Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

Normal people are extremely sensitive to deviations from social norms. There's even a word for it, "coolness" and more modern derivatives. Human social interactions are extremely complex, both verbal and otherwise, and people will subconsciously become uncomfortable or disinterested when people deviate too far from patterns.

The weird kids get bullied because they are legitimately weird. But pretending to be normal is difficult and tiring and inevitably you say or do enough unusual stuff that you give off weird "vibes".

And what we call "bad vibes" are often just people picking up subconsciously on subtle abnormal behaviors. I doubt that 90% of the population has actually considered any of this from an introspective perspective. Asperger's is simultaneously obvious and invisible. And doubly difficult because the rules we are supposed to follow are abstract and unspoken, exactly the kind of ideas with which autism makes people struggle.

Were there any correlations in this study between changes in severity of symptoms and therapies such as ABA?

I think it's very interesting. I, like I suppose many people in this thread, am virtually always consciously masking in interactions with people. I'm also happy to explain this to folks who are interested, and I haven't ever been called out on it, so you could say that I'm "perfect" in that regard. I doubt whether I adhere perfectly to "normal" behavior, but people don't ask about it, at least.

I think it's just a matter of effective control of yourself and a full understanding of the people and situation you're in. Most people on the spectrum struggle with the understanding bit, or the control bit, or both. I'm really lucky in that I'm pretty decent at both halves, so I don't think there's a true "secret to learn", it's more about capacity and ability.

The biggest thing I've learned is that I don't really like myself when I'm in full-facsimile mode, and so I consciously try to lower the facade whenever possible, but it's difficult after a lifetime of training by social sanctions.

my son had a couple of very annoying years between 4-7 where he would seem behind compared to other kids on certain things such as motor skills and physical (hand/leg) coordination. he was also huge for his age, like trapped in a larger child's body.

when it was time to send him to school our neighbors who knew him (because he hung out with their kid) suggested to send him to an IQ test because they figured he might be highly intelligent ("same as their kid").

they believed that their own son was very bright too but I thought it's only because both parents were closer to 50 than to 20. their child also had no real children friends and mixed mostly with adults - hence also talked like an adult (and seemed smarter than average for that reason alone - he was total sh1t with being a kid though but he knew how to recite grown up books and read/write long before school ...)

anyway - bear with me, I promise to connect these things

eventually we sent our son to do an IQ test and it came back inconclusive. we were told to test him again in a years time. (he was a mixed kids growing up with 3 languages which might also have altered how he performed on the test). Long story short he had a difficult first year in school with the teachers telling us that either a) he is too smart and should be moved forward a class, or b) he needs to go to a special school because he is dumb, or c) he should probably be tested for both autism and ADD. We decided to do none of the above and give it another 2 years to see how it play out. Eventually he settled into his surrounding and turned out one of the best students in class.

another case: my best friend's kid is diagnosed with autism ("somewhere on the spectrum" they say). He is incredibly active for his age and more than other kids. His parents who are both very ill (ALS and MS) are used to seeing a doctor every few weeks to get injections, ... they have more exposure to doctors than to any other grown ups in their life, and meanwhile their friends are also all people who have "sick" kids. Whenever I play with the kid I think he is pretty normal, except for that he is a lot smarter than anyone else. Like a smart boy stuck in a smaller childs body.

Another example: my gf is a nurse and occupational therapist. she literally works with disabled kids who are on the spectrum, have down-syndrome, cerebral palsy (to name the most common problems). She says if somebody has autism you can sure as hell tell. There is no "maybe", or "somewhere on the spectrum"- yes some cases are milder but she thinks that some doctors just diagnose and presribe solutions for things they don't fully understand themselves.

could it be that a lot of these kids simply go through stages in their childhood at different speeds? like not every kid fits into our "systems-thinking" model and maybe totally grows out of it a year later? The horrid thing here is that the moment way start treating their behavior as a disease it has good potential to actually become one, ... which brings me to the last example.

I worked with a US company remote. we were all on Jitsi every day even we weren't meeting so the mgmt could keep tabs (this was the rule for some reason). The assistant to the CEO a mid 30ies lady insisted that her child had autism. She constants forgot to switch her mic to mute and I could see how she talked to that child. He would get regular slaps in the face and get screamed at - then he would be told to take his meds. Also I think they might have been on some deal where they get benefits because their kids was "disabled".

idk what to make of this but the whole medical profession seems like a racket to me. especially in the US (where this disease seems more of a fashion than anything) ... I hope these kids don't wake up one day and realize the crimes that have been committed against them.

I'm glad I put my foot down and not put my child on pills (just to put money in some idiotic Dr. med. pocket). I would have destroyed my child! (and I see what it's like whenever I look at my best friends kid!

I'm not sure if this helps, but after 45 years as a stranger in a strange land, the only friends I've managed to keep longer than a year have been autistic themselves.

My wife is also autistic, and we both marvel over how, for the first time ever in our lives, our home is our sanctuary where we can just relax and be completely ourselves with all the weirdness that entails. All previous romantic relationships were stressful and ended badly because it felt like I was walking on eggshells, and couldn't understand why my SO kept getting upset. My wife had similar experiences in past relationships.