To think autism gets worse with each generation

Just to ask whether you feel this is more financially beneficial than working and not caring for an Autistic child? I don't want to assume that's the suggestion but it does feel a little like that. Benefits will never cover the outgoings the poster has referenced here.

Those who don't experience this don't realise that incredibly skilled mothers will be leaving their well paying, tax contributing salaries in droves in order to care for children who are unable to care for themselves ( virtually no provision exists any more here). Alternatively, as we see at almost epidemic levels- mum's leaving their tax contributing careers and having to stay home with kids who can't cope in mainstream school and are having mental health breakdowns because of it.

For those who don't have experience, the provision for SEN kids in schools has become so stripped back that parents have nowhere for their kids ( many very capable) to go. This problem is growing significantly and impacts everyone.

There is nothing financially preferable about these situations. Anyone who thinks as much needs to stop reading the Daily Mail.

Well obviously. If you are full time carer and single and do not work, most likely you will get benefits.

The National Autistic Society state the following below…
Taking my own DS as an example, he has level 8 GCSEs, is grade 8 piano, speaks a complex language he’s taught himself, has taught himself to code and has an IQ of between 135-145. And yet….some days he cannot talk due to anxiety, cannot eat due to anxiety and ARFID. He has never called anyone other than me on the phone, he doesn’t go into shops, he won’t use public transport and won’t learn to drive as he doesn’t trust others. Until quite recently he couldn’t tie his laces and cannot currently work as he is selectively mute and therefore cannot do an interview.
He is super intelligent (cognitively and emotionally) and yet isn’t high functioning at all and needs a lot of support from us.

I agree with you verbena17. I The intensity of modern life has created additional stressors.
Also some of the personality traits in my Autistic family members - e.g. deep thinkers and feelers, quiet, taking people and situations at face value, considered, nature loving - are qualities often at odds with modern society.
I wonder if we could (wave a magic wand) reduce some of the modern stimuli and provide the setting, time and space for EVERYONE to process and respond in their own time and way...would there then be a reduction in the examples described by OP and other posters?

I always thought the stats were 1 in X people, not children. Which means I count in the figures of the 2020's but I should have been counted 1980's or late 70's. It makes sense but If the stats are indeed just children, then that's wrong

I think the society each generation has grown up in has become less nad less tolerant to individual eccentricity such that neurodiversity has become increasingly difficult to manage.

My kids are ND, so am I (late diagnosed) and I am now 100% my mother and uncle were too. Whilst I can see that huge parts of my life were impacted negatively, my daughter has absolutely been blown away by the current education/exam system and the covid/post-covid disconnection she and her peers have experienced.

So no, I personally don’t think each generation is ‘more autistic’, but I do think each generation is experiencing an increasingly stressful and intolerant environment that makes managing autism very difficult.

Government won't do anything about people having children at older ages ...as it would mean they'd have to address the housing situation. This way more of the population have to live in cramped conditions for longer...renting for years, house-shares. That's my opinion anyway. It's a symptom of people having children older which is a symptom of the appalling housing situation

Maybe the figures were always inaccurate and incorrect and those stats were wildly out of touch with reality. How many people who appeared to function better in society would never have been considered years ago. Instead they would just be seen as ' weird' or ' odd' because they were different somehow.

I think the incidence of autism in general is increasing (and I don't just mean due to better understanding and diagnosis.) When my son was diagnosed 9 years ago we were told it affected 1:100 kids, by the time he started school we were told 1:65 and looking at the kids in his school I think it's probably about 1:30 now. I'm utterly convinced there are triggers in the environment that mankind hasn't identified yet - microplastics, air quality, mercury in fish etc.

People are having children older ...older dads also

The terms high and low functioning are not referring to IQ. They are literally describing someone’s ability to function.
https://psychiatry-uk.com/higher-or-lower-why-using-functional-labels-to-describe-autism-is-problematic/

This

High and low functioning refer to iq not how happy you are. I’m not sure why you are suggesting more disabled people are default more miserable it’s simply nonsense.

More recently low functioning autistics would be described as having ASD with a LD (learning disability), and High functioning just ASD. These are very useful descriptors and I think there are also many who are not offended by the terms but who are offended by the idea that having a LD is something unmentionable or of no consequence.

Not as such, but it's what I was thinking too. Talking to people such as parents who knew "mildly" autistic people when they were kids can be pretty revealing. If you met my boyfriend (high flying career in tech, has friends, can navigate social situations albeit awkwardly), you'd never guess he didn't speak a word until he was 3. If you met me (dozens of friends, usually perfectly happy in social situations), you'd never guess I spent every lunchtime for a year at the age of 9 standing stock still in the corner of the playground with my face in the hedge.

Rolls Royce too is pretty much built on men that would have been classed as having Asperger’s but now ASD………incredibly intelligent but socially awkward.

