The Lost Girls of Autism

TheCatWoman said:

Iain I think you might the book interesting

I just bought a copy and will have a read now. Thanks for the advice.

Obviously when I was growing up autism wasn't recognised and certainly not in women, but even so, I'm a amazed that nobody recognised that there was something very wrong.

I think my Mum is ND, another only child with restricted socialising oportunities but this time because of WW2, she's still very shy, but is happy to be around people, but we both get a bit overwhelmed by to many people.

Iain I think you might the book interesting, as it looks at two seemingly distinct patterns in autists and could explain why you and I experience autism so differently and point to differences in our brains that make us autistic as opposed to NT.

TheCatWoman said:

Looking back now I wonder how nobody noticed that I had some really quite strange behaviours

it is highly probable one or both of your parents were also neurodivergent so they may not have known what was "normal" or not to look for.

Back then in the 70s there was nowhere near the knowledge of mental health that there is now so you would probably just have been thought of as a bit eccentric by those who should have spotted it, but then again there was no Aspergers diagnosis to use (this only started in the 1990s).

I don't think there was anything they could have done even if they knew as medical science had not progressed enough.

I bought the book months ago but I haven’t read it yet. It is slowly making its way to the top of the ‘to read’ pile. I’m a fairly fast reader but I sometimes put new books at the top of the ‘to read’ pile if the subject is of priority interest, otherwise most new books go to the bottom. 

I've just been reading about differences in the brains of people with autism, whilst there are many similarities between autistic brains, different parts seem to be affected in different people. I've been reading about Kanner brains, Kanner being an early researcher on autism, Kanner brains seem to be high on systemising and less so on the social parts, whereas Cammelion brains seem to be more active in social areas. Cammelions are more likely to be female with high masking and far more worry about fitting in with any group they're around, the masking seems to be so effective that many women don't pass the standard autism assessments as assessors are asking the wrong questions. This research has largely been done through fMRI scans and the numbers of women included in studies have historically been small, often no women are included at all in any autism studies, which could be why autism is still seen as predominantly male and male brain orrientated.

Well if she is autistic then she'll have you as a role model for what can be done and that autism isn't an automatic disability

Thanks for the kind words. The problem being she is like her mum and I think she might be autistic too, socialising isn't natural to her and she has intense anxiety joining in with groups or playing group games. I volunteer as a playground assistant most weeks, and she tends to hang with me a lot. It's a small school though so sometimes kids come to play her games (they all know what she plays and what she doesn't!).

But my son had that too and the last few years he did a lot better, so there is always a chance!

We did go on holiday for a few years, but then it went to day trips, many where I was the only child in a group of mostly older people.

Although your daughter has had some set backs with her socialising I hope she'll be ok, at least the rest of her cohort will have been similarly effected which I think could make things easier as they'll be learning this new social world together.

I don't think I was taken to groups, I was a middle child, so though I had siblings, i remember being made to go to a 'drop off' playgroup just before starting school and I still remember the trauma of it.

So I went to lots of groups with my kids that all had different benefits, and I was part of an NCT group for my first, and I still meet up with a couple of the mums even though I've moved away from that area (my son grew up used to eating out, so still really enjoys that too). There were less opportunities with my second after we moved more rural, but still went to what we could!

A lot of that got undone with COVID unfortunately, as my second had just turned 3 and was about to do groups herself, and then the whole stay at home and social distancing thing hit and her playgroup never restarted for a few years so she missed out a lot.  Even when starting nursery, we couldn't have settling in sessions as we weren't allowed in, so it ended up being more traumatic for her too. The loss of confidence around being with other people still effects her massively.

They also get holidays and get lots of opportunities to try different things (they love center parcs). We didn't have the money for holidays as kids, so that's another thing they get, and will hopefully make them not as scared as me of going places!

I like Gina Rippons book, her other one The Gendered Brain was good too, it exposes what huge assumptions are made from tiny study samples and applied widely.

Looking back now I wonder how nobody noticed that I had some really quite strange behaviours, I think at the time it was just ignored and overlooked. For a long time I put all my strangeness down to being an only child and only playing one other child before I went to school, I still think that accounts for some of it, but obviously not all, I think it compounded the autism.

I was very aware of making sure my children were socialised as early as possible, mother and baby groups, play groups etc, none of it was comfortable for me, but I did it for them as I didn't want them growing up like me. They're both more socially confident that I was and seemed to fit in quite well, they both did well at school unlike me.

Do/did any of you with children conciously do things very differently to how you were brought up?

I've not heard of that one, I might add it to my kindle over the holidays. 

The more I remember, the more I can see autistic behaviour in my childhood too. Like lining up dinosaurs, so I could recite their names, and feel the texture on the models. Then spending hours looking through my books on them memorising facts.