Not sure what led me to realize I may be autistic but I realize it now. I'm 63 years old.
I was told by my mother that I was a difficult child. I was her first. She said I cried a lot when I was an infant. She said if she put me down I would cry. She picked me up and I would stop crying. She even went so far as to iron clothes while she was holding me in one arm
Later when I was a little older, I would pull away and not want to be held or cuddled. I would also get into everything.
When I started school the teachers told my parents that I should be evaluated by a psychologist but this was 1964 and my father refused to do it. I didn't play with the other children but preferred to sit on a bench and peel bark off of sticks and collect rocks. Peeling was something I did a lot. I would peel paint off of things that were already starting to peel. And I would pour glue onto my desk, let it dry and try to peel it off all in one sheet.
I would sometimes get bullied by the boys in school who made fun of my messiness. In third grade I was humiliated by a teacher who dumped my desk out in front of everyone in the class because I was messy.
As I got older, I read a lot and would often spend recess time reading the encyclopedias instead of playing with the other children.
During this whole time I would sometimes have melt-downs where I would cry a lot and my mother probably made it worse by telling me that I was a crybaby and saying that if I didn't stop crying she would "give me something to cry about".
I have been accused of not appreciating gifts because I don't act excited enough. I also have been told that I was smiling when someone told me about someone dying. I have a tendency to smile most of the time. People say I speak out of turn, talk too loud and sometimes say things that are inappropriate for the time or circumstance. I seem to have very little natural filter.
I'm sure there are other things, but these are just the ones I can think of right now of the bat.
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