Autism Soccer: Girls with Autism: They Do Exist

Autism is often associated with the male of the species, but it's not always the case.

Currently, autism prevails in males, and official figures indicate that for every four children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, three are boys and only one is a girl. That is why society maintains a myth that autism only occurs in boys.

In this article, we will show you that this may not be true. Keep on reading!

Girls with autism do exist!

Recent studies have found that many of the symptoms that influence girls with autism are in many cases ignored by families and specialists, since they are similar to the behaviors expected of girls because they are so.

Female stereotypes seem to go against the diagnosis of autism. Sometimes symptoms such as extreme shyness, certain obsessions, and fears, extreme sensitivity are traits that although socially strange in a man, are considered appropriate in women and therefore aren’t interpreted as warning signals.

Simon Baron-Cohen, an autism specialist at the University of Cambridge, said:

“We know that people with high functioning autism have two basic problems: communication and socialization. However, we have discovered that in girls studied within this same spectrum, the symptoms are different, women tend to have an obsessive interest that is centered around people and relationships, but since these behaviors are expected of a girl, many times they are overlooked.”

Nowadays, in the scientific community is considered a mistake to have thought that the disorder of autism is the same in boys than in girls. And this has opened an exciting debate that is putting autism on girls in the spotlight.

It seems that girls may have more skills to camouflage their difficulties, and therefore their difficulties may be more unnoticed than those of boys. They learn to observe others and imitate their social behaviors, even if they don’t understand them and seem not to be spontaneous, they want to achieve social acceptance of the group. Girls with autism usually have a more significant interest in interacting with other children, especially younger ones, something that doesn’t typically occur in boys with ASD so frequently.

All this has led the scientific community to think that there may be more girls with ASD than those who are diagnosed, or that girls are diagnosed later than boys.

Diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder with or without associated hyperactivity is also being produced in girls and teens, who actually have features of ASD, but who haven’t been adequately detected and diagnosed.

We join the campaign and ask for more research on autism in girls.