Hello. After the diagnosis we began to think back over our son's life to see if we knew the "why" & "when". When he was a new baby he refused to nurse, so that me wonder if he was showing signs then & I missed them. When he was a year old he had seizures for an unknown reason, could that have been a sign? I know some children with Autism do have seizures. He was so busy, walking at 11 months. He never seemed to slow down. He did talk late, at the age of 2, but once he started there was no stopping him! He smiled, was friendly & eager to learn. He learned his colors, abc's & shapes easily. We did crafts together & sang songs. We had our 2nd son when he was 4 & he loved having a baby brother! It wasn't until after he started school that we began to notice changes in his personality. He started to seem shy all of a sudden. He had liked dinosaurs since he was a toddler, but his interest seemed to really focus on them even more. He was an early reader, though, and we read a lot of different books. His favorites were always the dinosaur ones, though. We made the reading fun by making sounds & motions to go with the stories. We used flash cards & he learned all the states by kindergarten. We are so thankful we were already in these habits as he is a good reader & a good student to this day. We have often thought it was a good thing he wasn't diagnosed earlier as we might not have done as much with him. We might have limited him. He has always been in regular ed classes, only adding speech. He carries a B average. We finally came to realize we won't ever know the "why" or "when". Instead of focusing on that, we learned to focus on his future. We encourage him to do his best in all that he does. He is an amazing young man & I believe he will do well in his future. I think this is one of the most important gifts we can give our kids. They need to know we believe in them. Aspergers is not a disability to us, he just processes things different than we do. Things are so clear to him. It either is or it isn't.