The New York Times has an interesting article by Emily Bazelon, “What Autistic Girls Are Made Of.” It contains several stories of pre-teen and teenage girls with autism spectrum disorders.

The article notes that because there are so many more boys than girls with ASD, girls have been left out of a number of studies. There does seem to be a difference between the sexes: while boys emphasize numerical computation and low empathy, girls seem to emphasize reading and writing and care a lot about what other people think. There is a dark side to this; some of these girls get bullied by their peers and get depressed. Mainstreaming these kids has advantages and disadvantages.

It has been suggested that our daughter already may be reading but just can’t communicate what she reads. She does study printed materials and really focuses on the single-line news crawlers at the bottom of ESPN and other news channels. When we read to her, sometimes she makes us point to the words as we’re reading them. I’ve not seen anything yet where she really takes an interest in how people feel about her yet other than she loves praise for her accomplishments. It’ll be another thing we keep an eye out for.