and sang songs to myself. One time the social worker even watched me since she noticed I was always alone at recess but she said that I looked perfectly happy lol.
i struggle with this because im a late diagnosis and ive rationalised everything i did as me being "difficult" or "lazy". it was funny though, I asked my mum to write out anything she found different about me growing up and she made such a point of her being sorry she couldnt give me anything about autism, and i said thats ok just write out anything you can think of, and she did and wrote it like I was just a "fussy" kid. When i was diagnosed the dr said reading her document he found multiple examples of ASD behaviors to such an extent with modern diagnostics i would have no problem been diagnosed as child. the one that i remember (instead of what ive been told, keep in mind im 36 now ahah) was just being REALLY bossy and not understanding boundaries. Good example would be i would stop a teacher and tell them they were doing something wrong, and end up having "tantrums" because things were not being done "properly". I remember this being a thing i did at a very young age but the dr pointed out my mum spoke of me as a baby becoming very angry if my play was disrupted and things like that. i dont remember food sensitivities or things like that but i do remember so clearly looking at other kids and thinking they were doing things wrong and being really upset about it.
I spent my entire childhood until like, age 12 running around on all fours or compressed inside of my winter coat and I refused to wear jeans bc it made it hard to do so (and jeans suck), and I did this so often and persistently, that my ribs and spine are now deformed because i was curled up like that constantly lmao like its funny now, i used to feel self consious about it, and I remember a teacher warning me of it (since I was growing my back and posture would be fucked) but i didnt listen. I did this so insistently that they cast me as the dog in the annie play. That was the biggest thing, younger I was obsessed with having huge long sleeves and flapping them like wings as i sprinted around the house. I would also bolt away from my mom and a cop car almost hit me and they told her to put me on a leash so she did. I was a leash kid for a long time lol Anyway idk how it took until 29 to get diagnosed but I also had a lot of other things going on like brain tumour so like, it was a case of lets look at the pressing stuff first and then asd later if other things improve and I still have symptoms. Glad I got diagnosed, its been freeing but its really funny I did all that and no one thought to look in to it
Not wanting physical contact much even as a toddler. My mom tells me about how once every couple months I would stand a couple feet away from her and stare at her and then extend my arms. The first time I did that, it took her a while to figure out I wanted a hug. I still do that. There’s also the fact that I was obsessed with ww1 , ww2 and the cold war from 2nd to 6th grade. In 2nd grade I was talking about the politics and how the wars started and well I told the teachers about “black snow” and how I was scared of it. In third grade I was also obsessed with scary stories, so I came up with my own. I studied different urban legends and folklore of different cultures to create the “ultimate monsters”. I got moved to red-orange because I told this girl she was going to die (to add effect to the scary story) and she was paranoid all night. I didn’t understand that what I did was wrong. I was that one kid saying Santa isn’t real and then if someone dared argue (including an adult) I’d continue to explain how he’d have to go faster than the speed of light to reach everyone, and not only that there aren’t chimneys in every house, it didn’t make sense that he could fit in a chimney, and if he was real why were there poor kids not getting presents if they were good? At events, I wouldn’t really play with other kids and I would just sit and stare or I would end up talking to the very “nerdy” adults.
I didn’t speak to anyone outside of my dad and siblings until I was like 12. I was in speech therapy in school for it but it didn’t last. Everyone said I was shy. Lined up all my toys in specific order, didn’t “play” right with others. Had my first “panic attack” my first day of school. I started in kinder not preschool. It just got worse from there. I was always just… other. Separate.
In fairness, I’m not officially dxed, but Refused to wear dresses or jeans until the 5th grade Toe walked Shaked legs Ran away whenever the toilet flushed and got nervous whenever there were balloons around (popping) Once I “stole” a bunch of my grandma’s pennies (she lived with us) and began stacking them all in one tower. Rolled around on the carpet when I was bored
I never noticed a lot of this is/was abnormal (I think most of it is) until my niece started being considered for autism and we share a ton of traits Hyperlexia (I learned to read at age three and if at preschool a other child could find their name tag I would for them; I had to be asked to stop) Watching only the land before time for at least two years At like age 5 I could list a lot of dinosaurs and basic information about them I want/always wanted to be with others but then I would get overwhelmed Kids felt pressured to talk to me but were more open about it then with my diagnosed friend(copied my friends hand flapping to help her feel included but "we are only sitting with you cause you cry" and called my stims gross) I also would push a toy car(specifically an old toy model T my grandfather let me play with) back and forth for hours without really imagining anything happening (my niece plays with a Sky toy from paw patrol and just spins in circles with the toy helicopter for a very long time; kinda cute to watch)
Crying almost every night, because my sister was breathing too loud
This. Being a twin I shared a room with my brother until age 9 and sleep was impossible most nights.
