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The Lost Girls of Autism

TheCatWoman

I'm just over half way through this book by Gina Rippon, has anyone else read it? If so how did you get on with it? It's bringing up a lot of stuff for me about how I was when I was younger, like how much I masked and cammoflaged, how whilst I wouldn't exactly prepare a script for being with others, but I would read a lot of stories and then get confused when people didn't act the same way in real life as they did in books.

Whilst I didn't and don't have special interests, so much of my behaviour was repetitive, things like embroidering table mats, they all had to have exactly the same patterns of stitches if not I couldn't cope and would get really upset and aggitated. How all my toy farm and riding stable animals had to go in the same places, no dolls were allowed in my dolls house, it was MY house and everyting had to be arranged in exactly the same way.

I think I'm enjoying this book although it is a bit triggering, but I think in a good way.

Parents

  • 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.

  • in reply to Cinnabar_wing

    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?

  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    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.

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  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    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.

Children
  • in reply to TheCatWoman
    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.

  • in reply to Iain

    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.