Late Onset ASDs

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I'm curious if anyone here had a late onset ASD. Such as, according to parents, they were developing normally and suddenly regressed into autism.

If so, do you think it's more severe or about the same as those born with it?
I'm having a very hard time writing this out, so I'm sorry if it's confusing. I just keep reading stories where the mom is lamenting her lost NT child and how he's stuck in a broken sick body... and I'm curious about those kids who grew up, if there are any on here. I know some cases that are claimed to have happened suddenly while video evidence shows that the child had ASD traits before hand, but others, we can't tell. And other than genetics, there's still no real knowledge of what can cause this. So I'm curious about it.
(in my family it's all genetic and everyone has traits if they aren't even on the spectrum, so ASDs are completely normal to me...)

ASD is lifelong, it is a neurological brain difference. You cannot suddenly develop it. It's just that babies are unable to show obvious signs when they are that age. Speech regression of course happens, as well as loss of eye contact etc. but that would be in childhood. That's probably just how it goes because a child's brain is developing and undergoing certain changes generally, and that's what happens in autism at those stages to make the traits more obvious. Of course there is the possibility that something environmental triggers it if you have a genetic susceptibility but again, this would happen in childhood.

There are instances of brain injuries or medical disease that can cause autism-like behaviours late on, and these may result in a diagnosis of autism, but those are not the same as true autism.

Which symptoms of ASD do you believe appeared later on in life that were absent early on?

I was like an autist in childhood, but I did smile.
Being alone and playing alone was not a problem.

I might of had late onset. Well, not too late, but nobody noticed anything unusual in me until I started school at 4 years old. Before then, I was just like another typically developing child. I know my parents wouldn't know at the time because of not really thinking about things like that, but even they say now that looking back I was like a typically developing child. I even have a lot of pictures and videos of me as a child under 4, and I seemed normal.

One of the videos was of me at the age of 3, at a very noisy, hectic birthday party, with lots of children I didn't know. It was my cousin's birthday party, and him and his friends were 2 years older than me, and there was only one child that was younger than me (she was only 9 months old). One of my other cousins was there too, and she was 4, and she seemed more Autistic than I was, even though she only had learning difficulties. We sat in a circle to play pass the parcel, and the children were squealing with excitement and was probably an overwhelming environment for a small child on the spectrum and it was a wonder I wasn't having a meltdown from sensory overload. I was sitting happily in the circle with the other children, and when the parcel got to me, I passed it to the cousin with learning difficulties (she was sitting next to me), but she was just sitting there, kind of in her own world and not paying attention to what was going on around her, where as it looked like I knew how to play pass the parcel already by picking up the rules of the game by observing the other children around me (my mum said it was my first time I played pass the parcel). I held the parcel out to my cousin, and each time I watch it, I see I am giving off an impression as if to say ''come on, take it'' (I might have even said it, I couldn't really hear because of the background music), and I was making eye contact too. So an adult had to come and take the parcel out of my hands and give it to my cousin, who still didn't know what to do with it. Then when the kids were playing musical chairs, they were all running round the chairs in one way, but my cousin was running in the other direction, bumping into all the kids. She wasn't just doing it to show off either, because she never interacted with one child once. I was too little to play musical chairs, so I just sat on my dad's lap, eating some cake. But I looked like I was enjoying myself and wasn't overwhelmed by the noise and the other children running about. So if you didn't know better, you'd think I was my cousin in this video. I even saw her put her hands over her ears a couple of times. I might of, I don't know, but I didn't see me do it in the video.

It's such a shame because it seemed like I was developing typically, then all of a sudden, one day I just turned into an Aspie, and life went sh***y ever since.

I think I know what you are talking about, though bear in mind that autism by its definition cannot be "late onset" as such - if someone is autistic they were always autistic (unless symptoms were caused by brain injury). However, it is not uncommon for there to be few enough signs in childhood for it to go under the radar, whereupon a parent might find themselves with a teenage or adult child who has just been diagnosed and then have to come to terms with the fact that their child is not neurotypical and has more challenges ahead of them than they had anticipated. Perhaps that is the situation you are talking about?

While I can see mild autistic symptoms in my childhood in hindsight, they were not severe enough for anyone to think anything of them, especially because AS was unknown when I was a child (I am in my 30s). I was just a quiet bookworm kid. However, as an adult, I struggle enormously with day-to-day life because of my autism. Being able to manage as a child who is looked after is one thing, and living as an independent adult quite another, so sometimes the extent of the symptoms are not revealed until increased social and practical demands are made.

