Is autism different for girls?

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Are parents and professionals missing the signs of autism in girls?  Looking at why female autism is often diagnosed late and misunderstood

The most common autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) seen by health and education services are autistic disorder, also called childhood or classic autism, and Asperger’s syndrome*. Autistic disorder is characterised by speech delay and signs of impaired social interaction, communication and imagination.

Lorna Wing’s research found a ratio of two to one male to female prevalence of autistic disorder and fifteen to one for Asperger’s syndrome, suggesting that girls were less prone to the more subtle forms of ASD (Wing, 1981). Certainly, males are more susceptible to organic conditions (where there is measurable disease) such as autism which is a neurological developmental condition. In addition, girls appear to have some protection from the genetic variants that are thought to cause autism.

However, it is becoming clear that girls simply may be under-represented in Asperger figures because the history of research into ASD, from its inception with Kanner’s and Asperger’s work in the mid 1940s onwards, is based on males. Diagnostic tools – using interviews, specific tasks and categorisation of behaviours resulting in quantitative scores for analysis – were developed according to male phenotypes (Gould and Ashton-Smith, 2011). The ways in which Asperger’s syndrome manifests in girls have not been adequately investigated and only in the last five to ten years has attention been focused on females.

Signs of autism in girls

Diagnosis of ASD is based on the triad of impairments, identified by Wing and Gould in 1979. With Asperger’s syndrome, girls can present differently to boys in each of these areas of impairment.

Social interaction:
(Holtman et al., 2007)

  • boys with ASD tend not to appear motivated to be socially interactive, but girls on the spectrum do. However, girls have a history of failure in achieving and maintaining friendships
  • girls gravitate towards older girls, who tend to mother them and act as a form of social “protection”
  • girls may be socially immature and make a preference to play with much younger children who are not challenging and would allow the child with ASD to dominate play, giving them the predictability and control children with autism crave
  • girls with Asperger’s may “adopt” a less able peer, perhaps someone with a learning difficulty, who may themselves be marginalised so they are open to being dominated by the child with ASD
  • girls with Asperger’s may be unnecessarily dependent on their mother (or other primary carer) whom they regard as their best friend and confidante in a social world which they find challenging and frightening.

Social communication:

  • boys engage in disruptive behaviours, whereas girls may be persistently “ill” to gain what they want or control their situation
  • girls with ASD tend to act passively and ignore daily demands, while boys become disruptive in response
  • girls appear more able to concentrate than boys, who become distracted more easily and can be disruptive
  • girls tend to learn social behaviours by observation and copying, which can disguise their social deficits
  • girls may find the idea of social hierarchy difficult, so they can respond inappropriately to people in authority, such as teachers
  • children with ASD of both sexes need to learn the rules of “small talk” which they often find incomprehensible as a pastime. Girls’ difficulties tend to be masked by their passive behaviours and ability to mimic without understanding.

Special interests of girls with ASD can focus on stereotypical "female" subjects.Social imagination:

  • parents may perceive their daughter as being non-specifically “odd”, but without being able to pinpoint the cause
  • imaginative play does exist, but it is intense in nature, often focused on stereotypical female interests, such as dolls, make-up, animals and celebrities – which is why girls with ASD may not seem that different to females not on the spectrum. The key is the intensity and quality of these special interests, which are exclusive, all-consuming and experienced in detail
  • children with ASD can engage in repetitive questioning well beyond the age that those who are not on the spectrum would normally do. They can exhibit poor empathic skills and a lack of social interest. They can also seem disinterested in the classroom and exhibit immature, impulsive and unusual behaviours. An inability to “move on”, even with basic matters, can be common – for example, not being happy to throw away old toys or clothes which the child has long since grown out of. This “cluttering” behaviour can outline their difficulties with change. While such types of behaviour may be common to both sexes, the ways in which they present can be different for boys and girls.

