Some girls with Asperger's syndrome don't get diagnosed

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Well...I was told that this was just called being 'soppy' or 'silly'.

Everything else I learned from Biology or personal and social classes, nothing from home at all. The school told me to discuss these issues with people I trusted. However the people I trusted thought that too much fuss was being made.

If I ever tried to discuss those things at home, I was told that I was being disgusting and that that kind of language wasn't allowed in the house.

As for relationship advice, it was the general:
'Be nice to everyone and they'll be nice to you.'

Which doesn't prepare you much at all.
I don't know if that's naive or not.
I certainly know that that doesn't work for all people all the time, so I can't be that naive.

Not being able to small-talk doesn't always equal naive.
It just means that you can't always give people 'the spoonful of sugar' they expect to help 'the medicine go down' in a conversation. This can cause misunderstandings or misinterpretations where no offense was intended.

Sometimes I know what's going on generally socially in painful detail (often better than most people I've been told), but am too overwhelmed or ignored to be able to put it right or do anything productive about it.

As for practical serviceable relationship advice for the real world, I was given zero at home.
I was told just to study and get on with things, so everything would just fall magically into place. I was basically told that if I got good enough grades and was polite, people would be nice to me, want to be friends with me and accept me.

Once I doing something I liked or being productive, I was told not to worry because people wouldn't bother me at all and they'd just get on with their own lives.

That just isn't true.

Maybe I was being given advice by people who were 'socially naive' themselves.
I'd be unfair for me to blame them for that. If they weren't to know they weren't to know.
Not everyone is equally socially adept. Some people are oblivious to the idea of social adeptness because it's not usually talked about in the open. I was oblivious to this for years simply because I wasn't told how important it was.

I thought that relationships just happened. I thought that the world was full of objects and jobs to do. I thought that socialising and making friends were meant to be enjoyable recreational activities, something that someone would engage in after the work was done. I thought that relationships were the rewards people got for working hard and being honest.




Yes. I agree with this point.

But what kind of intervention?

Someone breathing down the girl's neck 24-7 to make sure that nothing happens?
I've had that happen to me before. It's been well meaning and good, but it hasn't always been pleasant.

What about independence and learning to work out things for oneself?
(I say this and I'm practically marooned).

Constant chaperoning? What?

Better awareness?

Informing her friends of the issues properly (not condescendingly or with untruths).

The only way I could see around this is for other people to be informed and act as a back-up friendship group. This could potentially decrease the girl's freedom to make friends with other groups of people by herself though.


I felt reluctant to accept the help offered to me by teachers who were concerned with my socialising, the reason being that my family believes that it can be intrusive and counter productive to over-interfere with someone else's life.

I don't know about this whole 'male brain thing': it seems a bit vague, perhaps even a bit misleading.

I've always liked warm colours (oranges, pinks and golds for example).
I've read that females are more sensitive to these warm colours, because these are usually the colours of ripening fruit and that females may have gathered in this fruit. I've read that a liking for warm colours is hardwired in the female brain.

I've had male acquaintances, but I wouldn't say that I have a 'male' brain.

My brain seems to be able to execute the rudiments of female body language/social signals at least. This is why I believe my brain can't be completely male.

If I was male with a male brain, I know that I wouldn't react the way I do in certain situations. There are differences.

I'm not an expert on this, but I believe that this issue is more complex and broader than some people might be willing to admit.

There are female systemisers out there too, probably more than have been accurately counted or acknowledged. But even those I've met were kind and caring. They certainly didn't act 'male', quite the opposite in most cases.

I never got diagnosed - I lived in Brazil during my childhood and was labeled "weird". My luck was that I was very good at school, otherwise... acting the way I did, they would probably had me kicked out.

There were NO ONE like me in the whole school. No one at all.

I was classic textbook case -- ticks, no eye contact, talking to myself, flapping of hands when excited (I still do that), different voice tones depending of the situation, tons if imaginary friends, an incessant obsession with pre-history and animals (mainly mammals, but I researched everything), drawing and reading. I hated groups, was never good at small talk, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. so many things you wouldn't believe.

One thing I have to say -- despite most of the bullying I had to endure came from boys, my best friends during my life were also boys. I don't have a male brain by any means; I am actually very feminine, girly, and also a belly dancer at home (one of my obsessions as an adult).

But... boys were not catty, at least not in front of me. They talked about much cooler things, like monsters and robots. And they always tolerated my monologues about pre-history, animals and arts much better than the girls. They did not talk about me behind my backs (at least if they did, it never came back to me, probably because they are less gossip-driven). They did not seem to be in a hurry to grow up; also because they were in my presence, they did not talk about girls. There were much fewer awkward subjects that would make me freeze and not know what to say. Boys were the perfect friends!

I'm sure more people had the same experience?

It's horrible being analysed from five years old .
I've been through this and I really wished that it hadn't happened.
It's like they put you under a microscope and everything you do is wrong and even then they can't diagnose you properly. I became paranoid about adults at that age due to my experiences and I still haven't fully recovered.

