Girls Are Already Pretending by Twelve

What the research found

Camouflaging is the effort of hiding the parts of yourself that stand out, so that you seem to fit in. For a neurodivergent child it might mean scripting small talk in advance, copying how other children laugh, or forcing eye contact that feels wrong. It works, in the sense that it buys a kind of social cover. The question this study asked is a plainer one: how early does it start, and what does it cost?

The researchers studied 106 girls aged 11 to 14, at the point where primary school gives way to secondary. Seventy were neurodivergent, meaning they had autism, ADHD, developmental coordination disorder, or some combination. Thirty-six were neurotypical peers. The girls completed an adapted version of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire, a 25-item measure with three parts: masking, compensation, and assimilation. Assimilation is the specific feeling of pretending or acting to get by in a group. Anxiety and low mood were measured separately with two questionnaires. The study was co-produced with neurodivergent teenagers, who helped adapt the wording so that the questions made sense to girls of this age.

On the total camouflaging score, the two groups were not reliably different. That distinction matters, and the authors are careful about it. The gap appeared on one part of the scale in particular. Neurodivergent girls reported significantly more assimilation than their peers, the sense that they were performing rather than simply being themselves (p = 0.012). So it is not that these girls do more of everything. It is that they carry more of the exhausting, hollow kind of masking, the part where you feel you are wearing a costume.

The study also found that camouflaging rose with age. For every extra year, total camouflaging scores climbed by about 6.6 points (p = 0.013). The girls at the older end of this narrow band were already masking more than the younger ones, which suggests the habit is building through early adolescence rather than arriving fully formed.

The strongest finding was about mental health, and here the numbers are large. Camouflaging closely tracked distress in both groups of girls, neurodivergent and neurotypical alike. It accounted for around half the variation in the girls’ anxiety and low mood: 50 percent for one anxiety measure and 55 percent for a broader measure of depression and anxiety (both p < 0.001). Put simply, the girls who reported the most pretending also reported the most distress, and the relationship was tight enough that masking alone explained a very large share of who was struggling.

What this means for you and your child

The honest headline is that this is one modest study, and its design sets firm limits on what it can claim. It looked at 106 girls at a single moment in time. It was slightly underpowered, having aimed for 128 participants and fallen short. Crucially, it was cross-sectional, a snapshot rather than a film. That means it cannot tell us which way the arrow points. Camouflaging may fuel anxiety; anxiety may drive girls to camouflage; or some third thing, such as an unaccommodating environment, may drive both. The strong statistical link is real, but it is a link, not a proven cause. Anyone who tells you this study shows masking causes depression has gone further than the evidence allows.

It is also, deliberately, a study of girls only. There was no comparison group of boys, so it says nothing about how sons might differ. And the camouflaging questionnaire was built for autistic people, so the particular ways an ADHD or dyspraxic child might mask may be only partly captured. These are the authors’ own cautions, not ours.

With those limits stated plainly, what remains is still worth your attention. The finding that survives scrutiny is that assimilation, the felt experience of acting a part, is already present in neurodivergent girls by twelve, and that girls who report more of it tend to be more anxious and low. This fits a pattern many parents will recognise: the child who holds together beautifully at school and then falls apart at home. That collapse is not misbehaviour. It is often the bill arriving for a day spent performing.

So what can you do with this. First, take the after-school unravelling seriously as information rather than defiance. A calm home where your daughter does not have to perform is not indulgence; it is recovery. Second, be cautious about praising her only for being effortless and easy, since that can quietly reward the very masking that costs her. Third, if she seems anxious or flat, ask gently about the effort of fitting in, not only about friendships in the abstract. Girls who camouflage well are precisely the ones whose distress gets missed, at school and sometimes at home.

None of this requires a diagnosis to act on. The practical move is the same either way: reduce how much your daughter has to pretend, and widen the number of places where she can simply be herself.