Is everyone, everywhere ND - I seriously am confused.

I went to school in the 90s and honestly can't remember much of my school days but I can remember at my "naice" small private school:

An "odd" very socially awkward girl who was usually extremely well behaved throwing a heavy and sharp metal object at a boys head for saying a silly comment and having a meltdown at being told off for it

A "feisty" girl tipping all the tables up and started throwing chairs in class in a rage. She did this a few times and would have to be talked down.

A "naughty" boy who could never sit still and was always getting into trouble even though it was clear he meant well.

Listening to stories of well known experts in their fields who were brought up 70s or before I can think of a number who were allowed to follow their special interests / weren't expected to sit nicely in class - like Keith Brymer Jones whose teacher gave him the key to the school pottery studio, or a bird expert who was allowed to skip class because he couldn't cope and the teacher let him observe birds instead. There seemed to be more flexibility then.

This. And don't forget the constant scrolling, small attention spans needed. Constant gratification. Dopamine hits. Combined with collapse of decent parenting (the ipad does it instead), and no manners. Dreadful.

After I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 22, my mother was extensively tested like I was and was diagnosed at 59. She was born in 1950.

My mother did quite well for herself in life; she graduated as salutatorian from her American high school, graduated from a good university, and became a teacher. But she was always working much harder than everyone else was to get to that point, and people who weren’t close to her didn’t see that. When I was born in 1986, she quit teaching to be a SAHM. I’m not sure she would have been able to successfully juggle motherhood and a career at the same time. She was a great mother, but our house was disastrously messy, and it got worse as she got older. Periodically, she’d completely forget appointments or obligations. We’d be driving home from school and she’d suddenly exclaim, “Oh my God, I was supposed to meet Mary for lunch!” or “Oh no – I just remembered I was supposed to have that dentist appointment yesterday!”

My two daughters, ages eight and twelve, also have ADHD. The eight-year-old can hold her emotions together during the school day, but once she’s home, she’s reached her limit and all bets are off. Big meltdowns over stuff like “you didn’t tell me I was going to have to unload the dishwasher!” and “no, that’s not what I said! No one is listening to me!” (Yes we were, kid, but you were yelling from the basement and not keeping your tongue behind your teeth like they taught you in speech therapy.)

Like my parents’ house, our house is a big mess, and like my mom, I’m a SAHM. I’m also a licensed attorney, but I have no intention of getting a job in that field, because clients deserve someone much more organized than I am.

If everyone is entitled to their own opinion then why is calling your friends dh an ignorant rancid cunt not just an opinion this woman has of him

This colleague and many others would say that was a fair opinion

However not giving any recourse to this ignorant rancid cunts disablist rhetoric which there are laws on shows the company up to be a big problem

So if someone is told their child's disability is fake, the only reason they would get angry is if it's true?

The woman shihldn't have screamed in his face (allegedly) but she's right about your friend's husband being a cunt.

I have not said that all diagnoses are sham. I have said that some people use a diagnosis as an excuse.
Additionally, people will say things like ‘it’s my ADHD’, ‘it’s my OCD’ or ‘we’re all a bit autistic’ when they have no such ‘complaint’.
You seem to be inferring things from my posts that I have not implied.

My friend thinks her 11 year old daughter is autistic purely because her room is messy, she dislikes homework and when she comes home from school she has a tendency to be a bit ratty and grumpy and winds up her younger sister at times. My friend thinks this is a sign of "masking" it could be but nothing else about her daughter suggests autism. She's very popular in school and amongst her peers, typically being the "queen bee" of her class. She can be a bit shy with new people but enjoys dancing, make up, getting her nails done, skincare, perfume and hanging out with her friends, going in a group to the mall to browse the shops (especially Sephora) and spend her pocket money on matcha lattes and lip gloss etc. She's bright but fundamentally not that interested in school preferring her dancing and socialising. She shows no problem with sensory issues or upsets to her routine or any other typical traits of autism.

Nonetheless my friend is still seeking an autism assessment because her "negative" traits must mean their is something wrong with her that can be explained away with a diagnosis. Perhaps it isn't impossible but she also sounds like a pretty typical 11 year old girl.