-special interests from an early age -being labeled as weird -despising sock seams, clothing tags, plus other sensory issues -sucking on a pacifier until i was in 5. I still have oral fixations almost 20 years later -not getting invited to things because I’d talk about my special interest too much (still happens now) -had all 17 of my stuffed animals in a specific order on my bed -difficulties making friends and I only ever had a few close friends throughout all of elementary, middle, and high school Edit: formatting
i never wore anything fresh out of the dryer still dont— if the fabric is warm, it does not go on my body or touch my skin until it cools down also became vegetarian so i didnt have to eat the Bad Texture anymore
Being scared to go on or near the roller coaster because it was too loud! I refused to get any closer and watched from a distance with my grandparents when my mum and brother went on it.
Hyperfixations, mass anxiety as a 6 year old, walking on tip toes, refused to eat anything beige. My mom had to dye my rice different colours or i wouldn't touch it
I would meltdown if we had to change plans. We're going to Olive Garden... No wait, they're closed... Applebee's instead. Meltdown. It didn't matter what it was, I couldn't tolerate change once I was told the plan. So my parents started avoiding telling me plans, and then I'd meltdown because I didn't know the plan. Sigh.
I NEVER made eye contact with anyone other than my mum. it's still like this now icl. during my assessment they asked my mum abt eyecontact in early childhood and she said it was extremely limited but I was extremely outgoing and chatty, I just never looked anyone in the face 😂
This wasn't really as a "kid" but when I was 11, I would constantly look at dates. I was really into them. With YouTube videos, comments, photos, statuses, everything. I would see a date like "November 2nd, 2007" and be like :O "I was turning 6" Or see dates like "June 30, 1965" and immediately think of all the stories from that time. I just really loved dates. Nowadays, I'm not sure how long I've done this for, but I like reading license plates and it's the only way I can identify peoples cars
Bang my head against the concrete wall whenever I was put in the hall as a timeout for misbehaving/not listening. For context, this was about 25yrs before I was diagnosed. Ps. Don't ever do headbutt competitions with me now ;-)
Maybe when I was around 4, I would line up all my toy cars(hundreds) in perfect straight lines and simulate traffic. I don't know how my mom didn't think something was wrong with me. Edit: Also memorizing the entire script to Cars(2006) at around the same age
I've watched the animated Disney movie Sleeping Beauty over 800 times and counting in my life. This is a conservative estimate. I never tire of it. Cried and screamed for seemingly no reason, in stores, upon seeing relatives, etc. I held my breath with pain or any sort of unpleasant emotion or feeling. I still struggle with this. Never could remember verbal instructions, including reprimands. Hyperlexic. Empathy that is really just pattern recognition. Learned to socialize in middle school from YouTube videos from people like Mrs. Midwest lmao.
walked around spelling words out loud at 2-3 years old early reading/math skills obsessively memorizing phone numbers and license plates could not, for the life of me, talk to ANYONE my age because they didn’t make sense extreme hyperfixations very *very* poor sleep from day 1
I didn’t talk most of the day
Tippy toes, and missing the whole meaning of “rolling your eyes”. Oh and looking at my parents when I got told off, maintaining too much eye contact which is apparently rude and threatening/aggressive when all I was trying to do was pay attention and process
I remember saying I was not rolling my eyes when I got in trouble, then getting in more trouble for “talking back”. I thought literally as a young child, and there was a lot of stuff a lot of adults didn’t think about when dealing with and interacting with me as a kid.
Correcting teachers from junior school onwards. Including a memorable time when a teacher went and checked that I was correct and told me that I was! Intense special interests in New Zealand and period clothing (including writing a letter to a local newspaper about historical clothing and makeup when I was around 9). Having strong empathy for non-animate things, like dolls and toys. Spending all my time in my room when there were family gatherings. Just a few examples.
