My journey as an autistic girl
[Music]
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
[Music]