AS and girls--Research?

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-24-2003
AS and girls--Research?
3
Tue, 08-30-2005 - 7:57pm

My daughter's developmental evaluation is on Friday and I'm reading up so I can ask the right questions (I can't walk into a doctor's office without feeling like its a pop quiz). I recall reading somewhere that there was recent research that suggested that girls' with AS were under-diagnosed because they tended to have gender related differences in symptoms. Does anyone know if this is true? Does any one know a good link to related info?

TIA, Mary

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-25-2003
Tue, 08-30-2005 - 9:43pm

Mary,

Sorry, I don't know of any such studies. I know that my DD, who is very likely Aspie, is very different than her brother (HFA). She is more caring, more girly, has no real behavior problems, is slightly less offbeat and has different obsessions.

But I also know the expression we often use on this board: 'when you have met one person with Autism, you have met one person with Autism: i.e. that even within a label, every person is different and very varied

Sorry. I don't think I helped.

Good luck with the evaluation, and please let us know how it goes.

-Paula

-Paula

visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 08-31-2005 - 12:47am

Tony Attwood has a paper he has written on the differences with girls and AS. If you do a google search even just on girls and AS it comes up tons. I had a couple links but I couldn't get logged in, computer crashed and lost them, lol.

There isn't any "research" per se that I know of, but there are loads of anecdotal accounts and such written. Besides the work of Tony there are also a number of books written by women with AS who were often diagnosed later in life but so where many men in our generation since AS was just diagnosed. Anyway, in reading those you will see some of the unique issues that face AS girls.

Currently my Cait is the only girl in the AS middle school program in our district where there are 13 or so boys. The program has been in place for 4 years and in that time they had one or 2 girls the first year and nothing since. The woman who is the teacher was so excited to have an AS girl in her class but I am not sure she was even prepared for her and the differences.

I also have a boy and girl with AS. My girl is older (11) and was diagnosed in preschool so we have been at it awhile. If you want any more info on girls with AS you can always email me. rbaer4@sbcglobal.net There being it seems few girls out there I always want to help in that area if I can. It took over a year to get Cait properly diagnosed and alot was because of the girl stuff and the knucklehead first neuro we had.

REnee

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-24-2003
Thu, 09-01-2005 - 3:02pm

Thank you. I found the Tony Attwood article and found it helpful. I found it particularly interesting because of how well the anecdotal quotes described my childhood. And all this time I've been telling DH she got her traits from him....hmmmmm.

Thanks again.
Mary