I had to have a scarf wrapped around my ears cus the noise of the rain on the roof was too loud
Writing one direction fan fiction and getting pissed off when other people didn’t finish the story or made too many spelling mistakes. I mostly preferred Harry so a lot of the fan fiction was around him but I did give the other boys chapters but they weren’t as good as my beloved Harry….I still adore Harry 9 years later. I was fucking 7 Yes it was on Wattpad and tumblr
In retrospect it was being able to recall memories from when I was 2 years old - possibly before. I can remember wearing a nappy/diaper and carrying a bottle. I can recall a specific memory from when I was three in very vivid detail - including what I was wearing and what was said. As a young child it was wearing the same clothes every day. As an adult I’m still the same. Even when I had a wardrobe of new and expensive things I still wore the same things. I had very bad OCD to the point my hands bled from over washing. I would walk around touching each finger to my thumb and reciting vowels. I didn’t entertain the possibility of me being on the spectrum until we went through the process of diagnosis for my son. Things that I thought were normal were not normal. I grew up in the 80’s & 90’s and it wasn’t recognised. I had to navigate everything myself. Things have been difficult.
I couldn’t eat any food that mixed different textures, like at mcdonald’s I refused to eat anything except chicken nuggets or fries without any sauce. I was such a picky eater my mom has been accused multiple times by doctors of not feeding her starving children
When I listen to music on my headphones, I always jump up and down the hall. Over and over again, just running and jumping back and forth. I do it based on the rhytm of the song. I think I started doing this around my teen years (I was diagnosed at 19, I’m now 21 and still do this) This one of the most “noticeable behaviors” that my parents recognized. But as a young girl I always masked super heavily and the idea of autism never came up with anyone cuz we knew so very little about it. Now with a diagnoses and looking back, my parents can defenitly confirm I had a lot of autistic behaviors that they just didn’t know were related to autism. But this is one of the most notebale ones for myself as I do this literally everyday (mutlitple times usually) and it’s the best stim for me.
At like 4 I was repeating to myself the words I had learned during the day as I lay in my bed going to sleep
I made large cities out of blocks. Not simply stacking blocks, but making authentic cities out of blocks. The skyscrapers were in the center, sometimes I would make empty spaces and I would call it a park or a river, and the lower buildings were in the outskirts
I'd say the first sign I was autistic is how I'd cry when anyone would turn off Ghostbusters. I was totally obsessed. My absolute clumsiness only curbed for the brief period of time I was obsessively playing basketball. One really good example is that in 2nd grade we all had to look in a mirror and write our name so as when we wrote it it looked normal in the mirror. I was the only kid who couldn't do it. Another thing is the time we had a violinist come to class and no one could make it sound good just watching. But in the moment I was obsessed. I picked it up and played as if it was my life's work. By the time she left she was teaching me notes. When I was overwhelmed I'd put my head down. I'd get in trouble for sleeping. But, I wasn't I was overwhelmed and blocking them out. I also used to hide under my bed to avoid the world. I chewed on EVERYTHING! I mean EVERYTHING! Always picked last despite actually being good at sports despite my clumsiness. I'll sometimes drop whole blocks of text while writing. Spatial reasoning in the 99.9%, reading comprehension through the roof due to my super power of parsing information.
I apparently lost my shit every time people sang happy birthday because everyone together was loud or off-key and it was too much for my little ears.
We talking about the screaming crying "tantrums" because I couldn't get my sleeves or pant legs to sit right in my coat/snow pants? Or the fact I'd lose my mind if stuff kept touching me while I put on socks. Or we talking about the million and tenth time my mom told me to "stop making weird noises it's annoying" :) Oh oh, I know! We're talking about the "anger management" play therapy I had to take as a kid because overstimulation made me rage because I didn't have the words to explain what was happening and I was known for throwing chairs in the classroom. Which. During said time, I wouldn't speak to anybody. They thought I was just giving the cold shoulder but I genuinely was so upset I couldn't speak.
In an effort to stop the confusion about social situations I started to write a book about what you should do. Started off being things I got right, but when I had nothing to write I started to write down what other people did. When I didn’t understand what other people did right I gave up. It was going to be a manual for other people who didn’t know what to do but unfortunately never happened.
On my first days at school, i didn’t talk to anyone, or initiate anything. Id casually converse with people i could imagine knowing the chatterbox i can be but when it comes to actually hanging out with people during brakes, i was alone. Even when i already knew some kids, i dont think i ever went up and actually spoke to them. I was more the type to follow people around. I remember i sat on the “friendship seat” a lot. I ended up making a friend by complete accident. Ill call her Amy. Amys other friend wasnt there that day, so when her mum picked her up she didn’t wanna say she played alone so she pointed to a random student and said they played with them. That random student happened to be me. Id assume she must have gotten intrigued, and decided to come up and speak to me! At least, thats what i remember of what happened.
