This girl?

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Some of the stories written by autistic women about wearing masks, etc, make me curious about my daughter.

She is 7, very popular, but is never herself. She always acts like her friends expect her to act. This seems so young for this. My husband thinks that must just be how popular kids act. It makes me sad though. I want her to feel confident in who she is.

Aside from experiencing strong smells, never eating, and this mask thing, nothing else makes me think ASD about her.

What do you mean by wearing a mask? What type of mask? Maybe I don't know that because I'm guy that has autism and I guess boys with it don't do it much.

https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpo ... ind-masks/

Doctors wear masks, when dealing with contagion, and self-righteous people wear masks, when dealing with the ceremonially-unclean. Dirt bike riders and superherous wear masks. And, there was a fad, in the 80's involving ace bandages. Have you asked her what it means, to her, in an open-ended, and non-confrontational way?

I would have to agree with the above posters.

She is trying to "follow the herd," and feels the need to conform to her peer group.

Probably, most "neurotypical" children do this sort of thing until adolescence--a time when conformity to peer standards continue, yet individual personalities reveal themselves more.

We seem to be guessing what people want, instead of just asking. Your imagination might be running wild, at all hours, when you are trying to do other things, wearing you down, when there could be some perfectly banal reason. Or, no matter how bad it is, it could be knowable, at least, and you could find closure.

I'm guessing by 'mask' you mean not a literal mask, but a 'mask' in the sense that she becomes a social chameleon, which is very common for females on the autism spectrum. This tenancy to camouflage or cameleon is a way of not only fitting in, but because people on the spectrum jave trouble understanding human interaction, they tend to mirror what they see to appear more neurotypical, so as not to stand out among their peers.
I did this a lot growing up, personally.

This sort of thing is also common amongst non-autistic children in general. Boys and girls.

Ok, thanks. I think she copies people as a means to fit in, not because she has no idea what to do.

So--NT. Thanks!

All human beings have a social mask, which isn't a literal mask. It's just a name for people acting the way society wants them to act instead of being themselves. That's why, among many other reasons, I hate society. People are expected to smile and act all happy and positive when they're feeling completely dead inside.

Children are cruel. They see being different as the same as having some terrible contagious disease. My mother told me not long ago that a boy had gotten new sneakers that he really liked, but when he went to school all the other kids were little snot rags to him because they weren't a famous expensive brand like Nike, and when he got home he told his mom he never wanted to wear them again. When I was younger someone once told me they put a can of store-brand pop in her daughter's lunch for a treat, but at school kids told her it was "poverty pop" because it wasn't a name-brand like Coke.

You know, my parents really had it hard. THEY had to TEACH my brother and me right from wrong, and show us why it was better to do the right things! They knew if they didn't we would very likely pick wrong and be cruel, heartless little monsters.