The Lost Girls of Autism

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.

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 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!

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!

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!