Autism Awareness
Early Detection of Autism in Young Girls
Why It Is Important?
Autism Awareness
What is Autism?
Autism is a developmental and neurological condition that challenges how certain people communicate, learn, and behave. Unlike many disorders, autism is a spectrum disorder. This means every single person who has autism will have different strengths and challenges. Example: Some people with autism may require significant support in their daily lives. While others may not require this type of support and live entirely independently. People with autism often have challenges with social communication and interactions. Autism spectrum disorder is often accompanied by sensory sensitivities and medical issues such as gastrointestinal disorders, seizures, or sleep disorders, as well as mental health, such as anxiety, depression and attention challenges. People with autism often have challenges with social communication and interaction, and are restricted to repetitive behaviors and interests. This repetitive behavior is known as self-stimulating behavior, or for short, stimming. Stimming can help reduce anxiety and calm an individual, this can help with coping with sensory overload, express frustration, or to relieve physical discomfort. Although, from much pressure and intimidation, people with autism will tend to mask their stimming. Masking, or Autism camouflaging, is when people with autism try to suppress their stimming to be “more appealing” to neurotypical people. (People who are not challenged with autism.) The action of masking can and will cover or change one's personality, function, or behavior. The effects of insincerity, job dissatisfaction, emotional and physical exhaustion, and feelings of dissonance have all been reported from the activity of masking. This is why we need more awareness of autism, if we did people would not need to rely on masking. People mask because they are scared of neurotypical people making fun or judging them for something they can’t control. If you help me spread the word of autism, you can help people learn about autism and masking. Thus actively making people with autism comfortable with stimming. Together we can demolish these negative effects of masking by spreading awareness of autism.
Why Young Girls
EARLY DETECTION IS KEY!
People do not understand the challenges that girls with autism go through, especially when being compared to boys. We need to understand that there is a grave difference between boys and girls when being diagnosed with autism. For example, repetitive behaviors and difficulty with impulse control may appear more often in boys than girls. Girls seem to be better at hiding their symptoms and do not appear to have issues socializing or forming friendships. The key symptom of socializing can be easily masked by girls and does not seem to become an issue until the teen years. This results in a late diagnosis. More research is needed to create tests that help identify girls with autism since current tests lean towards identifying boys only. Early detection is key!
Claire Bear Cares
MY WHY
I am and will always be inspired by my little sister, Claire. Claire was identified as autistic at seven years old. Starting when she was two, my parents noticed communication issues with Claire. They went back and forth from speech therapy to the ENT to the pediatrician for years, thinking it was a hearing issue. Claire did not present her autistic behaviors in the “typical way,” which resulted in a late diagnosis and several missed years of critical therapy. Claire is the heart of our family. She is pure joy and love. Claire Bear truly cares for everyone and everything (she will not even let us step on a bug!) She and other young girls deserve better. This is why I created Claire Bear Cares - to help spread awareness of unknown or overlooked signs of autism in young girls.