My journey as an autistic girl

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when i was in year five

we used to stand in line to wait to go

to music class

as we stood there people would get into

groups to talk to each other

everyone always seemed to know exactly

where to stand

what to say and when to talk

i remember wondering what the heck is

wrong with me

why am i not getting this it seemed like

everybody was on a different level than

i was

or rather i was on a different level

than they were at the time it didn’t

actually

seem like i was different it just seemed

like i was quirky

two years later we went in about

depression to a psychiatrist

i came out with the diagnosis of autism

autism spectrum disorder or asd

is a neurological disorder that affects

communication and behavior

it affects one in 54 children worldwide

it was first noted in 1943 by a man

named leo canner

and from there today the range of

the range of behaviors and

people that have asd has broadened

until now both children and adults still

get diagnosed every day

there’s just one problem with this model

that diagnoses hundreds and thousands of

people

it doesn’t actually fit everybody

this model of behaviors that we use is a

male

model based off studies and research

that have been primarily based

around boys and doesn’t always fit girls

so what is the difference between boys

and girls oddly enough

it starts all the way from an early age

rachel hiller

a professor in the university of bath

conducted two studies

in australia about the gender

differences between boys and girls with

asd but with no learning different

difference what she found

while endeavoring the caretakers of

girls and boys with autism

was that while was that there were some

similarities like later speaking

but while boy but while girls boa

boys would tend to isolate themselves

from others girls tended to obsess

over friendships and try harder and

harder to fit in

likely much more likely to be making

friends or even one or two like-minded

allies

girls would try their hardest to fit in

doing everything possible to figure out

how to make it work

girls also were more likely to for

emotional outbursts and meltdowns at

home

and have more fights with parents

girls were also more likely to

experience authority

and and depression than boys

but girls were also more likely to try

and mimic behaviors

like eye contact and toy playing while

boys would tend to more likely to line

up toys

and play with them in a completely

separate way

another difference between boys and

girls is that they experience

widely different views of a school day

for girls they’ll spend all day pressing

down their emotions and autistic

symptoms

masking it all girls were less likely to

make socially inappropriate comments

have volume control and and

have volume control and have harder time

understanding around them

teachers were less likely to focus on

girls as boys tended to have

be more hyperactive and were more likely

to struggle with classroom behavior

all this results in a phenomenon called

the four o’clock explosion that’s almost

exclusively found in girls

girls will spend all day repressing

everything from their personality to

their emotions

and when they get home they release it

all with parents and emotional outbursts

and doing whatever they need to do to

release all this energy and

frustration this this means that

teachers and parents have almost

completely different views of what a

girl’s personality is actually like

and this can result in psychiatrists

finding it harder to diagnose girls

as they have not sure who to trust with

these different views

the biggest difference between girls and

doctors or at least the most well known

is mimicking and masking that is

exclusively in girls

girls are more likely to mimic around

them and try to fit in with everyone

around them

using this to mask your autistic

symptoms and signs

this means that everyone from parents to

teachers and psychiatrists will find it

harder to die

to find and recognize girls with autism

all in all

many people might think this is a good

thing but i need to make some

one thing very very clear

girls are just as autistic as boys have

the same

problems understanding and coping with

social situations that normal people

don’t

and and also and have the same signs and

symptoms

and are just as amazing with autism as

boys

so with these symptoms and everything it

is harder to recognize girls than boys

starting with teachers teachers

are the ones who usually make referrals

for neurological disorders

so if they’re not the ones that

americanize autistic symptoms

children are less likely to get a

diagnosis for anything

starting off with teachers on average

pay less attention to girls since girls

are quieter from social pressure than

boys

especially autistic girls and teachers

are more likely to focus on the

hyperactive boys who are disrupting the

class

and the girls in rachel hiller’s second

study of autism she interviewed

teachers about the conversational skills

of a set of girls

teachers found no problems with the

conversational skills of half the girls

in the set

while psychiatrists and professionals

