What were you like as a baby?

In most technical environments, most people are looking at the diagrams or the broken thing so don't notice lack of eye contact. Even in meetings, there's usually a display to be looking at. Hide in plain sight.

I use a high-speed optical interface.

No RS232 port? :-D

I don't know why, but looking in people's eye's for more than a short period of time makes me feel uncomfortable.  I remind myself to do it, but I prefer to look off into the distance somewhere.

I never did eye contact - but as a twin, it was never noticed because my brother was normal - so he masked my deficiencies most of the time.

For team things, I almost always led any team - and as my ideas were always best, the team followed my lead.

I hope that special school didn't traumatise you too much...

I read somewhere that some ASD kids don't say anything until they can make full perfect sentences.

My reports just kept on saying I should pay more attention in class and interact more. 

It's interesting what you say about eye contact. I was always told to 'stop ignoring' people abd start listening. For as long as I can remember I never understood that eye contact thing and hated it.

I scored high on all senses and thought P.E. was the worst with those horrible accoustics or teamplay things.

I'd say her chances of being on the spectrum are probably >90% but that's fine with us. 

Because of the amount of input we've given our daughter (i do all the science, my wife does all the humanities), she was very advanced too (she used to love to do mental arithmetic and algebra with me during bathtimes at 2 years old) so as her personality grew, I couldn't adapt.

A friend's wife is a teacher and one evening we were talking about it all and she mentioned that I seemed to have an awful lot of Asperger traits so I ended up being diagnosed 10 years ago at 42.

I now know why I behave/react the way I do so I spend a lot of brain power pretending to be as normal as possible - especially for her.

My daughter is at uni now so I'm finding it easier to interface to her as an adult.

My school report when I was around 8 years old.  Still struggling to speak.

The special school I mentioned earlier was for emotionally damaged kids and almost the dustbin of the educational system. 

30 years later I was catching up.

I was classified as 'difficult' and not listening. And always wanting an explanation or reason for anything and everything. And lots of negative classifying for me too...

Oh my... that is almost me. Well, apart from the twin, lego and I was ahead in specific areas and a nuisance at school. Got punished a lot and even hit at one point.

My dad said I wanted to read adult literature at 8, but they tried stopping me.

I was always by myself in a corner with a book or wanting to do what I wanted, not pleasing anyone else (my aunt just said I was never listening, always doing my own thing).

I hit rock bottom when I turned out to be pregnant at 43, and just couldn't cope. Then the entire first year I struggled to keep up with her developments and changing schedule and I couldn't. It is a little easier now as she is so much into books and communicating. But sometimes she suddenly changes schedule and I am not fast to adapt.

I'm a twin. My brother in NT. I was told I was an early walker & talker with an advanced vocabulary. I was glued to the telly with almost any data input (I still remember watching moon landings when I was 3). I tended to sit away from everyone behind the sofa and play on my own and wouldn't communicate unless it suited me. I loved the library and read any grown-up reference books with diagrams and pictures. Not remotely interested in story books - most of those could be summed up in a few lines - but a book on Saturn V rockets was way more interesting.

Having a twin meant I had a working model 24/7 to copy most behaviours so I was building a database of 'correct behaviours'. Twins are always thought of as a composite person 'the twins' so I was never considered on my own.

We started school at 4 and the teacher eventually told my parents that I should be going to a special school (I was incredibly advanced at an early age).

Unfortunately, soon after, we moved from Oop North to near London in 1972 when we were 6 and the new school had no challenges for me - the teachers were all newly qualified hippy-trippy sandle-wearers and I was streets ahead of everyone else so I learnt to skid through school getting top marks and doing practically no work. That was my undoing - lack of discipline and challenge meant I became lazy and skilled at figuring out the minimum levels of effort required to succeed. The only plus was that they had Lego. If I sped through the work and got 10/10 I was allowed to play with it - and as I was so far ahead, I got it all to myself and played alone. Win-win.

I realised I was very, very different to everyone else when I was about 12 - that's when I began to seriously mask and create a false user-interface that got me through life very successfully right up until my daughter was born - I then couldn't adapt fast enough as she grew. That led me to being diagnosed.

I met all the developmental milestones.  In fact I spoke and walked early and have always had the feeling that I am rushing through life.  I was born a month early too.  Nobody noticed anything amiss except to say that I was "too sensitive" or "highly strung", usually as a critisicm rather than a neutral observation. 

Diganosed last month at age 55. 

I have a sister three years older than me.  And she is as NT as one can get.  She developed normally. Even now as adults people comment that they can't believe that we're related.

I was mute for a long time.  I could speak but I didn't.  Even now I'm not sure why?  I think it was because I just didn't see any point in socialising or speaking.  I did cry a lot when I was in pain. But for some reason I just didn't speak.

I think I started  speaking when I was around 7 years old.

When I was 9 years old I was placed in a special school. And by then I was speaking.  I remember feeling empathy for a mute girl there, and trying to speak to her.  I was asking the staff, why she wouldn't talk to me.

I will upload a couple of my earliest school reports that I still have to show my development .

I was also way ahead on speech. My mum said that I had a vocabulary of about 100 words by the time I was a year old. Also way ahead with reading. I could read a small paperback by the time I started school at 5, although some of that may be due to having an English teacher father who enjoyed teaching me to read.

With the benefit of hindsight (I was diagnosed as an adult), there are plenty of photos of me as a little girl "hiding behind my hair", a stim which I still do now. I have definitely been hypersensitive to smell for as long as I can remember. Not an overly fussy eater (my sister was far worse) but I objected to quite a few foods on the basis of texture alone. I recall being told quite often to "look at me when I'm talking to you", which suggests my eye contact might not have been that good. 

Reaching milestones on time doesn't necessarily mean that your suspicions are unfounded. As far as I am aware, I met all of mine (some early). I have Asperger's by the way. Also there seems to be some evidence that ASD runs in families. There are definitely some other ASD folk in mine!

When did you start talking? I guess you were your mother's first baby, and she had no comparison maybe?

Many years later, my mother told me that people were telling her from the start that there was something wrong with me.  I didn't speak,  I didn't play and did not react to other people's presence.