to ask this without expecting a backlash?

I was at school in early 1960s, there were about four boys and one girl who were just seen as slow. One boy was non verbal , two would get up and wandered around during lessons. They were sat at the back of class and
really just ignored, those who could nor read were just ignored. In secondary school, they were always in trouble and getting the cain almost daily. Most left school at aged 15 and got low level jobs or just lived on benefits.
School must have been sheer hell for a lot of children with SEN

Tbf ‘quirks’ were fairly severely punished and there was no reasonable adjustment. And you would only be diagnosed with MH issues in extreme circumstances. We were left to make the best of things and try not to piss the teachers off.

now there is far more understanding and parents will kick off about teachers not treating their ND kid right

My dad is in his late 60s and I still regularly see some of his friends that I've known my whole life- I am 100% certain that at least 2 out of about 8 would have received a diagnosis if they were children now! Sadly one was simply labelled "naughty" and the other "odd".

Children with high levels of need were not in mainstream school when I was a child.. I vaguely remember a child with a learning disability when I first started school but he wasn't there long and I assume moved to specialist provision. I cringe when I think about how we used to refer to "the naughty boys school" up the road too, which now of course I recognise as being specialist provision itself.

I'm a TA now and we are supporting children with significant need (without adequate resources - they are being failed despite our best efforts at ground level), but there are also many children with diagnosis that don't require very much from us to make school accessible and comfortable. When I think back to particular classmates from my childhood those children very much existed in mainstream then. We just thought of them as sensitive, hyperactive, naughty or not very bright 😟. It makes me sad to think how much happier school would have been for them if we weren't all expected to tick all of the same boxes!

DH is 54, diagnosed adhd last year, used to hide in the barn all day to avoid going to school until he got caught and beaten. I remember a school refuser in my tiny village school - no idea if he was neurodivergent but he killed himself in his 20s so quite possibly.

My elderly great uncle writes and self publishes terrible poetry and stories about his holidays in which he enumerates at length everything he saw including what everyone ate at dinner. My elderly uncle got burnt out of his career in his 50s and lives in a house on his own 100 miles away from his wife who he visits about once a month.

autism and adhd always existed as did dyslexia, discalculia and other ND conditions. But kids were beaten, excluded and denigrated for being who they were rather than accepted as they are now. Masking is a thing and whilst it might be self preservation it takes a toll on people.

Also I think it was more common back then not to tell parents or teachers about issues like bullying, struggles in the classroom etc. my parents had no clue what I went through.

The same diagnostic criteria are being applied more broadly, so the ways that autistic girls and autistic people of colour present are being included. There are definitely people getting diagnosed today who would not have been diagnosed with autism 30 years ago. They would likely have developed mental health difficulties by being an autistic peg in an NT world.
School absence has a lot of causes but I think Covid made non attendance possible. Lots of schools are way more draconian than they used to be, so whereas "quirks" were tolerated, now they are disciplined. Also there are online alternatives to traditional schools and solutions to problems.

OP, you say things like “teachers didn’t need to differentiate lessons”, but what you really mean is that they just didn’t differentiate lessons, and it was sink or swim. The bright NT kids coped, but those who struggled often simply fell out of education at a young age. There were school refusers, but we called them truants.

I was born in 88 and only diagnosed with autism last year 🤷‍♀️ looking back, it was obvious but at the time I masked (a lot), and was told I was just depressed and anxious - it was only when a GP actually sat and looked through my medical history of multiple periods of “depression” that he joined the dots and suggested autism (and burnout).

DH was one of those “naughty” kids who refused school and never got any exams - he has ADHD. Again, obvious in hindsight but nobody diagnosed it in those days.

You just had 'weird kids' who suffered in silence. I know, I was one of them.

I'm surprised that was your experience. I am not much younger than you, and can think of multiple school refusers from my memory.

I can look back and see lots of behaviour in a different light with a modern take. Most of those children didn't "grow out of it" - many had poor outcomes in adulthood.

It does appear to be more frequent now.

I was born in 1979. I was extremely bright, I used to listen to other children read when I was 6-7 because I was a free reader. I wasn't allowed to take times table tests because I always got 100%. I was stopped from doing maths for several lessons at a time so that other people could catch up. But I was bullied, had social anxiety (saw a psychologist in what would be be CAMHS), some EBSA.

In secondary I struggled with inconsistencies between teachers, differing expectations, etc. I would storm out of class to the school nurse and she'd just say "What happened this time...?" I was never, ever, punished by the teachers. I couldn't get my act together with homework but wrote a science investigation in the PE lesson before the deadline lesson to hand it in, in year 9, and scored levels 9 9 9 (max 10 10 10) despite making the coagulation data because I hadn't written it down. I just estimated the trend. I think my teachers knew I was slightly different.

I'm now diagnosed with both ASD and ADHD.

I guess I'm saying it was still there, even if it didn't have a label.

