To think perhaps my son isn’t autistic but instead modern society is too challenging for him to cope with.

Absolutely. DD struggled in primary with the open concept of having a topic going through all subjects and no timetable.
Too much free flow, too much sudden changes to what was done the day before.

Come secondary and she was in heaven. Knowing what subject was when and where did wonders.

She burnt out during Covid though - see above, too chaotic but academically she improved so much.

Schools in 80s and 90s had no leaning through play for Reception. It was straight to desks and learning and no wandering round. Higher up the school there was less low level behaviour issues as you weren't allowed to talk except at certain points and no wandering off to get a drink. Classrooms were less noisy and busy than modern day ones. Which may be a part of the reason why ND kids coped better, quieter, calmer and clear expectations. And there were more special Schools, so the really struggling kids never made it to mainstream.

Yep. This exactly.

It’s an interesting question isn’t it. School tends to be quite rigid, kids have to fit in. If they don’t then they’re seen as the problem. There’s next to no viewing of children as individuals unless they have a diagnosis.

friend of mine took her boys out of school and home schooled them. I’m unsure if they ever got diagnosed with autism or not but that was the way the school were heading. She focused the home schooling on stuff they were interested in and they thrived. They’re both young adults now and doing really well.

My son barely saw a screen until he was over 3 but he still had very clear adhd traits from babyhood. Reflux baby, screamed constantly, desperate to be mobile, walked at 9 months unaided, running by 10 months, climbed everything, had no interest in a screen as it would mean sitting down. I had friends with boys the same age and we spent all day either in parks or softplays or playgroups because they all had a lot of energy. Yet I remember when all the boys were chasing round a tree one day and the other 2 sat down to eat and drink, my son ate 2 bites and was back running at speed. He spent about 3 times as long constantly moving as his pals.

Incidentally one for those boys had an entirely screen free existence with a very crunchy German mum and moved back to Germany when they were 4, still screen free, very monessori, diagnosed at 7 with ADHD and attended a socialist school for a year to get school ready.

It's an inate brain difference. Before screens were the focus it was something else. For me it was novels and encyclopedias. My son has screens, his current obsession though is Pokémon and while he has Pokémon switch games his favourite passtime is Pokémon books filled with facts and categorisations.

You see what you want to see.

Also he can't focus on a screen even the way a neurotypical kid does, he plays a switch game hanging upside down off a chair cycling his legs and manages 20 minutes stints even at that. I see friends kids who totally zone out on a screen, my kid is upside down or jogging on the spot and talking incessantly about what he's viewing or playing. He's also rather be outside or trampoline or basically in constant motion which you just can't be and screens give us and him a brief break from the constant movement.

This is disgusting, and not unsurprising.

I agree this. I have left education, one of the reasons the current curriculum. From year 1 onward, education is like a secondary school. If you can't sit in a chair and write for 6 hours, you'll be left behind and become disengaged.

I don't know whether there are children misdiagnosed, but the rigidity of the curriculum means only certain children thrive.

Autism is based on the child displaying odd behaviour (stimming, etc..) and developmental delays. Is your son displaying different behaviours and struggling?

I agree, but I do think it's more of a schools issue than a wider societal one. The one-size-fits-all model of tests, tests and more tests is a nightmare for children who aren't academically minded. DC who constantly fail feel out of kilter with their peers and their surroundings and that can lead to behaviours that are often pegged as ND.

My DD was one of those DC. She struggled, failed most of her GCSEs but is now at a vocational college doing a BTech and is like a different child. The practical lessons and less-loaded timetable suit her far more than traditional schooling.

I mean. I was stuck in a special school in the early 90s because they thought I was unteachable. Turns out I was just deaf and needed hearing aids.

This is so powerful.
Schools were original designed under the 1898(?) education act to produce good little factory workers to keep the country going.
Sadly, lots of what they were founded on never moved on.
Society today doesn't rely on uniforms, limited toilet breaks, lunch 'hours', yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and yet that's what we're still directed to do.

i went to school in 70s and 80s. different schools across the country and overseas.

It wasn’t always idyllic. I was smacked for getting sums wrong at primary in the UK! Secondary was large and up north, lots of fights every lunchtime , boys often had a quick grope of the girls when passing in corridors, it was loud noisy, 300 kids in a year. I was driven to get on but still had to negotiate a path of doing all my work but not being beaten up as a swot!