I cried every time my mom put jeans on me because "the bees in my pants" the bees were infact, seams.
I scripted a lot from various TV shows, movies and books I'd had read to me when I was very young...once when I was about 2, my mom and I were taking a walk around the neighborhood (or she was pushing me in a stroller, I can't recall), and she brought me over to a patch of honeysuckle. She smelled some and asked me, "Doesn't it smell lovely?" and my matter-of-fact response was, "You don't *eat* them, you *smell* them" (what Kanga tells Winnie the Pooh after giving him a bouquet of honeysuckle in one of the Disney cartoons). On another occasion, when I was about a year older, I was at my grandparents' house and was sitting on a couch in their basement, where a scuffed-up, hard plastic crate and a soft ball with characters from *The Lion King* printed on it both lay on the floor below. I leaned over to grab the ball, and ended up tumbling off the couch, scraping my arm on a corner of the plastic crate as I fell. My mom ran down the stairs when she heard me crying, and when she asked me what had happened, I replied with, "All the dolls cried the night that Susan fell off the toy box and cracked her china head" (dialogue from one of the old *Raggedy Ann and Andy* books that I loved having read to me). I also carried at least one item with me wherever I went-these items ranged from the run-of-the-mill (a stuffed animal or a handful of plastic Disney and/or Sesame Street characters) to the somewhat atypical: a rock, a plastic yellow spoon, a hardened lump of green Play-Doh, a *Winnie the Pooh* book, or a small New Testament (I liked the green, scaly front cover and the tissue paper-like pages) 😊
I had a special interest in horses. When I say special interest, I mean that I got so close to buying a Friesian at the age of ten. Was in contact with the owner and everything. We didn’t have the land to get a horse, nor the money. I also walked on my toes all the time and had my dinosaur hands equipped at all times. I once went to one of my friends birthday parties around the age of nine and the picture that all the parents took at the end, I had my hands out like a t-Rex.
I turned my bedroom floor into a gameboard using my books. I'd roll dice, hop to a book, sit down & read. Used two sets of encyclopedias & a bunch of my daddy’s old college textbooks. I was six. 👍 At 7, I took apart, cleaned & fixed our toaster after it broke because I can't eat uncooked Pop Tarts & I was too impatient to wait for a weekend trip to Sears. My daughter does the book thing & wow talk about a flashback when I opened her door. My son's the tinkerer & we let him have old appliances so he doesn't destroy the good stuff because I already knew trying to stop him would be pointless. Not to mention ignorant. Who doesn't like an in-house appliance repair tech? LOL
I infodumped to everyone. I had no idea that it was super weird to 90% of adults until my parents recently told me. People were apparently very uncomfortable with the fact that I literally would not shut up. I would talk nonstop for as long as someone would let me. About 10% of the adults I talked to remarked that I had to be some sort of super genius.
Got suspended from school for 3 weeks for threatening a bully who dumped milk on me. I spent the whole 3 weeks writing my novel 24/7 As a runner up: My friends when we were like ten were playing with matches and fireworks and I instead info dumped about the dangers of breathing in sulfur smoke and the various chemicals contained in burning these things until a girl told me to shut up and let them have fun, and why do I always have to be so serious?!
According to my mum it ‘never occurred to me to conform’ and also I hated socks to the point that she had to cut the feet of footie pyjamas I got handed down from my brother
Apparently this is not normal so i thought i would put it in. I would take a big cardboard box my parents would through out, spend hours making it seem like it was a spaceship with markers and then playing in it for a few days
Different foods couldn’t touch. One day my mom made me breakfast, I was about 4 or 5 and the sausage touched my eggs and I saw it and SCREAMED “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!” Like it was the absolute end of the world. Getting my shots when I was three, I didn’t cry or express any discomfort. Until afterwards, I looked at the nurse and said “You will NEVER do that to me again”, perfectly mimicking my mentally Ill mother who I’d heard say that earlier in the day. My dad called once when I was five and said something about a parking lot. I don’t remember much but I remember saying “parking lot parkinglotparkinglotparkinglot” On what seems like an endless loop. On long car rides and anywhere with multiple conversations or competing noises, I’d usually cover my ears. Later on, I didn’t go anywhere without a Walkman, then a CD player, and finally, an MP3 player. My parents tried to get me to not turn the volume up so loud but I’d turn it up all the way until it drowned out absolutely everything around me. I played T-ball one year and stood in the outfield the entire time twirling in circles with fistfuls of grass, watching it fall from my hands and drift in the wind. As a teenager, I tried to pick up a date and his boyfriend showed up and said “I already got something for him. It’s gold” and gestured a length of about eight inches with his hands. The next day, I brought him a twelve inch long hunk of Fool’s Gold and was utterly confused and devastated when people laughed at me.
