Girls are over looked

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Hmm maybe that is partially why the other kids thought I was weird when I was in school......I was quite straightforward about my opinions, even if the teacher disagreed. I am pretty short and thin but my first year of college I was talking to a guy and he ended up telling me the way I dress and stuff sometimes intimidates people probably.........I don't feel very intimidating at all, usually I am on edge and anxious if I'm in a crowded place but apparently I look or otherwise seem intimidating. Maybe its that I am female but I don't look, act or give off the same vibes as a typical female.

I would encourage y'all to get connected somehow to the Autism Women's Network if you already aren't. They post on Facebook. This morning, they sent me this link to a book about Parenting Girls on the Autism Spectrum - Overcoming the Challenges and Celebrating the Differences:

http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Girls-A ... 284&sr=8-1

Thanks for that link!

men and women often have different symptoms and experiences with the same illness. schizophrenia is a good example of that, where it affects men and women differently, yet they both suffer from it (link):


also, Bipolar Disorder (link):



fact is, many mental illnesses and cognitive and learning disabilities manifest differently in men and women, which can make it difficult to diagnose one gender or the other. AS is still a relatively "new" disorder in the DSM, so clinicians are not necessarily attuned to disgnosing the disorder except in obvious cases. and a person can still experience a disorder even when it is not obvious.

If they're picked up on, then impairment is lessened. I wonder how "mimicing" is being defined, since it is extremely common for anyone to copy others.


That nurturing won't conceal or solve such problems, so no difficulties could just go unnoticed by someone who is actually observing. And even then, what of when girls mother boys who are losers?


Acting out isn't that prevalent in Aspergers. But there's still a high ratio there.


I don't get how gender disparities could have such an effect on diagnosis. I thought it would have the opposite effect then.


Of course, which is why mimicing as you describe it, cannot conceal symptoms.

Explain to me how a lack of conceptual knowledge about something simple like the concept of 'friend' would be obvious. If your child had a black and white concept of friend - the teacher said my entire class is my friend so even if they bully me, they are my 'friends' - how would it be obvious unless someone noticed that the childs definition wasn't matching up with the reality of her situation? This disparity in understanding is VERY easy to miss in casual observation. the child doesn't know they do not understand. The adults around them do not know they are misinterpretting unless something drastic happens to point it out. And if the child is embarrassed becasue they realize that sometimes they just don't 'get it' and actively try to conceal their misunderstanding, its a recipe for disaster later down the road.

I take it you do not have a child on the spectrum...

I'm not talking of individuals who have no knowledge of the child's situation. A therapist, who makes the decision whether or not to diagnose, usually does know of the circumstances through talking to the child and parent. It doesn't require a lot to realize there's something wrong if a child is calling their bullies friends due to being told their entire class is their friend by a teacher. If psychologists that the children are brought to or the ones working at schools don't realize this after knowing of such incidents, they belong flipping hamburgers, not in their profession.

What claim are you making then? There was no sense to back up the ideas that I said were false.

It took me two years of dedicated fighting with my school district to get them to see this. And my fight isn't unusal. In fact, fighting for the most basic of interventions is the norm in the US, especially with education budgets being cut to the bone. It isn't about the professionals - its about access. If you do not have the money for all those highly trained professionals - which most people do not - you must rely on the resources that are available. And, more times than not, those resources and access to them are controlled by accountants, financial oversight committees and school boards. Many school boards fill their special education positions with people with no special education training at all. (see the boy in the duffle story...) I was lucky - I finally got access to autism professionals by going over my school's head - risky because you'd be a fool to not believe that they hold grudges when you do this.

Access to competent professionals is not universal nor guaranteed. If basic access to competent care is a struggle then how on earth would an autistic child who is actively hiding their difficulties be caught at all? I've witnessed children who are clearly ADHD being totally overlooked by both the school and the parents. As I've stated elsewhere - if a child has no language delay, many times autism isn't even considered. A child who 'seems fine' can be quite far from it and by the time they crash and burn in middle school or high school they've already lost precious intervention time.

I think it all has to do with gender roles as well as inherant differences between the genders as to why girl's arnt diagnosed.
If a boy is shy reserved and akward...people will notice more quickly that the boy is not acting like typical boys
however if a girl is shy reserved and akward...she is seen as just just quiet and unsure of herself. Our culture allows girls to be more introverted than boys. Introverson in girls is even seen as ladylike.

