Is everyone, everywhere ND - I seriously am confused.

They’re not drugged up. Only 3-5% are diagnosed with ADHD in this country and only half are medicated. Let’s have some reality in this discussion as opposed to hysteria.

Also not everyone has autism from birth. Regressive autism where kids develop normally and then regress usually quite severely is also common

I won't disagree with that, though I'm less familiar with it. What I meant was that DS had clear signs from birth that he was "different" (difficult to feed, to soothe, to wean, to dress, to take places; but could draw his own name from pictorial memory at two).

Now we have a generation of adults and children (including yourself) who have really poor and inappropriate social behaviours and more than likely need to be assessed for personality disorders
We now have many more people depressed, anxious, reliant on others, hopeless about the future, low resilience, no sense of pride, self-centered, judgemental, self-conscious more than any other generations.

So where is the benefits to society of this obsession with getting diagnosis?

Define much better. Or are we applying the 70’s logic of “if we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist”. So no one was institutionalised, no one was hidden away, no one was refused an education, no one completely failed in school, no one was abused into submission (or worse), no one ended up on the streets, no one suffered from addiction through self medication, no one got so fucked up that they perpetuated their trauma or are only now seeking help, no one just disappeared , no one killed themselves and so on?
Everyone was fine yeah. So much better in fact.

I apologise not read full thread.
But as someone in the 90s I was diagnosed with dyslexia/ manic depression / adhd and autism
But I have a BA(hons) and MA and MSc
I still have adhd and autism and having read some posts married a man with autism ( but everyone I've worked with in IT is autistic)
I have 2 dds, one is normal ish , 1 is severely autistic, mute outside, no social skills, vv clever for her nice subject. But struggles to write and understand maths

No.Seriously don’t know what circles you’re living in but autism diagnosis levels are 1% suspected to be 3%, ADHD slightly tougher but both are under diagnosed in this country. I work in a school with high numbers of SEND and I’m not experiencing what you describe.

I taught in a unit for autistic teens for many years.

the advancing of education for autistic children has come on massively and these days if they are diagnosed early there is a lot of input from portage, speech and language therapists, total communication approaches etc.

the original hope with the development of these interventions was that if autistic people could be taught to communicate then it might be that under the communication difficulties would be a “normal” mind.

these days many autistic children learn to speak and communicate and some come from special school to units like mine where they can integrate to some extent with mainstream. However they remain autistic and still have significant social and other difficulties to overcome.

in the 1970s and 1980s no-one with autism was moving from special school to mainstream because the therapeutic interventions that make such a difference didn’t exist.

I agree, I'm a child of the 70/80 and don't really remember any trouble in school. Yes we had the 'odd' kids who was a little disruptive but no one was labeled. I'm sure diet as a massive role to play, with so many addictives in food + so much stimulation. Kids aren't playing out like they used to. They are driven to school, sat at a desk for 8 hours, picked up, sat at home . I'm definitely not saying ND doesn't exist it does but we need to look at the cause to find a solution instead of drugging these kids up.

Functioning in society requires the skills mentioned.

The ability to wait your turn
The ability to sit quietly while others are speaking
The ability control the impulse to be violent
Understanding delayed gratification and that other people have other needs and wishes from your own and yours do not always trump their wishes

If a child doesn't have those, they need to learn them
You can call it masking if you like but how is your child going to live independently as an adult if they can't do those things?
They have to learn to "mask" enough to function.
It might be harder or a bit more uncomfortable for them and take a bit longer

But really what is the choice? What job are they going to have if they can't do those things? How are they going to form friendships or romantic relationships or appropriate professional relationships if they can't do the above? Or just manage to go to the shops, interact with medical professionals and so on?

Children should be supported in getting there and understanding that it happens at different rates but that needs to be the goal for group education to be viable and for adults to function in society. Support can be given to find ways to help unwind/relax/not burn out through lifestyle, hobbies etc.

But some masking is required. From all of us. Don't you sometimes smile politely at work when you think someone is an idiot? Or speak calmly to a customer or relative when you really think they are being unreasonable?
You are masking. That's life when you interact with other people.

What on earth are you basing 'people did better' on?
Lower unemployment rate, lower reliance on benefits, lower mental health problems, better sociability, better education etc...