I don't feel that way. And I have no idea how it is to live in someone else's body so I'm not for a minute saying that. One can be disabled in one aspect yet certainly not what you'd see as malfunctioning.

The problem with these discussions is that every ND person is so different that we just can't ever have a reasonable discussion about this ' group' of individuals because people are exactly that , individuals and not one homogeneous lump.

Within this group of individuals who would be termed Autistic, there will be individuals who are not some sort of malfunction. I believe that for some ( and I have no idea who or how many( that they would possibly not feel so disabled if society was set up completely differently than it is.

I am not for one minute talking about every Autistic person as how do I know what someone is suffering with inside each day. I don't. And I know life is bloody difficult based on the people I care for and know. But there are individuals within this ' lump ' who I believe will see themselves quite differently, not necessarily defective but rather disabled by society more than anything else.

I repeat, it entirely depends on each individual. Every situation and person is unique.

I have no idea how it must be for every person. But I believe what someone says about their own lived experience every time.

Well I’m too invested so I really don’t care if people try to silence me from discussing the possible triggering effect vaccines might have on babies.

If people stop questioning the science, it really isn’t science any more.
Anyone saying ‘the science is settled’ is wrong! The science is never settled!

People should use their own discernment and never be afraid to question anything.

Interestingly, I’ve read and re-read the retracted MMR research paper and not once did Andrew W say the words ‘MMR vaccine causes autism’. Neither did any of the other 12 doctors who did the research. Yet he was used as the scapegoat and lost his licence permanently…,whilst the other 12 doctors got theirs back once the hype died down.

I’m not saying I definitely believe vaccines are the cause of the increase in autism but i think it’s very interesting to ask questions about. The retracted Lancet MMR paper looked at the relationship between the brain and gut and simply said more research was needed.

OTOH there are also a lot of people that 40 years ago would have been perfectly fine at their job in a little workshop or back office, or even in a lab somewhere quietly doing their work. No one would care if they were quiet or said the wrong thing sometimes or was only good at one specific thing. They may well have got married, bought a house and had a family but probably with an NT person.

Now a lot of them wouldn’t get past the first interview, or they get the job but they can’t keep it because they can’t concentrate on doing the job and answering 17 slack channels or they say something inappropriate. I’ve seen this happen to a few people now!

The Sheldon Cooper types can still work in Shoreditch or Silicon Valley because they can either mask or their aptitude outweighs their social difficulties but the more average ones can’t and struggle.

I didn’t say it was preferable I said it was less rigid in response to a posters belief that there was more of the autism about because kids have less boundaries these days.

It's more likely that you only notice when it's that way. Most of the time it seems late diagnosis is brought about because a child is diagnosed first then the parents realise they have traits.
If the child was not autistic or if it was so minor that it was diagnosed later then the parents would not ever be diagnosed.

And if an adult was severely autistic they might be less likely to have a child so wouldn't know if their child would be more or less autistic.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well.

I'm trying to say that when things follow the pattern you describe there is more likelihood of diagnoses.
When it follows a different pattern ie. Parent is more obvious than child then you wouldn't notice

Eugenics is already practiced today in the NHS. It's clearly not that big a deal anymore.

People are talking about autistic kids having done better when more of childhood was spent outside. Some of them no doubt did, but I think another factor to take into consideration is that bolters are probably more likely to survive childhood now than they would've done further back in time.

In my extended family, we've quite a wide variety of autism. There are DC who definitely would do better with more outside time. There are a couple of others who are bolters, and who aren't safe outdoors or anyone not contained, without a 1 to 1 and sometimes not even then. It would only be the last couple of generations of my family where this sort of ratio and input could've been afforded. We were all dirt poor until not too long ago, certainly couldn't have spared adults to watch kids constantly to keep them safe until maybe the mid 20th century.

I wonder how many aunties and uncles of today's 1 to 1 ratio kids were autistic bolters back through the centuries, but never lived very long until we stopped being subsistence labourers and then childhood moved more indoors.

Yes the amount of vaccines babies and very young children are given must surely be a concern.
But anyone expressing concerns is immediately deleted. Isn’t it strange how this cannot even be discussed.

During the course of my childhood, one kid got hit by a train on a railway. Another one got ran over by his own mother and ended up in a coma with one leg shorter than the other.
Two people fell in the lake that was on the news not so long ago because Four kids drowned when they fell through the ice - those two people didn’t drown but they got stabbed in the stomach by a rusty old car that was in the lake. I personally don’t know how I’m here because I fell off a garage roof.
My sister was sexually assaulted aged three in the local playground.
All whilst the parents were sat in the kitchen having a fag and a cup of coffee.

Ahhh the good old days of less supervision

Very disabled children who can volunteer and and get public transport wouldn't be disabled enough to get the highest rates of mobility it's laughable your husband thinks they would
I suggest he should look into a carer change becsuse he clearly had noises has he's talking about