Autism and gender
Last week I had to pick my son up from his autism ResourceBase. I’ve talked a bit about his schooling in a previous blog post. So please do have a look here.
While of interest to all in the ASD community it is not the main point of this post. Today my interest is slightly different. One thing I noticed, when I picked John up from the school gate, was the disparity in gender. Of the fiveteen kids in the group only three are girls.
Now this has been commented upon many times. Indeed males much outnumber females in terms of ASD diagnosis. But in recent years much has been made of women/girls who have ASD but are so high functioning it does not seem to get picked up.
So I am very interested in finding out what is the real situation. And there is only one group to ask which is you – the autism community.
So to that end I am running the poll below to find out what is really is the truth about gender and autism diagnosis.
Please note that while we are aware of the issues surrounding autism and gender and the transgender community we are hoping to explore this in more detail at a later date.
Finally it would be great if you could share with anyone in the autism community you think might like to take part.
Thanks very much in advance
| spud1296 | Tony Attwood did a wonderful job explaining why there may be so much under diagnosis of girls with autism. Many girls do not present in the classic ways that boys do and tend to go either without a diagnosis or with an incorrect diagnosis. A chief pediatrician at Duke hospital told me that my daughter was not autistic and that I would be wasting TEACCH’s time having her diagnosed. Boy was he shocked when he found out that Dr. Lee Marcus confirmed the autism diagnosis. People have to remember what autism is. A large part of it is where the person’s sensory system has many parts that are out of sync. That does not mean that they are out of sync in the same way however. While not liking to hug was considered a classic sign, over hugging (which my daughter did) can be just as much a sign. Also many people consider the love of patterns to be a hallmark. My daughter despises patterns and has a very hard time seeing them. People have a tendency to see this as meaning she doesn’t have autism when its just the other end of a spectrum. |
Tony Attwood did a wonderful job explaining why there may be so much under diagnosis of girls with autism. Many girls do not present in the classic ways that boys do and tend to go either without a diagnosis or with an incorrect diagnosis. A chief pediatrician at Duke hospital told me that my daughter was not autistic and that I would be wasting TEACCH’s time having her diagnosed. Boy was he shocked when he found out that Dr. Lee Marcus confirmed the autism diagnosis. People have to remember what autism is. A large part of it is where the person’s sensory system has many parts that are out of sync. That does not mean that they are out of sync in the same way however. While not liking to hug was considered a classic sign, over hugging (which my daughter did) can be just as much a sign. Also many people consider the love of patterns to be a hallmark. My daughter despises patterns and has a very hard time seeing them. People have a tendency to see this as meaning she doesn’t have autism when its just the other end of a spectrum.