It's not a label, it's a diagnoses and undiagnosed ND is rift in my family, which also has very successful people in it. I expect I have autism and adhd like my son, my Dad, sister and my brother I would put money on too. School was horried for me and nothing like the OPs version.
But also, if everyone has it why not change society rather than trying to fit square pegs in round holes. Look at our prisons systems full of ND young men. What if they were assessed and given medication that the needed to keep up on to be released?

...And then we had this wonderful thing called inclusion where the government exclaimed that our children would be wonderfully accommodated in mainstream education, with the 2001 Special Education and disability Act. We were on the receiving end of the complaints from the parents of NT children, who had to suffer the indignity of having to put up with our kids in the classroom.

I'm glad for him that it turned out well. The problem is that many adults in his generation who were never diagnosed end up going down a wrong path of criminality, addiction, violence etc because they struggled so much in education or maintaining legal employment, healthy relationships etc. It's one of the reasons why it's thought important to try and identify ADHD earlier in life, because encouragement and understanding (and medication if it is right for the person) can help steer people more towards the outcome similar to your father's
But crime is on the up, reliance on state benefits is going up at an alarming rate etc....so clearly the way we are dealing with it now is actually worse than we were then.

My father managed because his parents made it clear that inactivity was not an option. He learnt coping mechanisms and that he had to adapt to others around him. He found a pathway that was better for him and learnt resilience.

I think it's interesting in that what is called one thing and diagnosed can vary depending on when the assessment takes place. Especially with autism where it is a group of symptoms that can fit many diagnoses *thinking about those who have genetic conditions diagnosed as the cause of their autism.

On another note, just to throw it out there. Not all people who have a genetic cause have a hereditory condition. Some people have mutations which their parents don't have.

Also not everyone has autism from birth. Regressive autism where kids develop normally and then regress usually quite severely is also common among those with severe autism. (There are people who believe this is encephalitous - excuse my spelling/ PANS/PANDA).

No they did not. They were forced into masking and conforming which caused no end of mental health issues and distress or they were removed and hidden away.

Plenty of kids with autism were excluded from all schooling or mainstream schooling in the 1970s.

lots of private schools were started by various groups as some of the parents were quite well off and wanted a school for their kids.

in the 1970s what is now the autism spectrum was still split into Kanner’s autism (largely non verbal and severely delayed from age 2 or so) and Asperger’s and many children with Kanner’s were in special schools. Children with Asperger’s had often been excluded from mainstream.

Autism wasn’t even in the DSM until 1980 - Kanner type autism was considered an infantile schizophrenia.

That’s interesting as at work (NHS) we have all recently had practice educator training specifically on neurodiversity and about all the adjustments we can make as apparently at the university we tend to take students from 1/3 to 1/2 of students identify as being neurodiverse.

Our last two students were apparently unable to answer the phone and our current one can only do clinical work part time and has to “work” from home the other half. Because she’s not getting as much patient experience as she should be the placement has also had to be extended. We aren’t supposed to ask them direct questions and have to write down everything. The trouble is that if all these adjustments are made throughout school and university, in the workplace someone else is going to have to do the things they can’t and so presumably finding work is going to be pretty difficult in the future.

But today the majority of those children would be in mainstream.

I was referring to my cohort so don't define others experiences

Did you get no accommodations for dyslexia at school? As someone who sat their GCSEs without any accommodations and hardly got to the end of any papers and then finally had the right support and accommodations in place for A-levels having a diagnosis made a big difference. It meant I actually had time to finish exam papers and could type in exams so that my almost illegible hand writing was less of an issue.

My gran was put in a mental institution when she hit menopause (she was clearly autistic and she cracked)
What on earth are you basing 'people did better' on? Because they were shunned and hidden? Unemployed? Topped themselves?

Well, yes because it was a special school and would have been expected as part of the disorders and conditions those children had.

I'm glad for him that it turned out well. The problem is that many adults in his generation who were never diagnosed end up going down a wrong path of criminality, addiction, violence etc because they struggled so much in education or maintaining legal employment, healthy relationships etc. It's one of the reasons why it's thought important to try and identify ADHD earlier in life, because encouragement and understanding (and medication if it is right for the person) can help steer people more towards the outcome similar to your father's.