to ask this without expecting a backlash?

They would likely all be sitting in disability, believing they couldn’t do things.*

Wow. Not sure what ‘sitting in disability’ means. In the past 5 years since my diagnoses, I have gone from permanently unhappy to understanding my condition, embracing it and moving into a field of work that I adore. I also have friends and finally feel like I know who I am.

And OP, of course you were being fucking goady - as have the many who have come before you. If you genuinely wanted to know if asd was new, seeking opinion on AIBU is far from the first place that would come to mind.
Especially for a "new" poster.

I just ordered my diagnosis online from Home Bargains.

I wonder when idiots are going to stop perpetuating the myth that parents ask for diagnosis and it lands in their lap. Almost every family I know with a child with ASD and/or ADHD has gone through hell before even reaching the referral stage.

I was born in 76 and I can list 5 people from my school who definitely had ADHD / autism, just wasn’t diagnosed then.

Ok well I speak for myself and everyone I personally know in the autistic community which is a lot.

We get sick of parents being blamed for their child’s condition. A lot of people note that LAs will try to blame parents for their child’s condition so that they don’t have to provide a suitable education.

I think autism and ADHD was definitely around back then but children/adults weren't diagnosed like they are today.

Everyone is not on the spectrum. It really is about time that this nonsensical trope was seen for what it is. Damaging and ableist.

The diagnostic process for autism is complex and requires several practitioners. My 6 year old dd was diagnosed last year and she had 6 different people involved in her assessment and they all had a meeting to discuss whether or not she met the diagnostic criteria.

Please don't speak of "the autism community" as if we are some kind of invariant monolith. I am yet to hear anything from my supposed "community" that doesn't make me either want to run like hell away from them (I do maintain a healthy distance) or PML.

What do you think of Magnus Pike and Sir Patrick Moore, and John McCririck? And Mary Woodhouse, and (possibly) Margaret Thacher?

All as ASD as you like I reckon, not one with a diagnosis. They were just posh and eccentric.

As for school refusal it was called “bunking off” in my day and there was plenty of that.

Why don’t you just read the study? It’s interesting

ETA : correlation isn’t causation, and the study isn’t claiming it is.

You’ve just contradicted yourself.

As I sometimes say: everyone is on the spectrum. I just think the boundary between what was considered 'normal' and what was labelled as some kind of condition has moved significantly. Back along, autistic meant Rain Man like, nowadays it's mode widely recognised with much milder symptoms.

My uncle was almost certainly autistic, but was never diagnosed because it just wouldn't have been recognised back then. And if it had been, he'd have been bundled away to a facility. So my grandmother would never even consider that he had issues, despite it being perfectly clear that he would never be able to live independently.

More recently my friend's ds (currently teenage) has been diagnosed as autistic since about age 6. He certainly had some nd behaviours at primary age, but these days he's completely grown out of those and most of his issues appear to be behavioural than anything else. He's certainly way more sociably competent than I was as a teenager (and I don't consider myself to be nd). There's no shyness, awkwardness or lack of self confidence that many autistic people display. I genuinely doubt he'd get newly diagnosed as autistic if he were assessed today. But he has the label for life, for good or bad.

His younger sibling is awaiting diagnosis for ADHD. His issues are much more pronounced, and escalating as he approaches his teenage years. But again, I think a lot of it is diet and behaviour led - he's regularly pumped full of Coca-Cola and sugary sweets (right before meal time too, but his inability to then sit at the table and consume a proper meal is put down to adhd). They both talk to and about people in a deliberately horrible way (proven since they can also be really nice and polite when it's in their interests to do so), but they're never called out on it or disciplined for their words or actions ("it's because of his autism" or "I need to pick my battles with him").

I do think autism is very over diagnosed these days. I think a lot of parents push for a diagnosis for any kind behaviour that seems a bit off - they want something that explains why their DC is doing (or not doing) something they can't fully understand. And I think a lot of people grow right out of the childhood autistic traits in adulthood. Some people will say it's because they've learnt to mask their symptoms, which is likely true of some genuinely autistic adults. But is also overused as an explanation for people who were never really autistic in the first place.

It's also overused to excuse bad behaviour (autistic or not). At my DC's secondary school there are a lot of kids with Nd, learning difficulties and behavioural issues. The school prides itself on taking these kids (cynic in me thinks it's primarily for any extra funding that might come with it), and there are quite high poverty rates around here, so a lot of kids with behavioural issues (many of whom have been given a badge/diagnosis to explain it, rather than being put down to a lack of discipline or poor parenting). But my own dc notice day in day out that these kids get special treatment - completely let off for things that other kids would get in trouble for or if there's an issue between an Nd child and a nt child, the NT child is always the one who takes the rap for it.

