I'm pleased for you Bella!
So they are thinking of designing different diagnostic criteria for females? That is very interesting.
Of those books you listed, I have read several and I love Donna Williams books. Women from Another Planet by Jean Kearns Miller I thought was a FAB book.
Congrats Bella, I'm really happy for you and will be looking out for those books. Had never thought a local autism center would have books... cool.
Can you give a url for "Beyond the Square"? My daughter might be interested at some point.
Here are my (maybe gross-
I apologize ahead of time to any one offended! 
) generalizations after raising an Aspie daughter, now 16, and having read some of the "female Aspie" literature:
Girls are harder to diagnose and frequently just get dxed as ADD (mine did)! I have also heard it takes 3 shrink visits til the correct dx is made most of the time!
Girls because of their hormonal, social upbringing and female brain are better at empathy than male Aspies.
For the above reasons maybe female Aspies don't usually lash out in middle school the way boys do. On OASIS and other Aspie sites young male aggression is a big problem in the schools (as a result of bullying or meltdowns or whatever).
According to Tony Attwood many female Aspies dread growing up, looking mature and stall the process as long as possible (my daughter in a nutshell). Many will have little girl voices also for the above reason (also Tony Attwood).
Female Aspies look younger than the general population imo. They are frequently pretty and have angelic faces (this from another Aspie female online, she calls them "Aspie angel faces") Wonder what the metaphysical reason is. First the metaphysical, then the physical I always say....
For many getting married and having children helped them to mature (anecdotal, based on online chats with other Aspie mothers, particularly on OASIS).
Aspie girls are frequently preyed upon by unscrupulous males. We seldom let Hope out of our sight for that reason! We tell her never to be alone with a male she doesn't know or trust.
People can now add their favorite gross generalizations. But there is always a grain of truth in generalizations, don't you think guys?
Congratulations Bella,
it must feel great to know for certain, thanks very much for the list of books.
Congratulations on the diagnosis, Bella. I think it will open some doors for you. I had a Donna Williams book but can't seem to find it. I also have "The Essential Difference" by Simon Baron-Cohen which I found helpful, and "The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-Time".
It would be really good if some more diagnostic criteria were added for females. I don't agree that there are 4 times as many male aspies as female - I just think more females don't present as obviously as males.
I agree with tenaciouscj about the ratios of male / female AS.
This has always been my thinking since I started to research AS, there seem to be a disproportionate number of self diagnosed females on AFF if we assume the statistics are correct.
I have attended two Tony Attwood conferences and regarding AS females, he commented that they often appear to be either very masculine and tomboyish or extremely feminine and girly.
I myself am very feminine and love make-up, pretty clothes, sparkly things and so on. As a child I had waist length long blonde hair I was very proud of, I disliked getting dirty and I spent hours changing my outfits and losing myself in my fantasy world of fairies, horses and so on. I was an exceptionally shy and anxious child, I "blended" because I was thought of as simply "shy" and I copied other people, in fact I still do.
My mother and my cousin on the other hand are not feminine at all. My cousin who I am certain is on the spectrum, is the polar opposite of me, she is so masculine she is often mistaken for a man, she has never wore make-up in her life (I think she'd sooner die, and she used to laugh and say I looked like a doll!) she is obsessed with heavy metal and has a fascination for death, she'd love to be a funeral director and work in a morgue, that would be her dream job.
My mother very rarely wears skirts, has never worn nail varnish, and her only passion in life is dogs. She is only tiny yet a lot of people are afraid of her because she has such an explosive temperament (which I have inherited!) She saw a load of psychiatrists when younger and was told she had "phobic anxiety."
One psychiatrist I saw said I am a "borderline aspie" but too mild to need a diagnosis so just gave me the label of personality disorder with Asperger traits, and another said I possibly had an ASD but saw no "evidence" to back it up as I displayed no repetitive movements, made occasional eye contact and I functioned well enough, as in that I can drive and get my child to school!!!
Ellen - URL for beyond the square - http://www.beyondthesquare.org.au/
ED2003 - which state/area are you in?
THANKS!
Hope was quiet as a mouse til 5th grade when some hormones kicked in and she started to tease and flirt with her ex-military male teacher. EVERYTHING she did he interpreted as lack of respect so he came down on her hard. She was pretty much unfazed though. She became a little defiant. She has always been fearless...
A shrink told me once that Hope's defenses, self-absorption has helped her to deflect a lot of the sh**t that went on in elementary school. Everything was always "somebody else's fault". In retrospect I'm glad she had that tough exterior emotional shell, to tell you the truth.
Also, Asperger's was mentioned by a school psychologist in about 2nd or 3rd grade so I remember spending one weekend researching it, looking at the criteria, BUT HOPE DIDN'T MEET ENOUGH OF IT, so I dropped the idea she was autistic. THAT is how girls escape under the radar imo.
She continued to rock, esp. in the car, and I found that worrisome 'cause I knew it was odd (to me) but nothing clicked for me because there was then no autism in the family (I didn't know the signs).
Again, I am glad in some ways she wasn't diagnosed then because I think she would have been sequestered, not mainstreamed. With just the ADHD dx she mingled with others, was fully mainstreamed til the second half of fifth grade when she was pulled out of the ex-military teacher's classroom because he had had enough. A little while later we finally had an AS dx by our specialist...
I've read that there is a difference in misdiagnoses for females and males.
Before being assessed by an expert in AS and formally DX'd as Aspie, many people are misdiagnosed. Males are more likely to be misdiagnosed as having schizotypal disorders, and females are more likely to be misdiagnosed as borderline personality disorder (which seems to me to be the catch all that basically means you're not 'normal' but they don't know what you are).