It doesnt mean we suffer less, struggle less than boys do, but we are just interpretated differently.
I struggled very much to mimic my female counterparts...the more I tried, the more I was alienated from myself plus it was obvious that I was trying too hard and I was bullied anyway. However, I was given more room for error with boys and adults.
also
NT girls are much more socially attuned than NT boys. While an ASD girl is somewhat less attuned than a NT guy...but an ASD guy has two things against him...gender expectations, and gender itself. Guys are much less social than girls...it is just our evolution.
So ASD girls are more socially attuned than ASD guys just by our gender alone, but when compaired to NT girls there is a huge gap is social abilities.
To compare ASD girls to ASD boys is like comparing apples and oranges. Because of different hormones, the brain of a female is different than that of a male. An ASD female can still have major social deficits compared to NT females all the while being more socially attuned than an ASD male.
Both ASD males and females will have major social deficits when compared to NTs of the same sex, but compared to each other females appear to be higher functioning. Then you combine that with the fact that our culture believes that introversion is ladylike and social cluelessness is more tollerated in girls than boys....in fact this cluelessness is seen as femine innocence (at least as far as adults are concerned, for NT girls of the same age, social cluelessness is like having a big "kick me" sign on our back).

The difference is really amplified in dating
aspie guys really seem to clash against the gender roles thus making getting a date harder, while aspie girls are more likely to fit into gender roles and have less difficult time getting dates....however aspie females are much higher at risk for sexual predation than NT females because of missing sexual social clues until the situation is beyond her social ability to control.

for those who doubt an inherant difference between female ASD and Male ASD...needs to read "Aspergirls" That means you too guys. I dont wanna hear your arguement against it, unless you read the book.

Jojo

I am that disaster. My life is in shambles. I worked it all out on my own - and what did I know about it? What point of reference does a 3-yr. old have? I just knew that if I could stay below the radar, I could get by without taking any flack. I perceived my mother's guidance as constant disapproval and it was like torture. She had other children and was too busy to do much more than point out what I was doing wrong, so I strove to not be wrong, even if I had to fake it/lie. I've been trying to catch up to myself for decades.

Knowing about Asperger's is a welcome game changer. I don't know if I can rebuild all the broken parts but maybe now I have options for moving on. I have way less anxiety since becoming aware.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/27/m ... spergirls/



TheSunAlsoRises

Since boys are less social than girls, how could that be true? Why isn't the opposite true? Why isn't all that you mentioned reason to think that there may just be less prevalence among females? If there isn't less prevalence, then there has to be less severity in females. There's no way around it, as higher social ability contradicts social impairment.

The ability isn't higher... the APPEARANCE of ability of higher. Girls may fake it better. Being a good actor does mean you ARE Scarlett O'Hara. Asperger girls are just as impaired as boys - they just have more incentive, skills training via the peer groups and female family members and a natural cultural gender bias working to help hide them.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that you aren't more angry about how unfair the gender bias is towards boys. Because, at times, they definitely get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to intervention, discipline and general acceptance. Girls go undx'd but boys - they end up getting shoved in duffle bags, arrested and handcuffed and any number of other autism headline horrors that we've witnessed this year. You'll notice that the majority of those horror stories are boys.

Which one? Yes or no? It is not faked. Faking doesn't work. They do not have higher incentive. I have had monumental incentive. But that doesn't help ability impairments. I had to lay down and put up with it every dreadful moment. Peer groups aren't qualified to train to mitigate developmental problems. Who is exhibiting cultural gender bias?


I don't understand what you're talking about. Who is supposed to get the sympathy? Showering extra attention on someone for being less impaired doesn't solve anything. I don't complain of gender bias. Making the authorities at least just as scared for what they've been doing is a greater idea that works.

You know... we are having an epic case of miscommunication here. You are not understanding what I'm trying to say and I am not understand the point of view in your responses.

If you truly want to learn about the possible gender difference at work, several people here have suggested reading material that outlines it quite well. Tony Attwood's Asperger's and Girls also does a decent job. Most of Attwood's books are available in public libraries. I'd encourage you to read what people here are talking about.

I get the feeling you are defensive. If you simply want to impress the idea that boys have it worse than girls then I think the conversation is done. I think the gender differences present challenges and issues for both but for differing reasons. Asperger's is not a uniform condition - in fact, being on the autism spectrum kind of precludes it from having one single expression in all people it presents in. Gender differences are one of the variable factors. A girl reaching puberty is going to have radically different sensory issues than a boy reaching puberty. A girl who is emotionally abused is going to have different problems than a boy who has been both emotionally and physically abused.

And it is kind of disturbing that you interpretted 'intervention, discipline and general acceptance' as 'Showering extra attention on someone'. That is quite terrifying from the perspective of a mother, actually.