It seems that girls on the autistic spectrum may be less noticeable than boys because they are less disruptive and have an ability to mimic behaviours (Attwood, 2012.) However, they lack social understanding and any deep knowledge of language. This becomes increasingly obvious at secondary school level, when there are no younger children to associate with, when peer groups are more mixed and any “protection” may have dissolved. Additionally, multiple stimuli (such as crowds in corridors or screams in playgrounds) and changes to routines which occur at secondary education can increase individual anxiety greatly. Adolescence, involving unstoppable changes, such as menstruation and the growth of breasts and body hair, can profoundly affect girls with ASD, heightening anxieties due to lack of control over what is happening.

Mental health issues for girls

Anorexia nervosa has been called “female Asperger’s” because around one fifth of girls who present with anorexia have traits which are peculiar to the autistic spectrum; around 20 to 30 per cent of anorexic patients are perfectionists and demonstrate rigid modes of thinking and behaviour, which are common autistic traits. Anorexia offers girls with ASD what they perceive to be a positive outcome because lack of nutrition prevents menstruation and physical development.

It is not until puberty that girls’ social difficulties become more obvious, particularly as they enter secondary school when they can become the subject of bullying or can be generally marginalised and perceived as strange. Unlike boys, they become withdrawn, depressed and quiet, rather than aggressive.

Profound anxieties may be demonstrated in altered behaviours, lower grades at school, poor sleep patterns, low mood/depression and obsessive behaviour.

Research from 2011 found that many women who were later diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum initially were thought to have learning difficulties, personality disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder or eating disorders (Rivet and Matson, 2011). This differential diagnosis could be related to lack of awareness of how ASD present in females.

The need for change

More research is essential to identify features of ASD, particularly Asperger’s syndrome, in girls and to train health and teaching staff about presentations in females. Diagnostic tools must be adapted to incorporate gender differences and ensure that scores attributed to behaviours include the range of symptoms in girls. Observation of girls in the social setting of school, paying close attention to friendships, is vital for diagnosis. Seeing how girls manage during unstructured time is also telling, since those with Asperger’s have difficulty identifying how to fill the time and do not enjoy the freedom but are lost and anxious.

The earlier diagnosis is made, the sooner intervention can be implemented. Within a school, this might mean:

  • use of visual timetables or other visual aids to underpin communication and increase predictability
  • emphasis on visual and sensory play for younger children
  • occupational therapy input to address any sensory issues and enhance coordination and musculo-skeletal abilities
  • programs to improve knowledge of facial expressions and understand the physical signs of feelings and attach names to those emotions
  • social programs, involving exercises and language games, performed by small groups of children with ASD
  • buddying between individual children with ASD and older volunteer children in school, who can offer social support and advice about social interactions
  • structuring breaks and lunchtimes for girls with ASD
  • increasing awareness among teachers so that they do not suddenly present tests to children with ASD (and therefore other children). Lessons should be highly structured and teachers should help those with ASD during unstructured time
  • careful positioning of children with ASD in the class, away from distracting children
  • warning of sensory stimuli that are to be introduced into the class
  • close liaison with parents to understand if school is causing high anxiety which is being acted out at home (for example, with friendships issues) and discuss behaviours in school
  • helping parents to support language skills, using games provided by school or speech and language therapists.

All research suggests that an early diagnosis of ASD, followed by appropriate interventions, will optimise the person’s life chances by increasing independence, understanding and accumulation of language and social abilities. To date, the ways in which females present with Asperger’s have not been thoroughly examined or used as the basis for diagnostic tools, which continue to be male dominated.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism is recommending that there is a lead teacher for autism in every school who has relevant expertise and training. This follows a survey which found that 80 per cent of respondents thought that teachers were not given sufficient training to support children with autism. Any such training should, of course, include gender issues. After all, teachers are in a unique position to be able to identify the signs of ASD in girls and implement strategies to help them to develop to their full potential.

