Aspies struggle to cope with more complex social demands

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"The symptoms of girls with Asperger's tend to emerge at about the age of 10, at exactly the same time that their peer group becomes more sophisticated. Lizzy couldn't cope with the complex social demands of her friends as they got older: the cliques, the subtle conversation subtexts, the sarcasm and complex social cues": http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... m-symptoms

Totally agree about difficulties getting much worse at puberty, ( from age 10 ).

And, cross-referencing to the other article you just posted about girls and AS, I definitely experienced the period of cramming social skills, reading and/or daydreaming whenever I had the opportunity, obsessing about fictional characters and film stars, perusing women's fashion magazines as if they contained the elixir of life, ... for about 6-7 years, until the "swotting" at all that , plus some, ( which soon became lots of ), alcohol, from 17 onward, paid off and I became, for a few years at least, ( before collapsing/having a breakdown from maintaining the performance ), a swan!

Of course I had little or no time for studying anything else, ( for a career for instance ) during this period.
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I think that a lot of the problem is do to with gender/gender-roles.

While I could be a tomboy/"boy"/genderless-child things were so much simpler. But as soon as I reached the age, 11 exactly, where my mum said it was time to get a "first bra", ( ludicrous, and unnecessary ), and I read a stack of old "girls" magazines, ( Tina, Pink etc ), belonging to a 13/14 year old neighbour, ( in a remarkably quick connecting of bras and something to learn about ), I found the new social persona required of me suddenly way too complicated.

I practised making what I imagined were "femininely pouty" mouths, and another girl from nearby who had already gone onto the "big school" tried teaching me "how to walk", like a sexy woman should ! !! ( because I walked like a boy, striding, and also rather "bouncy" ), and I began investing my meagre pocket money in make-up that not only I had no idea how to use, but which I was forbidden to use by my parents, ( on or near the spectrum to some extent both of them ), etc, etc, etc.

My sister, a year and a half younger, managed somehow, I don't know how, to pursue her hobbies, scientific interests, and to excel academically, wearing clothes that were totally out of fashion, with totally "square"/creepy haircuts, and hideous shoes, and making friends with other earnest serious types. Whereas I wanted to be one of the socially successful girls; I believed in the stuff about a woman's life being romance, etc.

I basically took gender "rules" totally literally, and I think that gender-role-"rules"/expectations were responsible for at least half of the problems I had from age 10/11 to 28/29.

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That stuff started in early childhood for me. I remember in Year 2, I was round at one of my friends' houses with another girl, the game was "getting ready for a date with our boyfriends", involving my friend's mother's make-up and clothes. My friends both laughed at me because I didn't even know what a date was. Come on, who the hell needs to know that at that age?!

My own games were much more enjoyable for me. They involved what would look, to an outsider, like sitting there staring blankly into space, but I was actually imagining how the playground compared to various scenes in history. That was fun.