Is it harder to detect autism in girls

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Is it harder to detect autism in girls, as in my experience girls are typically more developed in certain social and conversational skills, masking possible indications of autism and seem to go out of there way to please and cover up there inabilities..

The fact is that autism is less likly to be detected in a girl then in a guy. Their was recently a show about that and how so many get DX'ed with the wrong thing. Alot of it is sociological bias as well.

i think that it is harder to diagnose in girls.

in general girls (NT & not alike) are calmer & this means they are usually less disruptive. therefore they do not draw as much attention to themselves & so AS symptoms may be missed by parents or teachers. Myself for example i have always been afraid of people shouting & have had rigid obssesion with rules. even now i hate to break any rule (including speed limits etc). this meant that i was very rarely in trouble & so was not noticed to be odd.

also i think it is more acceptable for girls to have obsessions. my obsession that i have had from a young age is horses. however young girls often like horses & it may be easy to miss that this is more of an obsession than a general likeing.

NT girls are more accepting in my experience when they are young than NT boys. in my experience there will always be a few NT girls at primary school age who will try & incorporate the "odd one" into their game, often whether the child wants to or not! therefore even though the AS girl may not be able to communicate & interact socially with the other girls, may not enjoy what ever game is being played, or just plain not see the point, from an outside perspective (of parents or teachers watching the children) it may appear that the AS girl does have friends & so is not recognised. i think this is an issue as once the child gets to secondary school age the other girls may decide they do not want to associate with the "odd one" any more & may turn against them as happened to me around this age. the undiagnosed AS girl may not understand why her "friends" have turned against her, becomes more aware of her differences & with no explained reason for it this can in my experience quickly lead to depression.

as for being more developed in social & conversational skills i am unsure. i think it may just be that girls are better at disguising it. may be because they are quieter they are happy to let the others talk & just listen.

these are just my ideas, but i definatly agree with you.

I've seen quite a few young girls with AS now; most of which are aloof to the professionals, but they interact fine with their family--typical Asperger's.

I was reading the book called Aspergers and Girls. It says what you have said here that our behaviour is more compliant and therefore we are less likely to stand out and attract any concern about ourselves.

There aren't any formal statistics but it is believed that as many as 4:1 girls and not 10:1 as they used to believe have AS only we pass unnoticed because our differences are not strong enough to worry anyone and even if they do, they find other reasons for it, not proven reasons but beliefs about our behaviour.

This can be true for me but only when it comes to men. And only some men. I have a really hard time socializing with women though probably because of their more highly developed social and conversational skills. I tense up good and hard with most women, eyes start darting around like CRAZY, etc. With men I find it much easier to BS because I don't feel that horrible pressure to make so much small talk. Men seem far more comfortable relaxing with silence and something to be enjoyed like music/tv/video games, whereas women make me feel like I need to gab gab gab to have a successful interaction.

I've heard a few aspie women say something like that. Not sure how true it is for the rest of them, though.

I think that because girls are expected to be all bubbly and conversational socialites that it may be easier to spot an aspie chick. Several guys have told me "you know, you're just like one of the guys". I think that they knew something was different about me compared to other women and that if they'd known what the hell an aspie was, they'd probably be able to point it out right away.

To sum up my point of view though, I guess I'd have to say that I don't really think gender has much of an influence on how much the aspieness will shine through. I think guys can hide it/show it just as well as women can.

Well, superficially, more women seem to act like guys. Even ones that do things like get long nails, etc.... Maybe it is just because fewer guys are isolating themselves in certain areas, women are treated more the same, and there are a lot of books that try to explain to women how men think.

My mother was considered a bit odd, because she wanted to play sports. TODAY, that is FAR from unusual for a woman.

BTW, having said that... I'm sure females show autism/aspie symptoms just as males do, but the worst ones are less likely to be triggered, and more likely to be accepted as normal. They may appear normal for a female, but not for a male. HECK, I have seen MANY females break down, start crying, and seem incoherent, under the mildest stress. That was taken as NORMAL! NOW, one wonders if maybe it was the typical autistic meltdown.

The question should be is it harder to detect in 'some' girls,as being girl [or boy] doesn't have a static stereotype that applies to all of the gender.
Am was originally diagnosed in one morning appointment,by a pysch who was previously MH only and had never worked with autism and ld before.
Am used to live with two other female auties [who were fully LFA] and they were classic to the 'male' stereotype, not just to the difficulties.Another lady am used to live with [in last home] was diagnosed with AS and she seemed to also fit the 'male' stereotype.
Am and the rest are also diagnosed as having challenging behavior-usually more associated on the 'male' side.


On the reverse of this stereotype,there are male auties and aspies who fit the 'quieter,less obvious' female stereotype of ASD as well,there is at least one member here who relates to it the most.

"as for being more developed in social & conversational skills i am unsure."

Women's brains are wired for social interaction, emotions and speech whereas male brains are wired more for hand-eye coordination and decision making skills. Im not making this up, this is hard science and has been common knowledge for hundreds of years.

A girl with AS is likely to be seen simply as a quiet or shy person. Oddities do not tend to stand out as much as in boys. I think that a girl with AS has a natural 'counter' to most of the penalizing social effects of AS thanks to her gender. Not saying its not hard on them too but its just better masked

I saw this on ABC the other night.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=4177353&page=1

It seems to be an issue.

I didn't get a diagnosis till 21.
I hide it very well I think, No one suspected anything.
But I have male cousins getting diagnosed at age 6 - 8.

I am sure Mr Attwood said girls hide it a lot better in most cases once?

Yes, there are a lot of articles out there on the topic of girls with autism spectrum disorders and how AS is often misdiagnosed as something else (like OCD or social anxiety disorder).

This is how I feel about it - I think I wasn't picked up on because I wasn't causing trouble to anyone. I internalised rather than lashing out. At school I was well behaved and very academic, I got very good exam results. Why would anyone have cared to get me diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder?

@sarah:
Didn't you have any problems with meltdowns / aggression?
Or was that more in private?

I heard it's harder because girls are more adaptable then boys. We can adjust to small changes in our schedule better then boys can for example. Also it's more acceptable to have a shy little girl who has trouble keeping eye contact with adults then it is for little boys.

I was very shy as a child and even had to go seek help from a professional because I couldn't communicate with my peers. The teachers always asked if my parents were getting divorced of if any other tragic thing was going on at home that made me not want to talk. By the time I was in 4th grade I found a group of friends that accepted me, but I still rarely talked to them because I just didn't have anything in common with them at all. So the teachers stopped freaking out until I was in about seventh grade. Like a poster said before the girls didn't want to accept me anymore because I was too different. This caused me to become very depressed. About a year after that I was diagnosed with ADD and Social Anxiety Disorder, but later I learned about AS and I think I suffered from that instead. But since I was a girl I don't think anybody really thought about AS because they saw that and autism as something a nerdy boy would have. Not an extremely shy, different, girl.

The agression was all directed at myself - big self harm problem. When I meltdown I cry uncontrollably, hyperventilate, self harm. Like, last night I had one and curled up in a ball on the pavement outside a club with my fingers in my ears, crying. It's clearly a bit deranged but it harms nobody, (apart from me).

A word that's been used a lot to describe me is 'sensitive'. This was used as a euphemism for all the above behaviours on every single one of my school reports.

'Sarah is a sensitive girl... quiet and introverted. Has trouble making friends' etc etc etc