About 11 years ago we had neighbors move into the neighborhood.
They had a boy the same age as my son. Both of them were 4 years old at the time. After the boy came over/outside one day, I told my wife there was something off about the kid. Mainly, no eye contact whatsoever.
It took the parents/teachers another 3 years to diagnose the kid with Asperger’s. Which is a high functioning Autism. To this day, his mother calls him a genius. And he does have gifts, but sadly, he will never be a normal functioning member of society.
hmmm.. when we were toddlers, we were TOLD by our parents to look our elders (and our peers) in the eye...even after being contrite for misbehaving. If we didn’t, we got a smack. Very few autistics in the 50s and 60s. I fear the lack of social skills due to poor parenting often gets misdiagnosed in this day of “everything is a syndrome” as spectrum autism or aspie. JMO.