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I raised two special-needs sons who likely qualify for a diagnosis of ASD but never got a formal diagnosis because I homeschooling them, so I didn't need an off
by DoreenMichele 3y ago
I raised two special-needs sons who likely qualify for a diagnosis of ASD but never got a formal diagnosis because I homeschooling them, so I didn't need an official diagnosis to accommodate their needs.
Human children are raised for many years and a large part of social stuff is learned behavior. Some things can be explicitly taught to people whose brain wiring disinclined them to innately pick it up on their own.
Girls are socialized differently from boys and it seems likely they are just expected to "get" social things even if they don't. They either get someone to explain it or they try harder than boys to cover up their deficits because it's more socially unacceptable.
Not everything can be taught. Some social difficulties can be rooted in things like a lack of prosody or lack of ability to tone match can be extreme priblematic and cannot be fixed, at least not that I know of.
But some things can be explained and to whatever degree it's learnable, if girls are simply more expected than boys to learn it, it's not unreasonable to suggest ASD is likely underdiagnosed in girls.
- psychphysic 3y agoIf this were true we'd still need to explain why there's about 5:1 ratio of severely autistic men vs women. Bringing in milder autism we can dilute that down to about 4:1 maybe 3:1. But why? Why are we positing unproven theories to discount the data? That's not good science. Trying to explain data is. Simon Baron-Cohen the works foremost autism specialist (a clinical psychologist and cousin to Ali G Sacha Baron-Cohen). Put forwards the "extreme male" brain theory (now called emoaphising-systemising theory to avoid gendered language) theory of autism and it's pretty compelling.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI'm not suggesting it necessarily accounts for the entire difference. You said you were interested. I shared what I know. If you were not interested and just want to double down on you are right and anyone who has another view is wrong, then don't claim to be sincerely interested in the alternate view and then someone like me can skip bothering to share what they know with you as a pointless waste of time.