Further information

Kate Reynolds is a registered general nurse, counsellor and trainer of health professionals with 18 years’ NHS experience. She is the mother of an autistic child and the author of Party Planning for Children and Teens on the Autism Spectrum. Kate blogs at:
www.autismagonyaunt.com

* The term “Asperger’s syndrome” is used also to refer to higher functioning autism (HFA) for the purposes of this article, since the only difference in presentation is that HFA involves clinical speech delay in childhood.

References and further reading

  • Attwood, T. (2012) The Pattern of Abilities and Development of Girls with Asperger’s Syndrome. Archived paper at: www.tonyattwood.com.au
  • Gould, J. and Ashton-Smith, J. (May 2011) Missed diagnosis or misdiagnosis? Girls and women on the autism spectrum, Good Autism Practice, Vol. 12 No. 1 p 34-41.
  • Holtman, M., Bolte, S. and Poustka, F. (2007) Autism Spectrum Disorders: Sex Difference in Autistic Behaviours Domains and Coexisting Psychopathology, Developmental and Child Neurology, 49 p 361-366.
  • Rivet, T. T. and Matson, J. L. (2011) Review of Gender Differences in Core Symptomatology in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. 5 (3) 957-976.
  • Wing, L. (1981) Sex ratios in early childhood autism and related conditions. Psychiatry Research 5(2): 129-37.
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18 COMMENTS

  1. I am a mother to 6 children all are girls and all are on the spectrum……I loved the article, Brilliant reading.As i was reading down i was nodding and agreeing yes to each and everything that applied to me and the girls. Well done on a great piece.

  2. YES! I’m HFA, and once I overheard a school resource worker say, “It looks like autism, but she’s a girl!” I often wonder if things had been different somehow if I’d known I wasn’t crazy, just wired differently.

    It IS frustrating that everything seems to assume that male is the norm. Half the world is female, and don’t we all start out biologically female anyway? Pfft, silly boys.

  3. As the parent of a girl on the autistic spectrum I was heartened to see girls very specific issues being recognised by this article. It was a nightmare for me to get the level of my daughter’s difficulties recognised, because she hid her stress and tried to do her work.It came out in a torrent at home until she was regularly threatening self harm and I was unable to get the level of her fear properly recognised by the education system for years. As a result she has become socially phobic outside of school and extremely overattatched to me in a very bizarre way. Thankfully she is now getting her needs met at a special school and has actually found a place where she can ‘fit in’ and succeed.

  4. I have Asperger’s and am mother to two girls one with Asperger’s and one with high functioning autism. It’s high time clinicians realised the differences and more studies were done on females. If they want to know how we tick – try asking us!

  5. I enjoyed reading this article and agreed to almost everything said about girls on the spectrum. As a mum of a daughter with aspergers syndrome, I have had a lot of problems getting my daughter’s difficulties recognised. Because she is passive her primary teachers dismissed my concerns. In fact her SENCO actually said that because she smiles and looks at you she can’t be autistic! It took such a long time to get her ASD recognised that she ended up out of school, depressed, socially reclusive and dependent on me. We now have a statement of SEN and are now looking for a specialist school but I really wish she had been dx a lot earlier.

  6. I am over the moon to have read this article. My daughter is almost 13 and we are only now close to having her difficulties recognised. She fits pretty much everything discribed here and just reading this has answered so many questions for me and perhaps had I read it sooner I wouldn’t have had such a hard time in convincing schools and professionals that she is on the spectrum.
    I am going to forward this to school with the hope it may explain her characteristics.

  7. My daughter was dignosed with clasic autism back in 1986. , when she was 3years old at the Donald winicott centre , it took just 3 days for a doctor to give us this dignosed . I have read all with great interest . And I would say the one difference is the monthly cycle . This is a very traumatic time for young women with autism And I think more research is needed with regards how this affects females ,

  8. Glad you found the article useful Katie. I think Kate Reynold’s article has been very thought provoking for a lot of people

  9. This is so helpful (if upsetting): our almost 6 year old is showing 90% of the signs described here & we have spent 2 years being told we are not strict enough/too strict/lazy/ineffective parents. Finally being assessed at CAMHS & hoping we can get some support. Currently she is home educated but it’s pretty exhausting – just can’t imagine her coping in school though. Thanks for pointing out it’s not all in our imagination!