At a recent school reunion a number of those in bottom sets were saying how they’d all been diagnosed with ADHD as adults and yet at school they’d been allowed to smoke in the classroom and read magazines as teacher just wasn’t interested.

Yet most recently my ND nephew has 8 GCSEs even though it was a struggle for him.

Maybe it’s harder now for ND kids because they’re not being ignored and being challenged to achieve?

I am a 70s born autistic. Life was absolutely not at all easier for me. Primary school leafy me traumatised. High school was a struggle every day and I was permanently ‘in trouble’. Early adulthood led to self medicating with alcohol, which led to extreme vulnerability resulting in serious sexual abuse.

Yep. As a child with undiagnosed dyscalculia (it wasn't recognised as even existing then) though I had to live with the shame of being 'thick' at maths, I will say it mattered less in the great scheme of things.

In some ways, of course, it was wrong that I was just written off. My maths teacher was a kindly soul, but he had no tools to help me, and when my mother asked if I could have extra tuition, he simply said, 'there is no point. She won't pass'.

Terrible as that probably sounds now, it wasn't the end of the world at the time. Whilst we now understand that it wasn't that children like me were just a bit thick, the upside of that is that, back then, being 'just a bit thick' wasn't the huge barrier it is now.

Yes.

You'll find most teachers agree with you on this.

I think life in the 80s was simpler for many autistic people and easier to mask and/or cope, but they were autistic regardless of when they were born.

I would agree. Some where I work are REALLY struggling. I'm doing what I can to support but I know they'd be better off in home ed given the quiet, calm school placements they need just aren't available. I'd never have said that ten years ago.

My DH has been diagnosed with ADHD in his 40s, at school in the 80s and 90s he was told he was naughty, shouted at, told he could do the work if he just concentrated, then bounced out of top sets he could academically have coped in and put in bottom sets with cover teachers with kids who ran wild and fought each other. He hated school. As an adult he has 2 degrees a professional job and has just secured another promotion, his employer is very supportive and his boss is the one who suggested a ND assessment, recognising her own traits in him.

I think we don't know what school is for anymore. Back in the 80s it was normal for people to leave school at 16 and start working. Millions of boys started their trade apprenticeships back then.

Now, we have a collective FOMO, a national obsession with "a good" education. But beyond that, what actually is the point of school?

Once you can read, write and count, what are you actually learning in school?

I think we've been confusing activity with achievement.

There are millions of Uni students who right now are studying for largely irrelevant, useless Degrees. Education has become like a religion, and the non-believers are hounded and burnt at the proverbial stake.

We have this very odd criteria for demonstrating intellectual ability. Most people seem to believe that attending school or University makes a person intelligent. It doesn't. Intelligent people do well in school because they ARE intelligent, a GCSE doesn't impose some sort of magical intellect upon them.

Objectively, school is a toxic environment for learning anything. If it didn't exist, and we were to design it from scratch, it wouldn't look anything like the current system. We put fucking labels on kids, ADHD, ABCDEFG, because they won't behave like we think they should when we put them in a classroom . . . which is like having a pet goldfish, but keeping it in a dog kennel and then wondering why it died.

That's reducing adhd down to one particular behaviour though. My child is diagnosed with innattentive subtype, I don't have time to list all the traits and everything he deals with but it's so much more than getting bored and restless.

I do think screens are an issue in society but when you actually have a neuro-diverse child it's just not plausible that screens in and of themselves can lead to a diagnosis of ADHD. It's the way he was born.

My eldest is tricky, too much unstructured time makes him anxious and also causes meltdowns. He needs to get sensory input from throwing himself at things so we do do a lot of clubs, trampolining, gymnastics and a specific Sen club for movement. He needs meals and activities at predictable times etc. we've tried every type of day for him. He's also a ND kid who really thrives with the structure of school. People who unschool etc always leave me baffled because he needs to know the exact rules and structure in order to settle to an activity. He had the teacher this year known for being strictest in the school and he adores her. She clearly states what she wants from him, he knows the consequences if he breaks a rule and she's very very fair but firm. Probably because our school are great at meeting movement needs and ensuring their is free movement and play between specific lessons. He's almost 8 and our issues arise with the change in routine in the school holidays and weekends we've had to make very structured to help him regulate.