There’s an interesting but small study published last month on whether or not the eating differences which often can be seen in autistic children persist into adulthood, and mostly I just wanted to comment about what in the article is offered as sort of an aside.
Investigating eating in autism beyond young childhood, one study found that food selectivity in autism, defined as only eating certain foods, was less pronounced in older children and adolescents compared to younger children, suggesting that this phenomenon may change as children get older.
This is the sort of thing that I feel you can’t fully attach meaning to until and unless you’ve determined the reason for it. As in, did “food selectivity” become less pronounced in older children because they no longer were having difficulties or sensitivities, or because the social pressures to conform to the neurotypical world around them made them suppress those difficulties or sensitivities?
That’s part of a broader question about masking and camouflaging and compensating, because one thing that only now seems to be on the radar in any significant way is what are the long-term impacts upon the autistic of such suppression-as-adaptation?
So I bring up that throwaway reference to older children because I always worry that what readers—or even the researchers themselves–will take away from things like that is that the older autistic children in question somehow "got over” being autistic, at least in those ways, when in reality they actually might be doing damage to themselves by keeping those behaviors locked up.