Why do some people think that Autism is a “boy thing”
When autism was first talked about it was to describe a group of boys who had been noticed behaving in a similar way. How autism was then diagnosed was based on these descriptions.
Over time new information has been added to our ideas of what autism looks like.
Often autistic women and girls are missed or misdiagnosed with something else like depression or personality disorder. This is often because it does not fit this traditional male pattern.
Lots of autistic women have been seen by doctors for their mental health and prescribed tablets. A lot of autistic women will say that the mental health diagnosis they were given never seemed to fully explain their difficulties.
When we look at diagnosing adults with autism, the evidence is that the average age that women are diagnosed is older than the average age for men.
The difficulties with social communication and social interaction, and flexibility of thought are still there, but may look very different.
Girls may be:
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Better at copying other’ behaviour
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More sociable
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May communicate but less likely to do ‘social chit chat’
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May be able to make a special friendship
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More involved in pretend play and possibly have a more active imagination
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May have similar interests to peers but may have a different quality or intensity of interest
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Use intelligence in social interactions rather than intuition
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Can copy other socially successful individuals
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May seem to be coping but are often acting in order to fit in
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Maybe better at masking difficulties
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More likely to have been misdiagnosed with another problem such as an eating disorder, personality disorder, or OCD