Hello. I’m in my mid 20s. I was mute in my early youth and had to attend speech therapy classes in preschool and early in elementary school, and I rode the short bus. I played with and spoke to my stuffed toys until I was in middle school and that was when my parents took them away. My family always said that I was an odd child, but only in recent years did they suspect that I was on the spectrum. To this day, I’ve never been officially diagnosed.
That’s sad your parents took your stuffed toys away ): Its never to late to get diagnosed but if you can’t there is nothing wrong with being self diagnosed. People will give you a hard time about being self diagnosed but almost all autism communities are cool with self diagnosis.
Yes, I had a stuffed anatomical stomach, he was my favorite. I found him years later when I was helping my family clean the house, but my stepdad destroyed him and made me clean up the mess.