Blog 4 – Autism in girls!

Autism in girls….

Part 1

When doctors studied Autism, they only used males when gathering their research.

Why would they do this?

This now makes it much harder for females to be diagnosed because everything has been based on the male brain.

Girls often display different traits to boys so that is why it can take longer for girls to be diagnosed. I was diagnosed at 17. I know a lot of young boys who have been diagnosed as early as 3!

A main reason as to why girls are late to be diagnosed is, we are really good at one thing boys with Autism are not and this is something called ‘masking’. Making is basically being a good actor, it is where you copy traits that ‘everyone else’ is showing and start portraying them yourself. It’s like a game of copycats. But in your mind, you are not copying, you think that this is ‘normal’, and everyone feels the same way.

You start to feel like an alien, and you start to get very good at hiding that. Which is why people comment ‘You don’t seem autistic’.