Girls & Women with Autism

  • 5 hours 40 mins
  • 30 days to complete course
  • Downloadable PDFs
  • Certificate of completion
  • Suitable for everyone

Course summary

This course celebrates the unique presentation of girls and women on the autism spectrum. The course will equip the participant to:

  • Understand why autistic girls and women are under diagnosed 

  • Recognise camouflaging and compensation coping mechanisms

  • Recognise the ways the profile of abilities for girls may be different to boys with autism at different stages of development

  • Appreciate the different pathways to diagnosis in autistic adolescent girls and women 

  • Utilise two new screening tools (QAS-C) designed to identify the characteristics of ASD level 1 in children and adolescents and in women 

  • Understand issues regarding self-identity and low self-esteem for autistic girls and women

  • Strategies to enhance the concept of self

  • Learn activities in a group programme (Being Me) developed for teenage girls with ASD 

  • Recognition of the effects of alexithymia and empathic attunement on the ability to experience and express emotions

  • Strategies to recognise and regulate emotions

  • The value of Energy Accounting to reduce the depth and duration of depression

  • Understanding how Polyvagal theory can facilitate emotion management

  • Learn strategies to develop friendship skills in childhood and adolescence

  • Choose resources to improve social reasoning abilities

  • Understand issues regarding adult relationships especially vulnerability, sexuality and being a mother

  • Learn best ways for seeking and maintaining employment

Who will benefit?

  • Parents and family members
  • Autistic girls and women
  • Teachers, therapists, psychologists, paediatricians and psychiatrists

 

What will I be able to do as a result of taking this course?

Understand the adaptations to autism by girls and women, their daily challenges in making and keeping friends, learning, sensory sensitivity, emotion expression and regulation and sense of self as well as achieving and maintaining employment and being a mother.

Learning objectives

 To learn how autism can be expressed in girls and women, how they may adapt to autism and strategies to enhance specific abilities.

Module breakdown

Module 1

  • The profile of abilities of girls and women who have autism
  • Imitation and camouflaging
  • Girls interests
  • Pathways to a diagnostic assessment

Module 2

  • Question time
  • A new screening tool for girls and women
  • Self-identity
  • Low self-esteem
  • Strategies to enhance and express the sense of self
  • Empathic attunement
  • Alexithymia
  • Energy accounting

Module 3

  • Question time
  • Anxiety
  • Polyvagal theory and autism
  • Friendships and relationships
  • Psychological reactions to being different
  • Issues experienced by teenage girls
  • Resources
  • A diagnosis of autism in the adult years

Module 4

  • Question time
  • Interpersonal relationships
  • Being a mother with ASD
  • The adult female personal expression of autism
  • Employment

What our participants say