Girls and Boys - The Differences

Besides the obvious ones that I'm sure I don't have to go into, a new study has shown that autism affects the male and female brain in different ways.  See BBC News.

This is not really a revelation to me.  Having attended a support group for Autistics in the past, I not only observed that there were a far greater number of boys affected with this condition but also that they seemed to be affected in a different way.  I also gave up going in the end because none of the advice I was given helped me and none of the advice my Mother was given helped her in dealing with me.  One piece of advice was outright harmful.

I will admit now to not being properly certificated for autism.  This is directly due to advice my Mother received at that support group.  She was told that even if she some how convinced the necessary authorities that my diagnosis of autism was correct, then by the time they issued the certificate I would be out of school and the certificate would be as good as useless and therefore not worth the distress that I would go through to get it.

We have since then found out that such advice was wrong beyond all belief but since I am now nearly fifteen years older and I have learnt how to 'mask' many of my symptoms receiving the certificate is going to be nearly doubly harder than before.

This 'masking' is apparently a common response to living with autism in girls and means that less of us are diagnosis and sometimes even leads to stigmatising.  What is more the majority of these 'masking' techniques are used to cover up when we feel stressed out by situations and hide the resulting 'brain storms' that rip through our heads.  (I'm not just being metaphoric here, when we are stressed out it literally feelings as if an electric storm is ripping through our brains and we can't think around it.)  The study has said that girls with autism are more likely to go on to develop anxiety, eating disorders and depression.

If that was a check list then yep I've had all three of those at some point in my life, the worse one being suicidally depressed after leaving school.  The only reason I'm here now to write this is because my family loved me so much that I didn't want to hurt them by leaving a mess for them to clean up in the morning.  Strange the things that make us keep on living.

Thanks to the study, the doctors now want to study girls with autism more so that we can have the proper support and help to get by in this world.  I just hope they are careful about how they word 'help and support' as Mark Neary points out in his article '10 jargon phrases used for my autistic son'.  I know his son is a boy (obviously) and we are talking about autistic girls but the principle is the same.

This is my favourite of his list:

"4. If I shout or swear, I'm angry about something. If Steven shouts or swears, it is challenging behaviour and new behaviour management plans need to be drawn up."

I also really liked:

"6. I have friends. Steven has a circle of support and influence."

Just goes to show how many fences are drawn up between us (autistics) and you (normal) people in the minds of the so called support structure.

Why am I less entitled to friends than a normal person?