...which brings me to the subtypes of AS, there are two subtypes in particular which are much more likely to be missed/unnoticed in childhood, but that's different from late onset.

Late onset sounds more like schizophrenia, although that would be accompanied by delusions etc. so should be distinguishable.

If anyone wants to see the four subytypes of AS descriptions, please click the link in my signature and go to the bottom of the thread.

Childhood (age 1-4) socalizing with each other is fairly simple and often including in Joe90's case was in a structred enviroment. Young people like that can maybe naturally take more stimuli, I know thats how the ears work anyway, as well social anxiaty likely has not had a chance to develop like it often does in older kids/adults. Its hard to see the difference in kids that young and I suspect meny parents were and are in denial about what they saw and how they understood what they saw.

Mine showed late. I think the milder you are, the harder it is to see in a young child. If AS was recognized in a child so young, theirs must have been so bad it was noticed and it's not mild. Their symptoms may be seen as quirks or personality traits or as them being their age because it was normal at their age. Or their symptoms may be mistaken as them being naughty and misbehaving, as being stubborn, wanting things their way. It would take a smart parent to know their kid has something rather than assuming they have a brat and they need to discipline their kid better and be tougher with them. Mine always knew I had something and it got worse as I got older because I was getting older so kids were changing and so was everything else like with the hidden rules and social expectations. Then by 5th grade, Mom finally took me to a psychologist because she didn't know what to do and she couldn't help me with my problems anymore so she told me talking to someone else would help me feel better so I agreed to see one. Mmmmm maybe if their AS was recognized young despite being mild, maybe they just had smart parents and with all the information out there now on AS, it helps parents recognize it sooner and back then when I was little, there was nothing about it so of course they wouldn't notice, not even notice something different either.

Whenever I see people claim their kid didn't start showing AS symptoms until a certain late age, I just assume that was when it became obvious they have something and they reached their limits.

I think being a kid with AS is easier because then you are more hidden and that is if you are mild of course. Plus it's easier to make friends too as a child. Like Joe90, I seemed like a normal toddler despite my speech delay and being quiet. I also laughed and smiled and liked getting attention and I loved looking at the camera. My mom has pointed out some unusual things about me but I saw it as normal and felt like she was picking apart my behavior. There was one video of my mother calling me and I don't answer or even look at her because I was deaf at the time. But I looked at my dad when he said my name or said something because he talked loud and I was able to hear him so it made me look that way to see what I was hearing. Then it seemed like I lost that ability because I had a hard time with eye contact when I was older. Mom also told me I pointed to things like the plane in the sky when I heard it and went "dah" after I got my hearing back. I also had my own way of communicating because I couldn't talk. I would show my parents things I wanted and I would take their hand and pull them to it and point to it. I sometimes wonder if I am even on the spectrum if I seemed to lack too many ASD traits at the time and I don't even know what traits I showed except I had the need for sameness and how I played with my toys and it was OCD type behavior and not tolerating touch from strangers, bad eye contact and wringing my wrists in public, taking some of my stuff apart, and I read about my play skills being below the age level. But I think I was late onset too and I sometimes even wonder. I have seen aspies say they were normal until a certain age and then they got traits and got diagnosed. I wonder if there are even aspies out there who developed normally and did normal things like looking at people, responding to their name, pointing to things, did tantrums and the terrible twos and used manipulation like all kids do. Mom tells me I was very good at it and I would make fake tears and I seemed to have lost the ability because I don't think i would be able to make fake tears or succeed in manipulation. I could attempt it but it won't work. I also tested my limits Mom told me. I think Temple Grandin said she did the same too. I think she wrote she liked testing things. I tested things to see what the rules were and what was okay to do and not okay and what would happen if I did something, how people would react. I also asked my teacher when i was seven if I could go potty instead of saying bathroom because I wanted to see if the rules applied to me too and if the rules were still the same as the year before because she didn't tell me the rules. I over heard her telling the new students the rules and she said to them "You don't say pee" and telling them what else they don't say and they say bathroom. So I wondered if those rules applied to me and tested one of them and then figured they all applied to me and they are still the same as the year before.