In America the catch all is PDD- pervasive development disorder.
I would NOT want my child tentatively labelled borderline personality disorder because that imo is a pretty bad dx. I've known two such women I think and they were vicious! The borderline personality disordered person loves to cause emotional rifts and trouble among friends and family, is truly selfish and controlling and God those women are just a mess imo...
I've read that there is a difference in misdiagnoses for females and males.
Before being assessed by an expert in AS and formally DX'd as Aspie, many people are misdiagnosed. Males are more likely to be misdiagnosed as having schizotypal disorders, and females are more likely to be misdiagnosed as borderline personality disorder (which seems to me to be the catch all that basically means you're not 'normal' but they don't know what you are).
In America the catch all is PDD- pervasive development disorder.
I would NOT want my child tentatively labelled borderline personality disorder because that imo is a pretty bad dx. I've known two such women I think and they were vicious! The borderline personality disordered person loves to cause emotional rifts and trouble among friends and family, is truly selfish and controlling and God those women are just a mess imo...
I find these comments deeply offensive! I myself have Borderline Personality Disorder and I can tell you that like Autism/AS it is very misunderstood!
It is true that some mental health professionals use it as a catch all and that some women are misdiagnosed with it when in fact they actually have Asperger's, BUT, it is also possible to have BOTH AS and BPD. BPD has much overlap with Bipolar and is a very real condition.
Ellen, you have well and truly bought into the stereotype that all BPD women are "vicious, selfish, and just love to cause trouble" are all aspies like Rainman? NO! There is tremendous variation, and so there is with all other syndromes/disorders.
Yes, there are some deeply disturbed people with BPD, there are also some lovely caring people with it, many are vegetarian animal loving people.
I myself have never "caused trouble or emotional rifts among family or friends" Far from it! If anything, I love people I am close to, too much. I would not wish BPD on anyone, it is a very real and distressing disorder. Ellen I suggest you do your research before spouting off about things you know little about.
I have read half of those books. For me, Liane's book was the closest to my situation. Though I could not relate to Donna Williams at all, she did remind me of my ADHD/Aspie niece. Ashley Stanford's book is the best one written by an NT, very very sympathetic to Aspies, as well as informative.
Congratulations on your diagnosis, Bella. The book by the same name can be harrowing, but is excellent.
The first person accounts are best, in my opinion. Songs of the Gorilla Nation by Dawn Prince-Hughes is another really excellent account of growing up with undiagnosed AS.
An Aspie friend once told me I was the most man-like female he had ever known.
This is pathetic, but when I was a girl, the only REAL path in life was wife and mother, and I knew it, so I set about using my skills to achieve that goal. This made me learn about emotions and having friends and getting help from friends regarding that single-minded pursuit of the boyfriend. School was easy for me, so I could devote all of my time to this society-imposed special interest of mine, finding a husband. Pathetic, but helpful maybe in the long run. FWIW
Congrats. Was it your first official DX then?
What is the price on closure these days?
Where I live in the USA it costs about two thousand dollars. But that was a joke? Closure, priceless and impossible. Diagnosis, pricey.
You wrote:
"I don't think the teacher handled this situation at all well. It could have been out of embarrassment but he was the adult and she the child so it was up to him to find a way of dealing with her behaviour without laying blame on her."
--------------------------
No, the teacher didn't handle it well- he misinterpreted nearly everything she did as disrespect, but he was going on the assumption she was simply ADD not an Aspie (we didn't know then). His military background (just follow orders, etc.) certainly didn't help, but looking back he gave that class a lot of structure, demanded responsibility (to the extent you can demand that from 4-5th graders) so I feel he was good for her in some respects.
Me and Hope have spent hours discussing what went on in that classroom, believe me. As for where Hope got the flirty behavior, I don't know except she is very visual, very drawn to attractive people and Tutt had charisma, charm (something I haven't mentioned). She strikes me as still asexual (she claims she is not interested in boys romantically yet), but her attraction for such people (men and women) makes her flirty and more animated than usual, if you know what I mean. She has flirted with an uncle (!), a pretty young woman of 30, boys at camp and at school. We have to remind her not to behave that way as she will be misinterpreted herself....
Everytime I hear about children recently being diagnosed with asperger syndrome, its always boys. I also have noticed while most men with asperger syndrome were diagnosed in childhood or adolescence(Often a misdiagnosis with something else-at age 3 I was misdiagnosed with PDD-NOS in 1982 and it wasnt until 1991 that I got the aspergers diagnosis from a child psychiatrist), most women who are officially diagnosed were diagnosed in adulthood. Moreover, many aspie women say that they knew themselves that they were different but their abnormalities went unnoticed by adults. It almost seems like asperger syndrome affects women less severly, or at least in a less obvious way than it affects men.
This one I think, I started a reply & then thought it looked stupid, so I deleted it.
Maybe I'll start my own thread on this once it is a fait accompli, but as long as you are willing to share yours, Bella, I would just like to say that I have completed my initial interview and all five hours of testing, and am now waiting for the official word. I AM concerned that my femaleness may stand in the way of a diagnosis, and will cross that bridge when I get to it. It feels strange, but I am willing to FIGHT for a diagnosis!! I've been studying this for two years now, and I am utterly convinced that I am an Aspie. If the neuropsych doesn't agree, I want to educate him until he does!!!!!!! Any other females have this reaction?
Thanks, Bella, I wish I could have waited for a "Congratulations, you have AS" diagnosis, but I live in the wrong part of the world for that. But that provides the motivation for me to educate those in the USA, so my daughter will not have such a struggle.
Aspie Female Solidarity Forever!!