only found no problems with the

conversational

skills of 17 percent of those same girls

all this means that teachers are less

likely to make a referral or even

recognize that a girl is autistic in the

first place

getting referral means going to a

professional but professionals are also

affected by this bias starting with the

very basis of what they diagnose autism

with

their model this model is a list of

behaviors and science to recognize

autism

and the extent to and to extend to how

it affects

people but this model is based around

boys

for example hyper fixation

boys are more likely to hyper fixate on

things like trains

mechanics and video games commonly

stereotyped ones but

more commonly found at boys girls who

are more likely to

hyper fixate on something that’s

actually not uncommon

and usually not unmanageable like

fashion or collecting shells or stamps

this means this obsession

is is focused though on it with an

autistic intensity

and can last from adolescent from

preschool years to adolescence

this means that one of the key ticks in

the box that

professionals have to do for hyper

fixation

often isn’t found and can mean that

girls can go misdiagnosed or undiagnosed

with autism

the biggest group though affected by

this bias is the general public

and the media specifically parents

in the media a lot of things we stay are

heavily stereotyped especially autism

even autistic boys are heavily

stereotyped with what people think

autism looks like

but it’s always autistic boys in the

media

can you remember one time you’ve seen an

autistic girl

on the news or in a show

girls with autism are just not

recognized by the media

and thus parents don’t see what an

autistic girl looks like compared to an

autistic boy

this makes it harder for parents to

notice that their girl’s quirkiness or

symptoms

line up with things they’ve read or seen

about autism

and makes them less likely to go in to

check if a girl is autistic or not and

can make even girls feel like they don’t

have autism

or that their or that people not believe

girls to have autism

because they don’t line up with the

traditional symptoms that people

recognize

all this

what so why is there this difference

between girls and boys

one theory is the extreme male brain

theory

which focuses on the idea of fetal

testosterone

where we’re in development boys have

different behaviors from the chemicals

in their brain

and then girls another theory is that a

mixture of social and environmental

factors have forced girls to adapt

throughout time

and making them and forcing them to be

better at

fitting in than boys ever had to another

theory is that we are simply not

recognizing girls

with them flying under the radar of

teachers and psychiatrists

all this means that when you’re going in

for a diagnosis girls are more likely to

get misdiagnosed or go undiagnosed

a quote from dr kamala pang states that

i feel like autistic girls are more

likely to describe as anxious

simply because it challenges the gender

stereotype

how getting a misdiagnosis or not

getting a diagnosis at all

can have really horrible effects for

girls it can mean that they are

not able to get early intervention or

help with growing up

or it can mean and it can mean that

girls are more likely to suffer from

anxiety and depression the boys with asd

all of this though is changing

as we move forward more researches more

studies and more people

are looking at girls and boys the

differences and or just increasing

their their variation of their sets and

research

meaning that our behavior our

understanding of the behaviors and

differences

are expanding

more people with autism are friends with

autistic people or the family of

autistic people are speaking up

and sharing their stories and getting

words out there

to tell and try to get other people to

stand up

but we can all do more as people we can

all go online

and look up what what autistic girls are

doing and autistic women

we can ask people around in our lives if

they are autistic and

how try to help understand and really

connect with people around us

as teachers and psychiatrists and

professionals

we can you can try and look at your list

of behaviors and double check

the girls around you you’re that you’re

not labeling them and making assumptions

about them

and you can try to actually check if

there’s something special with them

as parents we can look at our children

and see what

is going on with them and maybe if those

fights or

outbursts or silences and no eye contact

actually means that a girl is autistic

and girls out there who felt like me who

feel like me

look inside yourselves and really see if

maybe simply because your symptoms don’t

line up with the boys

doesn’t mean you’re not autistic we can

all do better

to stop more girls from falling through

the cracks

today i wear my headphones in school

and i focus so much better today

my friends family and teachers all

understand that i’m autistic and act

accordingly

today i feel more like myself and i am

happier than ever

today i am autistic and today i am a

girl

thank you

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