All of that interference made people afraid of me and I of them.
It didn't help understanding.

I found it incredibly counter-productive.

People saying that there was something 'wrong' with me did absolutely nothing for my self esteem. It also stunted my social development because few people wanted to talk with a 'sick problem child'.

All the while, I couldn't see what I was doing wrong and what was making them so mad and afraid.

I was just being me.




I can gauge the intentions of those around me and read their body language to a basic level.

I've helped people who have felt sad and worried.
I have helped those who have felt lonely and ostracised.
I have formed emotional and social connections with others, because they've thanked me for my support and help!

I can form social connections and will do so in the future, even if it's not easy.
I was informally labeled AS when I was a child and I can say that I have helped people, had meaningful friendships and helped others deal with their emotional traumas, just not in the expected style!

I just don't have the social back-up to respond and deal with potential harassment situations, if I'm on my own, which I am usually. I don't clique up easily.

This is my idea as to why most girls hang around in groups: social back up.

Also there seems to be a stigma against girls walking and doing things on their own.

Girls on their own are seen as easy targets whatever their ability to read body language. That's my hypothesis anyway.

Also, I think that there are various no-verbal dialects, some with more limited repertoires of facial expressions and emotions than others.

I also didn't realise that all of these social nuances were so important, my relatives did them all at a basic level, but not at the hyper-social level that some people to expect women to perform at nowadays.

After all of those years of being messed about by people labeling me; overcrowding me; ostracising me or expecting me to socialise in a set way: you bet I was desperate for social interaction!

I have proved that I can socialise and form meaningful relationships with people, just not in the orthodox way that child psychologists expect girls to socialise.

I can't talk about how I was treated or labeled in the past because people won't believe me or they'd think that I was being deliberately awkward.

From my experience, labeling leads to further ostracism and can divide families.
Especially if the family's values and character traits match the labeling criteria for the child.

If people had just accepted me as who I was and given me the support and tools to help myself without being condescending or complaining that I hadn't met my 'social quota' for the day, I'd have been a lot happier and willing to cooperate.

This is why I've flown under the radar even though I still struggle because, to be quite brutally honest, I've had enough of the expectations and labeling.

I don't see how a formal diagnosis would help if there are no sensible people to understand or resources to help out there.

What's the point if people either won't listen or will assume things about you that are completely untrue?



Ugh.
Just Ugh.
I'm sorry but this made me angry.

This is the 21st century not the 19th.

How about just accepting the girls as they are?

It's stupid pressurising girls to be girls like this.

They might say that they 'want' to be like this, but for many of them, it's probably not that way at all, they've probably been effectively brainwashed to be this way by their parents and/or society's expectations.

How about letting girls invent their own way of doing things and holding events?
What about different things?
What about being inventive?

There are lots of other things that can be done!

How about letting them be themselves for a change and not shoving them into a box?

I've experienced this, the coercion by other females and being forced to be someone who I was not. I feel like people have tried to shove me into a box from birth simply because I was a girl.

How about thinking outside the box for a change?

I never wanted to do anything like this.
I wanted to be myself.

I wanted to do things my own way, not someone else's.


The idea of after school clubs is good, but I think that the motivations mentioned here are questionable.

Girl's should be taught to think for themselves not follow someone else's so called 'social mores'.

Ambereyes - Hurray!

People should stop trying to "fix" us or change us.

The gifted thing probably made the difference.. I always wanted to be one of the smart kids, and had "smart person" interests, but since I'm not actually smart, I couldn't fit in with the gifted kids. I'm not sure if middle school or elementary school was worse.. they were both really, really bad.

Everybody always knew there was something wrong with me, but it was only when it bothered them that they bothered trying to do anything to "help".. which meant that the "help" was actually a punishment.
I think in elementary school they (by "they" I think I mostly mean teachers; people who actually did frequently see how I was being treated) didn't take it seriously how bad it was because I would say that I had some friends-- but when I said "friend" I meant "person who considers me remotely human" rather than actually "friend." So they'd say I was lucky to have 4 or 5 friends, not realizing that out of the several hundred people in the school, I was counting a friend as anybody who felt sorry for me. The meaner kids would tell me that my "friends" didn't actually like me, just pitied me, but I said it was the same thing-- and to me, it was. People who felt sorry for me must think I was human.. so they were better than the people who tortured me.

Actually, in the gifted classes, I was teased and by some, considered one of the dumbest kids in the class...
When I was in elementary school, and had first tried to get in to the "Vanguard" classes (after being held back a year for my meltdown), it was a concern of the counselor that I would be bullied severely by the snooty Vanguard kids.

I just happened to have really good luck with the standardized testing...also, the gifted classes were considered "Special Education" as they were for kids who were smart, but tended to learn differently, or apply themselves in different ways...There were kids in the class who were geniuses, but refused to do any work because they were extremely bored.


I was stunted by my social problems and whatnot in the gifted classes...it just was not as brutal as it would have been in the angry, overcrowded regular classes, and I would never have been able to swing it in the Honor's classes, because I am too disorganized.