Female Autism

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How do you differentiate multiple special interests from interests that an NT may have?

I'll reply more later CBF atm.

A special interest isn't just an interest in something, it's persistent and consuming. You don't just like it, you breathe it. As said before, it's the intensity, and while there can be a couple, there isn't going to be that many at a time.

Last edited by Ganondox on 08 Jan 2015, 12:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Fascinating discussion.

Must a special interest be an intellectual pursuit? Or, can it simply be an obsession?

As an example, my daughter when she was younger (say between age 5-10) was obsessed with elephants. She collected them (mostly stuffed animals, but anything elephant-related). She would draw pictures of them. She would read about them. She would write stories about them. She would line them up. She would count them. She would sleep with them. All her teachers and classmates knew she loved elephants. She was obsessed with them. But is that a special interest?

Probably. Special interests are usually like that.

Elephants are intellectual topic, but special interest doesn't have to be information about a topic.
I spent a period drawing pictures of planes and boats only as my special interest.

But how would you differentiate that from an outside point of view? It would just look like an obsessive NT (which I know many of).

Perhaps some people consider eberrything that a person is interested in or enjoys doing at certain time to be special interests, but I don't think this way. For eggsample, I enjoy photography and plane-spotting, and do them on a Saturday afternoon once a month or so, but the time I spend on them is tiny compared to my real special interest, they are not even consistent hobbies like my mother's hobby of gardening, which she does eberry weekend and almost eberry day during summer when there are more plants demanding attention.

Pursuing one topic in many ways like elephant eggsample is common in special interest. Once one is obsessed, some people want to eggspress that in as many ways as possible.

By the fact they are autistic and not just obsessive.

How would you determine that they are autistic when this is part of the criteria?

What is the actual difference, between what you describe and an NT with multiple obsessive interests?

Because there is other criteria as well.

One just has multiple obsessive interests, the other has other autistic traits.

There might be more to it as well, but I don't have anything.

Which parts of the autism criteria are actually useful in the diagnostic process if things like special interests, stimming and routines etc. are not? (seems that is the direction this is going)

I flap my fingers with the speed of light while pacing back and forth, and I'm a female. What kind of neurotypical does that?

And there's a difference between having special interests that are common for a girl this age, and between obsession. I was obsessed with cats and nature, and many girls like cats, but I'd go on and on about it and not stop, and the other cats lovers usually dont do it to that extent.

Also, I engaged my babysitter with a discussion about how cavemen lived. She told my mother she thought she was talking to a grownup.

There is an endless list of autistic traits like walking on toes, intense love for music, monotone voice, dreamy look in the eyes, focusing on small details without seeing the large picture, hyperactivity, living in your own world, not understanding sarcasm, face blindness, not reading expressions, etc. Yes, you can tell when a girl is autistic.

Special interests are what make me doubt my diagnosis sometimes. It seems like for something to count as a 'special' interest, as opposed to a normal interest, you have to be utterly consumed by it and spend 12 hours at a time on it. My concentration span has never been that good! Which brings me to another point I've been wondering about lately: ADHD is sometimes co-morbid with autism. But ADHD (which I suspect I have, albeit mainly without the hyperactive component) would seem to directly contradict the notion of having a special interest that you can focus on for hours.

I think it can safely be said I have narrow/restricted interests, but I usually haven't had an interest that has consumed my life - unless you can count certain video games; a certain forum; a certain person, etc. Would so rather have a special interest in the field of physics or whatever, and be a brilliant geek: that would be awesome. I do have some interest in science, but neither the brainpower nor the focus to build on it.

Re social skills/empathy: Personally I have never felt good in those areas or easily able to pass as NT. (As a quick aside, I don't actually believe women are more empathetic than men overall. I believe they like to perceive themselves as being more empathetic, but it's largely just that: a perception. I've known loads of women with all the empathic abilities of an old leather boot.) Anyway, no, I'm not overoozing with empathy - and when I do feel empathy I don't go overboard with hugs and kisses - or competent 'masking' skills. I actually would've masked if I could, since as a teenager I wanted nothing more to fit in, but failed abjectly.

PS: Apologies for any rambling. Norovirus + ileostomy = brutal times. Still getting over it.

Being emetophobic, I have avoided nearly everything motion-sickness-inducing like the plague for years except for cars. So spinning is something I am just not into, although I do enjoy some twirling while dancing to music.

My interests in dolls, stuffed animals and cartoons may have seemed normal as a little girl, but when I became a teenager and was supposed to have grown out of such things, my interests in them only became much stronger. I was bullied a lot at school for being a fan of Garfield comics and keeping Garfield plushies in my locker, and drawing cartoons seemed to be all I cared about. I found most types of schoolwork in junior high to be mundane and very unnecessary since I would not need to know about the political wars of our early prime ministers while creating an animated world of talking hippos and cats.

Yeah that whole "every female autistic spins" is a big load of nonsense to me. That's like saying every deaf person can lip read.

Unlike good social cognition, lack of special interest doesn't preclude autism, and neither does lack of stimming.
Some autistic people never had a special interest or even a regular, moderate-intensity interest at any time of life.