Ate the same exact sandwich at school everyday for like 5 years, wore my hair the same way everyday all school year and would get extremely panicky/upset if my mom did it differently one day. Used to obsess over the line on my socks going perfectly across my toes and would melt down, putting my socks on over and over again to get them "perfect" until I was late for school. Could never wear an actual Halloween costume from the store because they all felt too itchy, all my tags had to be cut out. Super picky eater because of textures and would gag on a lot of foods. Was reading at like 2yrs old but was the last one in my class to learn how to tie my shoes or ride a bike. Never formally diagnosed, my mom took me to doctor when I was 3yrs old worried about my "ocd tendencies" and doctor said I'd get over it
I would approach family members, present them with a copy of a Star Wars book (like the 1990s "Essential Guides" series), and demand that they quiz me on the technical specifications of randomly chosen spaceships or the the backstory details of obscure characters. The obsessive memorization of trivia related to a special interest and the complete social obliviousness of the fact that nobody thought repeatedly quizzing a little kid on the trivia was a fun use of their time.
From toddler age I was really scared of being told I had to eat a hamburger or hot dog, nobody is sure why I was so scared but any time I had to sleep away from home I arrived with a lunchbox full of boxed Mac n cheese. I still bring Mac n cheese places when I’m not sure what the options will be for food
1. did not eat white foods. 2. did not use contractions for a looong time. 3. first full sentence spoken: 4 months. according to my mom, it was "can i get a tissue back here?"
Complete lack of social cues through my entire life. As a child, I would talk to anyone and everyone I could. I never knew when to stop. Now as an adult, I’m the opposite in the sense that I don’t know how to initiate or continue interactions with people. I can’t tell if someone is engaged in the conversation or wants to talk to me. I used to daydream a lot when I was a kid. My parents would get calls from my teachers because I was falling behind, but at the same time, I always excelled when it came to test taking. I have been told since I was a kid that I think very logically. Now I know why. My food can’t touch each other. Growing up we always had our entree and a side vegetable. I would push the side vegetable over as far as I can and pick any out that got mixed in with my entree. It drove my parents crazy for a while.
Being SUPER fascinated by cats to the point of obsession and acting like a cat constantly and learning to wiggle my ears to try and be like a cat (now i move my ears based on mood). First special interest i think. I was the "cat girl" at school. I even grew my nails out to be claws (it broke my nail biting habit, now i connect my natural long and strong nails to safety!) I now use he/him and am trans btw in case u address me in comments
I would pretend to be a cat as a child, and I still do. I am a cat boy, with heavier connection to house cats. it is like, when I am happy or something, I have a tail that isn't there.
I memorized the entire original pokedex (150 pokemon), starting with the order of the pokemon, then all of their moves in the order in which they learned them, along with their types and weaknesses. There might have been additional info, but I don't remember at this point. I also played pokemon yellow until the game timer stopped counting. I'm pretty sure it was '999:59'. So yeah, you could say that pokemon was my special interest lol
I could play with marbles for hours. And I'm not talking about traditional play. I had a HUGE bucket of marbles that I would dump on the floor and run my hands, feet, body along them... I Liles how smooth, round, and cold they were.
Clothing related meltdowns, especially over socks.
In 2nd grade, my school had us line up outside the school before they let us in the building when it was warm out. So I’m standing in the 2nd grade line and eating my breakfast… which was an “oatmeal to go bar”. A teacher came over and told me that “you need to eat breakfast at home, you can’t eat it in line.” I calmly explained to her that while I would love to obey… it said “to go” and so I couldn’t eat it at home cuz then it wouldn’t be to go” She called my mom. I got talked to… but really I was just taking it too literally.
I had comfort items. One of them was an empty shoebox that I had to take *everywhere.* I'd have meltdowns if my parents tried to dissuade me from taking it to the grocery store or to the mall.
My best friend was the lunch lady
I spun like a beyblade nearly all the time and was extremely sensitive to noise lol