My Early Years

It's safe to say I wasn't the easiest child to raise. Although for the first couple of years of my life I lulled my parents into a false sense of security, from around the age of two that soon came to an end. The well behaved calm child my mother had thought she had, began to have meltdowns that she found it difficult to bring me out of. I was her first child and at the time she attributed my meltdowns to the terrible 2s and hoped that I would grow out of them. I can tell you now at aged 32 that I never have!

Taking me out and about began to be troublesome. My mother would cringe as I would roll around on the floor of the doctors waiting room while all the other children sat on the seats waiting patiently. At the first meeting with my new headmistress when I was old enough to start school the woman looked at me rolling around on the floor while she talked to my parents and said "she's going to be a handful"

I also showed other early signs of being on the spectrum. I would walk on my toes more than most children. My mother thought it was cute at the time, but when I was 16 the doctors informed me that walking on my toes as a child was the likely cause of the weakness and hyper-flexibility that I was experiencing in my ankle joints. It is also another sign of being on the autistic spectrum.

When I was nearly 4 my mother became concerned that I often wasn't responding when she was talking to me. She began to be concerned that I might have hearing problems and so she took me to the doctor. After running some initial tests they informed her that I was in fact deaf, and that the only reason I was speaking as well as I was is that I was lip reading. I can remember taking these tests and I remember hearing beeps in my ears, but I have no memory of how I responded to them. After running some more tests they determined finally that I was not deaf, merely choosing not to respond. I think that today this would lead to an investigation into why I was choosing not to respond, but back in the early 80s there was very little awareness about the autistic spectrum, and no further investigations were carried out.

Although I was not behind in my speech and sat up, crawled and walked on time, I was 4 years old before I started making an attempt to dress myself. My own daughter was only 2 when she started insisting on trying to dress herself, and since this places me more in line with my son who is 5 and has only just started to occasionally try to dress himself, I wonder if my delays in this area point to me having had similar problems to him at this age.

It is hard to look back over 3 decades and assess what signs of Aspergers I exhibited as a small child, but some of these anecdotes I grew up with and it is only now that I realise they slot into the Aspergers puzzle. The more both myself and my parents think about it the more we understand my behaviour back then...and that was just the beginning!

Introduction

My name is Sarah and I am 35 years old. I live in Wales and am married with two children - a 7 year old daughter and an 8 year old son who was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when he was 5. I’m sure I will write his story in time, but this blog isn’t about him…it’s about me.

My entire life I have felt different to everyone else, but until my son was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, I didn’t understand why. It was through my research on the subject to try and understand him better that I stumbled across a complete description of myself, including some of my deepest thoughts never shared with anyone. Yet there it all was in black and white.

Last year I was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder on the Aspergers end and for the first time in 35 years I am beginning to make sense of my mind, my feelings and my explosive reactions. I began to write this blog three years ago and it is about my journey of discovery as I try to make sense of my life for the first time. I hope that it will be of interest to others who may be going through the same thing, or who know someone who is. I also hope that friends and family will read it and hopefully they will understand me a little better too.