We want Nd people to be fully integrated with the rest of society, but I don't think we're preparing them as children for adulthood or independent living properly. It seems all through childhood they're taught that their diagnosis is their excuse. That's not going to cut it as an adult - I expect a lot of young adult offenders had (or would have been given) a diagnosis of being nd as a child. We need to be trying to teach them better self awareness, and responsibility wherever possible.

Sorry, that got really long!

Sorry that was to @LiviaDrusillaAugusta

Cue 100s of responses saying, “My child has ASD and never had screens as a younger child”, or “I have ASD and it wasn’t because of screens”.

Someone upthread theorised that screens for young children might be impacting diagnosis rates, which reminded me there was a study regarding that exact issue.

The study doesn’t conclude that autism is caused by screens, but it is interesting and relevant to this discussion.

I am 5 years in age and 5 years in Dx behind you. How did your friendship situation change? I have been officially recently Dx with inattentive ADHD awaiting Austism. I have no friends, well one who lives far away. I am going through a patch now where I really feel it. Other times I am completely happy by myself.

Autistic children need screen time - they learn from it. This is something that is accepted now by the autism community.

So it’s likely that autistic children will gravitate towards it because they use it to understand the world around them.

But saying that screen time will turn a NT brain into an autistic brain is utter rubbish.

Yet the researchers behind a study of 84 000 children have shown a correlation between very young children and time on screens and later ASD diagnoses,

You can dismiss it all you like and there are multiple confounders but it’s still relevant to the discussion.

No one is saying that all ASD presentations are secondary to screens.

Autism has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘screen time’.

It’s a genetic neurotype. Easier to blame parents though, with this unscientific bullshit, eh?

Autism runs right through my family. My dad is almost certainly undiagnosed autistic. Something he now accepts in his late 70s. He and I recently discussed how sick we both felt about going to school as small children.

I was an 80s child, I was diagnosed with autism in my 30s.

When I look back at my childhood, I was absolutely a school refuser. A situation that worsened with time until my parents moved me to a small all-girls school when I was about 12. Until then, my life had been hell with constant bullying and teachers misunderstanding me.

I think back to my childhood and can see many examples of undiagnosed autistic people, including myself. These people now also have autistic kids as well as myself.

We were all round pegs in square holes. Some of us fared better than others. But either way, we were damaged and have had to spend time processing that.

For myself, it’s a priority to make sure it doesn’t happen to my own kids.

Maybe, but it all ends up as the same diagnosis, doesn’t it? So maybe too early and too much screen exposure has contributed to increased diagnosis rates.

Or there's autism, and then toddlers exposed to too much screen time separately show symptoms that happen to align with autism? In that case it's more likely due to factors like being less nurtured rather than a genetic thing such as autism.

Fleurflowering, we hear and know more about these things now, that's all.

I am 76 so was at school in the 1950s and 60s. I knew a couple of girlls who were on the autistic spectrum (Asperger's); both had a very hard time, people thought they were 'strange'.

There were a few with special educational needs (known as SEN then), needed extra help, didn't always get it and were often in all sorts of trouble. They were considered 'thick'. There wer special schools for SEN children , most of which were awful.

Two I knew who were severely dyslexic, they did have help and it paid off. Both were very bright.

One had Tourette's syndrome, would bark like a dog, sometimes she went under the table to do that. She had the mick taken out of her all the time. When she left school the headmistress said she could probably get a job as a guard dog.

You're confusing diagnosis with prevalence.
Large numbers of kids with ASD were still institutionalised one way or another when you were growing up. The others? Well, bullying was very definitely a thing back then so the ASD kids who were in your school probably got dfferent labels, like, say, "weirdo".

There’s an interesting study published in JAMA a few years ago where the data from 84 000 mother/child dyads were analysed. For boys, screen time usage of (I think, I read it ages ago) 2 hours or more at one year of age was positively correlated with an ASD diagnosis at 3 years.

Obvs correlation doesn’t equal causation but it’s interesting.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2788488

Autism etc has always existed, documented going back thousands of years, just not called that. In the 70s, they were the 'naughty kids' or the 'slow kids'. Even dyslexia wasn't well recognised then. If they had severe enough symptoms, they might be in a special school unit for kids with disabilities.

Earlier than that, there's a good chance that more affected children were shut away in children's homes for those with disabilities. Hidden from society.

Those who could might leave school early and go into more manual jobs if they had a learning disability, or they might find a job that suited their traits. It was acceptable to leave school much younger then.

Those who couldn't cope might be in mental hospitals (as we called them then as children).

It's just more recognised now and a lot of older people are being diagnosed in the wake of a child or grandchild being recognised as autistic.

Yes, there were less behaviour problems. Even kids prone to dysregulation can be conditioned to become quiet and 'behave' when faced with the cane, strap, ruler, or other corporal punishment. That's not a good thing, just a fear response in action. I'm glad we've moved on from that.