A relative of mine is in her eighties and I think she would be diagnosed with autism now.
She struggled with friendships growing up and her siblings were told to not upset her at any cost. She found school very difficult. She is still very rigid in her thinking but so disorganised.

As a kid in the 70s I was always told I was hyperactive and it was down to E numbers in foods (doctor's diagnosis). I have always struggled with my brain going in 20 different directions, being untidy, dropping food on myself, foot tapping, unable to sit still ... always in trouble at school but masked it as was bright. Then against all odds I did OK and am now a teacher. It was only working with kids with ADHD that I had the lightbulb moment that this was me!

My brother was born in 1972 and has only recently been formally diagnosed with ADHD - in hindsight it’s so obvious but at the time everyone just thought he was “difficult” but due to a total lack of understanding he left school with no O-levels and it all led to his belief that he was just, in his words, thick and unable to learn anything.

It obviously existed but there was no real focus on it from the medical profession as far as I can see; my parents took him to a “specialist” in the 80s and they couldn’t pinpoint anything as it was so misunderstood at the time.

Look back at the ‘naughty’ kids in your school. I can think of at least 3 boys in my year group who were just seen as “bad” when in hindsight they clearly had autism.

Children with serious difficulties went to the special school. They didn’t set foot in our school. My Nana worked in a children’s ‘hospital’ that was actually a residential care home and school for children. Many of the children there we’d now see as children with learning difficulty and autism. It in fact still operates as a residential setting for children with physical disabilities, learning difficulties and autism.

There was a lad in our village notorious because he got expelled from every school in the area. At the time he was just viewed as trouble and his mum useless. The poor woman was beyond desperate and he was diagnosed when we were all in our twenties.

if you look back on censuses and old school names you’ll see that there have always been children with what we’d now call autism or ADHD, just back then they were labelled as slow, or backward, or other more offensive names. They just weren’t in mainstream schooling.

Oh and my best friend at school stopped going about 18 months before she was due to take her exams

And those of us who didn’t grow up with screens and who weren’t diagnosed until middle age?

ASD/ADHD wasn’t diagnosed then, so we had to crack on as best we could. I was self harming at 15 and had suicidal ideation but nobody knew. I hid in the school toilets at break and lunchtimes for 5 years.

Now I know that was the issue.

I have two dc with autism ( one with higher needs than the other) and i look back and realise some of my classmates were undiagnosed ASD or ADHD. I do however believe that it is over diagnosed now and very often wrongly diagnosed in children that actually have attachment disorders due to neglectful parenting.

My grandma took my mum (as a child) to the GP in the late 50s, saying there was something not quite right with her (well-meaning). Turns out it was inattentive ADHD… I also have it. Judging by his behaviour so did my Grandfather!

In 1970s it was similar. There may have been one or two kids in my junior school class who were autistic ADHD but they were just labelled weird or naughty.

Yes it’s always existed, we just didn’t have the means to recognise these conditions.

My uncle was absolutely autistic, he never had any formal diagnosis, my nan had no support or understanding, he was pretty much labelled a bit of an odd-bod and sent on his way - yet he always worked, general factory work or kitchen support, lived alone etc. He passed away a number of years ago now but I think all in all he did ok for himself.

I think there’s a balance to be had, yes it obviously would’ve been great for him/my grandparents to get support, but because there was none they/he got on with what he could do and could achieve in life.

I think there was far less of it, even if some were undiagnosed at that point. I was at school during the 1960s and no-one I knew in my class (of around 30) would have fit that diagnosis. Children at my school were polite, rarely acted up in class, some were obviously better at some subjects than others, but there weren't meltdowns or kids refusing to go to school. However that's a very small sample of kids!

Edited to add: My mother however would definitely now be diagnosed with ADHD. No diagnosis nor help available when she was a child, sadly.

Autism was first described in a paper by Kanner in 1943. Asperger was working independently at a similar time and described Asperger’s syndrome and it took a few years before it was considered they were two manifestations of autism.

there was a LOT of research and work on autism in the 50s and it was thought it was caused by mothers not parenting well enough.

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/what-is-autism/the-history-of-autism

in the 1970s in the U.K. not everyone was entitled to an education. Some children were deemed uneducable and not allowed to go to school. Private schools for these children developed through the 50s and 60s but in the 70s there was a big push to allow every child a state education and schools specially for uneducable children were built by the state.

children with autism would not have been in the same schools that “normal” children were in because they were not allowed to be.

In 1978 there was the warlock report followed by a new law in 1981 that allowed children with disabilities (who had previously been deemed uneducable) into mainstream schools if they wanted to.

previously they were not allowed in mainstream schools and had to go to special school,

I was at a highly academic girls school and there were lots of genius “weirdos”. Clearly, they weren’t, they were autistic. I had a few friends who were quite reckless, smart, instinctive and disruptive and almost certainly ADHD. The numerous anorexic girls who lived on Diet Coke and apples were likely ND too.

Ipads do not cause autism, youre born with it