First I just want to say I really like everyone's photos!
I'm afraid that I don't have any photos of me as a little kid to upload here (not stored in my computer anyway), but when I do go thru old photos of myself, two things that stand out to me....the first is the fact that whenever I'm being photographed, I'm either looking off to the side or have my eyes closed, and my smile is usually very strained or looks forced. The second thing is that in most photographs, I usually have one or two stuffed animals with me, or some other object. In the photos where I have a stuffed animal with me, I appear withdrawn from everyone and everything else in the photo and it looks as if I'm "talking" to the stuffed animal (something I've done all my life and continue to do as an adult
...it feels like I'm alone most of the time, so what am I supposed to do?).
It's the video footage that my favorite aunt took of me during my toddler/preschool years that I feel are the most "telling," tho...during a tape filmed on Christmas Eve when I was about 4, I'm fascinated with my father's wristwatch that glowed in the dark when you pushed a button. I also ask over and over again about opening "just one present" on Christmas Eve (what some neurotypicals refer to as "perseverating"), and then while I'm in the kitchen eating lunch, my mother begins singing as practice for a choral performance later that night. My mother's singing happened to be a sensory "no no" for me at that age, and I turned around and said, "Mom, STOP!" My mom replies with, "Baby!Coupe, just never mind!" I retort, "I'm MINDING!" And then my mom says, "Well, just go in the living room if you mind!" (I'm actually known as "the good one" in my family, and when my siblings and I watched that video a couple years ago, they found it quite hilarious that I used to "talk back" to our mother that way. XD)
In some video footage from when I would have been about nine years old, I actually seem kind of depressed and withdrawn. The only person I give consistent eye contact to is my aunt (who is filming) and I carry a toy of Randall from "Monsters Inc" everywhere with me, the way I did with stuffed animals in earlier photos/videos. I can't watch that particular video without alternately wanting to gather my younger self in my arms and rock her gently, and feeling a twinge of outrage that the emergent depression I was showing wasn't noticed sooner.