Just watched some old tapes of my son - what happened?

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Yesterday I was cleaning out an upstairs closet stuffed with old pictures, schoolwork, books we'd made together etc. and feeling much the same. When they were 4 they seemed more social and engaged with the world than they are now, and they were so happy most of the time. I think what has changed for us is awareness. Like many of the other posters said, the other kids around them have matured and their abilities have grown in ways that my sons' abilities have not, and my sons are now aware of these differences, which they weren't until about midway through grade 3. So now all of that crushing social anxiety serves to magnify the deficits which have steadily grown larger in the last couple of years. Same kids, same Aspie traits, but the kids around them are much more socially adept, and my sons are much more aware of this, leading to more unhappiness, withdrawal, stress and sensory overload.

(Also I don't think that having a moment of sadness, because your child struggles more than they used to, is indicative of any sort of denial about the diagnosis or non-acceptance of autism in general. I myself am likely Aspie, this does not mean that I can't sometimes feel sad or worried because my children find life so difficult, rather sometimes I feel deeply concerned and have to will my way back to positivity, because I can relate first hand to what they are going through, and also know how much harder it is about to become as they enter their teen years.)

Hi C- I just did this over the weekend and had the same thoughts and response as you. I had trouble watching my quiet 4 yr old do these cognitive tests. I cried. He is a very different and seriously Autistic teen now. No longer little or calm.

I sort of "get" what the OP might be referring to. As time goes by my daughter becomes more withdrawn and less and less animated. As a small girl she would show excitement and laugh openly. Now it seems those moments are rarer and getting fewer each year. My daughter is only 7, was never in a play or "headed for Broadway" but I definitely see her pulling the cocoon more tightly around her and I am finding it more and more difficult to make the connection with her. It's almost as if we are trading the meltdowns, volatility, and hyper emotionality for stoic, intellectual, (sometimes) angry and withdrawn. I still see the glimmer of excitability there but I wonder how much longer it will actually be reachable.

Or maybe we just had a bad night and things will be better tomorrow.......

I have videos of my son from 18 months ago, saying what I say back to him and smiling at the camera and doing what I ask. Then in the next six months he somewhat turned into a Zombie. No speech, no looking at me, and lack of expressions.
I've found some ways to connect with him again, but he has no speech anymore.

I feel this way, too.

And, up front - we don't have an official diagnosis (yet).

I recently looked back at videos and old pictures also. I don't see anything, except a happy, confident child. (Which I don't have now. Now I have a moody, nervous teenager.)

I mean, intellectually I *know* some signs were there. There were never really many friends (often none). There were always people here and there who found her odd or took an inexplicable instant dislike. That started happening around 4 or 5ish... I always thought a lot of them were just put off by her obvious smarts. (It doesn't make other parents feel good when your preschooler is reading Harry Potter and theirs are struggling with letter recognition. Or for example, she made the swim teacher mad when he tried to lie to her about some posted rules. She could read them, and knew he was lying (at 4). Once at 9 some mothers from the softball team complained about 'the way she talks'... ) Anyway, that kind of thing was always happening, but I didn't connect it to anything. There are other things, looking back, like her need to be first on the stairs in preschool, or as a toddler, an insistence on having the left shoe on before the right (at the time I was just mega-impressed that she knew right from left). She always had a fakey-sounding laugh, but she laughed along with us. (it was actually fake, apparently.) But she was curious, affectionate, happiest when busy and learning about new things, and irrepressibly optimistic.

It becomes clearer with age that socially there's a huge gap. Humor is hard and in conversations she's two steps behind everyone else and hopelessly unable to keep up (that's my observation with family even..outside family, at school, it's probably worse). In the earlier years, I guess adults make more allowances and conversations are less complex. She has trouble communicating a main point with out a slew of details and often her remarks are totally irrelevant. (It's very hard to be patient with that in someone with such obvious intelligence, I must say. But in the younger years, kind of cute sometimes.) She doesn't like sudden changes in plan and as she gets older, this gets more pronounced.

She didn't and doesn't seem to have the sensory issues, and she doesn't seem to have any motor skills deficits (well, bad handwriting for a girl). I suspect these kind of symptoms attract more attention.

Anyway, that was long and getting off topic.

But I feel the same. I wonder if I was missing other signs, what did I not see? But I look back and I still don't see it. It causes me grief to think I missed it and equally as much grief that we might be off base now thinking of AS (I don't know, but I don't see any other thing that explains it all). And beyond that, I look back at the happy and exuberant little girl and I do wonder what happened. I love her no matter what, but I do wish she were having an easier time of it, that she could find that joyful way of being again somehow.

I relate somewhat, because looking at pictures of how smiley and happy my son was when he was younger used to tear my guts out. He was always autistic, no question, but he was also happy... they gave him a smiley face award in preschool for cheerfulness, and the smiley face was like his icon. But around age 5, things started to get bad... lots of talking about how horrible he is, lots of grumpiness, irrational jealousy of other kids... (he would want what they had, but lose interest the second he got it.)

I'm so thankful to say that things are much better this year and he once again seems like a happy person most of the time. He has a really good teacher who's working wonderfully with him and has made a lot of developmental strides. He seems to have gotten over a lot of issues that used to eat at him. It's so great to have him enthusiastically agree when I suggest we do an acitivty, or to not make a big stink over something like having to put his shoes on again. I'm not saying he never grumbles or always wants to do stuff, but the difference is amazing.

I think the people who are saying it's the expectations vs. development are right. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if my son's mood is so much better because he has "caught up" somewhat and no longer feels like such an oddball. He's also really shining academically, which probably helps his self-esteem. (I remember a psychologist who specializes in autistic kids telling us that all kids should have a chance to not be the lowest kid on the totem pole.)

Speaking from the POV of the kid who seemed normal, the signs in tapes of me as a baby are screamingly obvious to me, but my NT family persists in misinterpreting it because it's so easy to do. (When did trichotillomania become a normal quirk for a baby?) And I can tell you first-hand that children will accept anyone until they're eight. At the age of eight, they suddenly won't be friends with anyone who isn't NT. Hence, a social life is trivially easy for many children on the spectrum at very young ages. I didn't get worse at it; it got harder.

When you're a very young child, with people telling you what to do all the time (or without any obligations), you don't need very much executive function. And of COURSE a little kid is going to have meltdowns all the time. A little kid can be really quirky and no one will notice.

And even when something is off, how many of you parents think your child will grow out of it?

Similarly, delays can be more obvious later. If there's a speech delay, you won't notice before a normal child would speak.

And finally, regarding shyness, as everything else is noticed-- as you're excluded from every group, as teachers come to hate you, as people go from being thrilled that you're talking to wanting you to shut up-- you learn to be shy. You learn that that's how you survive. You learn to fear people. You learn to shut up when everything you say is used against you. When something about you that you can't even perceive makes the people around you act as if you smell awful, you learn to avoid them. To not draw notice. The lack of running around playing with them and subsequent retreat into studying your special interest, interacting only with adults who never run and jump and spin, gets you comfortable only with quiet. Children become alien to you. Former friends become terrifying, the world incomprehensible. You haven't practiced, so you're not athletic. Rather than fail, shy as you are, you look for ways out. Get more out of practice. Seem stranger, be rejected more.