  10. Wow this is such a negative judgemental deficits based description of girls on the spectrum! If you can’t talk from a strengths perspective you shouldn’t be putting info on the net! It’s perspectives like these that lead to the pathologising of people which in itself is destructive. Girls I know who have been thus labeled are amazing, free thinking, unique individuals, who think for themselves and don’t conform to societies expectations. THAT’S courageous and should be celebrated !

  11. @Olive

    As this is an article about “Are parents and professionals missing the signs of autism in girls? Kate Reynolds looks at why female autism is often diagnosed late and misunderstood” of course they would be looking at the traits of the condition that make it a disorder, that’s the whole point. It’s a legal disability, that’s not to say people with ASC aren’t capable of loads of great things as well.

    You don’t get diagnosed with a syndrome based on your strengths! Without a diagnosis, most people can’t get the support they need.

    Yes, us Aspies are all those positive things you quoted and more, but our lives are also affected by the condition, especially without access to the support we need.

  12. I agree with Olive in a sense that there are so many unfairly malecentric accounts of autism on the net, it’s a shame that a female one should be so dogged by the negative and not the positive. Also, not every girl with ASD fits into all those boxes. I have no problems with empathy or with language – but I have severe ones with direction, organisation and some of the other things. It’s nice to see a more female based article, but there are better resources to tackle the ‘human’ side of female autism without feeling like we’ve all just been branded defective.

    I currently work with kids with autism (and other spectrum based disorders) and I have been able to help them untangle problems because I understand the problems from their point of view. But I also hear of parents who are frightened of letting their kids get a diagnosis – which is why a more positive or balanced view needs to be more widely available to all.

  13. I read this with great interest, particularly the parts about secondary school, which seemed to perfectly describe my time there in a nutshell. My older son has Asperger’s, thinks I have it, and we have long suspected my youngest son has it too. I had never thought of looking at the different aspect presented through the way girls are perceived as having it. It describes me perfectly.

  14. @Applesauce: It’s a diagnosis, which is based on diagnostic criteria, which are by definition deficits. That isn’t saying that it brings no positives. The point of the article is why girls are not diagnosed. Professionals believe that only those whose lives are affected by the condition warrant diagnosis, that anyone too “mild” for a diagnosis shouldn’t have one. But they are missing the point, which is what this article addresses, that females are more able to mask the traits and symptoms, that doesn’t mean they are not impacted by them or don’t deserve diagnosis.

    This article is showing where females don’t fit the stereotypes that professionals are judging us by, which stem from the diagnostic criteria.

    We are fighting for recognition, that’s what this article is about, you are doing us a disservice by criticising the article because we should all be making our voices heard so that we get that recognition.

  15. How very sad that such an emphasis is being placed on control and domination in the characteristics described. These are very loaded terms.People with Aspergers don’t want to control or subjugate other people any more than neurotypical people do, but they may prefer too socialise with people they identify with – and that can include people who are at a similar stage of emotional maturity as themselves or others they feel have similar setbacks in society. It’s a level playing field. If people with Aspergers seem bossy or domineering, it is more likely be about to be their communication style than an intention to bully. And meltdowns aren’t about attention-seeking or manipulative, they really are mini breakdowns, where the person is overwhelmed by the world around them and can’t function until they have successfully readjusted emotionally.

  16. [quote name=”Morgana”]How very sad that such an emphasis is being placed on control and domination in the characteristics described.[/quote]

    Do you mean points 2. & 3. under Social Communication, Morgana:

    I think what they mean is that this is how the behaviour is perceived/viewed generally by the NT child/society, not that this is the intention of the ASC child.

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