I bet if I didn't have a speech delay, doctors wouldn't have thought I was autistic and no label would have been given.

I think there's a big difference between when someone "gets autism" and when it's first detected. Aspergers doesn't necessarily present itself in early childhood, such as delayed speech, as dramatically as more severe types of autism such as Rett's do. Just because it gets more noticeable at a certain age doesn't necessary mean that's when it manifested itself. It starts in at birth and depending on its severity and what it effects, eventually becomes apparent. I think in a lot of cases with Aspergers, a kid has to actually be in school, before they start saying, "hey there's definitely something wrong with this kid".

Toe walking, delayed speech, stimming etc? Not necessarily present in Aspergers. Retts, yes. Aspergers, not necessarily and probably not.
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What I'm going to write is kind of long.

My parents say I've always looked weird or different compared to other children.
Even when I was a baby my parents say I was.
I was extremely hyperactive as a baby. I threw things into the fireplace (I lived in a house with the fireplace when I was a baby), I broke a lot of objects and such. All this according to my parents. I can't remember of course.
Mom told me I made eye-contact only a little, and only with her and my father, because I passed most of my time staring at flies or other bugs I saw. Because of this, I couldn't make much eye-contact with them.
When I was around the age of 1-2 I started speaking. In fact I had no speech delay as a child.
But I've had mild motor skills delay (I started walking a little later than other children, but not so late) and also severe self-help skills delay. I wasn't able to use a knife until I was 7-8 (still cut myself with it at times) I couldn't dress myself until I was 9-10 and I've learned to tie my shoe laces only when I was 14.
But let's proceed chronologically. When I got into kindergarten I was always arguing with other children, I couldn't follow the teacher's directions and prefered to play alone.
My mother (she's a psychologist herself) began to think I had schizofrenia when I was about 5-6 (she had her reasons). Because of that she brought me to another shrink. The shrink at first thought as well that I could have schizofrenia, but after a lot of tests the shrink began to think I could be an high-functioning autistic. Then the shrink had to decide whether to diagnose me with HFA or with AS (the severity of my symptoms was between those two ones). The shrink decided to diagnose me with AS eventually because I didn't have speech delay.
So I was diagnosed with AS and ADHD-C.
In elementary school I was a bit troublesome: I often got involved in fist fights with my classmates, I couldn't sit still, and such.
Most of all, I had difficulty in learing to write.
I learnt to read quite fast, but writing was difficult for me.
I could write the single letters of the alphabet, but couldn't put them together to make a sentence.
I didn't know what direction I had to write in, so I began to write vertically. When they told me I had to write horizontally, I didn't know if I had to write from left to right or from right to left. So I began to write from right to left in a line, and from left to right in the other. Then I eventually learned I had to write horizontally from left to right, and the problem was solved, but my handwriting remained a bit difficult to read.
Growing up, I also grew more and more defiant, and my mother began to suspect I could have ODD.
I was eventually officially diagnosed with ODD a few days ago, even though a therapist had alredy thought I could have it a few years ago.
About affection, my mother has told me that she couldn't know whether I'm really flat affected like they say in my reports or not. My mother is not the type of person that needs much affect to be showed by me; same for my father. They think my way of showing affection is ok, and they know I love them.
As a child I usually shown my affection by making drawings rather than by hugging. I even hugged and kissed at times, though.
That's the end, because the phase of developement is from the first years of life to the first years of elementary school I guess.

Now about my brother.
I have a brother with childhood disintegrative disorder.
When he was a child he was brillant, he started speaking a lot before other children, he could alredy make complex talks when he was 1. Also his physical developement was kind of fast (he's a bit like the opposite of me about this).
He also was a very extroverted child.
But he suddenly stopped speaking when he was 2, and gradually regressed.
Because of that my mother became severely depressed, also my brother became depressed, in fact he self-harmed by hitting his head on the wall when he was upset.
Now he's doing it seldom because my parents have discovered a med he can take that calm him down without giving him side-effects.

This was way too long...

I always had AS but it only really became a problem after childhood. As a child I would quote comedy shows I seen on TV obsessively and pull faces and do impressions of people. Perfectly ok to do this as a kid, but the older I got the more I realized my interactions with people were always one sided. It kind of progressed from there and I only found out about AS late twenties.

In regressive autism, child loses developed skills, e.g. language, but may redevelop skills after regression.