I also used to work with a woman a few years ago who thought her 3 year old daughter might be bipolar because sometimes she was deliriously happy one minute and the next she was crying and upset. Not sure she'd ever met a 3 year old before.

Ideally, there would be small pupil:staff ratios for all children, better pupil-staff relationships, better parenting, better behaviour policies, expulsion for bullying, calmer environments, better teaching, better outdoor provision etc. That would suit all children, NT and ND. As it is, I think the education system works reasonably well for about 80% of pupils. How can we realistically increase that to 90% without special schools?

And?

All I can say is I was shocked when I came back on Mumsnet after a break of years to see so many posters saying they had ND or autistic children. I think that a lot of mothers say their kids are those things because they want them to appear 'special' and to be treated as special even though they are probably quite ordinary and normal. Giving kids phones early on (I see babies being given phones on buses), kids not going out to play all day long like we did, a general worship of victimhood, the impossibility of teachers being able to teach a class that is full of kids facing the other way and 'discussing' whatever she's talking about, no sanctions in schools, the fact that parents think they know better than teachers or doctors - all this has contributed to kids who are ill-disciplined and unhappy. Yes there are such things as autism, etc. I have a neighbour whose son is genuinely, obviously autistic and went to a special school. He's absolutely fabulous and his father doesn't let him annoy the neighbours by playing his music too loud. My sister is probably dyslexic but got through school without a diagnosis and is earning loads of money. My nephew (30+) who has had a diagnosis seems perfectly normal to me. I'm afraid I think the majority of these diagnoses are due to pressure being put on hard-worked GPs by mothers. And don't get me started about self-diagnosis. What gets me is that in my father's generation these young people would have been proudly going to war and defending the country, and now look at them! It's sad and pathetic how far Britain has fallen.

How did this work in years gone by when there weren’t screens, shops didn’t play music etc when there was no cars or internet or additives in food

Everyone seems to forget that ADHD and Autism aren’t something that came about in the latter part of the 20th century. What about those people who were born with adhd in the 19th century and before.

Oh I know. it really pisses me off when my lazy NT colleagues use their generic NT excuses for poor work. Oh i feel unwell today. Oh I didn't sleep last night. Oh I have a hangover and forgot. So typical of NTs!

Anyway, sarcasm aside, the 'using excuses for poor performance' thing, is an individual person thing not an ND thing. Why are you attributing this to ND people only?

It's worse now than before, without doubt. Undeniable. As is general parenting.

Looks like you'd never be unemployed if you are an ASD assessor these days.

Except GPs don't diagnose Autism or ADHD.

It's clear from the post, my friend thinks anything she perceives as difficult behaviour must be due to a diagnosable issue as opposed to just a normal developmental stage or general issues which anyone could have. Also I posted about someone else who was also slapping a label on normal behaviour they found difficult. If this sort of thing is more common like what we are now understanding about mental health were people are pathologizing normal uncomfortable emotions then perhaps the same is also true of behaviour. Nothing can just be normal and a bit difficult it has to be validated and excused by a diagnosis. If that's the case and all negative or problematic traits warrant a diagnosis then we really are pathologizing the normal spectrum of human behaviour.

Nor are there any schools that don't impose 'sanctions'.

No. What I’m saying is that some poor performers use an NT diagnosis (real or imagined) as an excuse. Nowhere have I said that:
All poor performers are NT
or
All NT people are incompetent.

No it’s actually how autism presents in women and girls. Funny once it’s women being diagnosed it’s picked apart and ridiculed.

Guess what your friend does not represent my children, the kids I work with or the ND population as a whole!

Some children are ND. Others aren’t, just poorly behaved. There is a vast spectrum anyway. But it’s obviously not easy sorting it out, which governments will have to do, sooner or later, both for welfare reform and service provision.

So why aren't you framing your issue as being with people who are work-shy, rather than about ADHD and autism? Why is autism and ADHD the focus and not, say, people who are late for work because they're doing the school run, or someone who fails to do their job because they claim they're having problems sleeping, or because they've got a bad back, or any other reason for poor performance? You claim that it's just when these diagnoses are misused, but you don't seem to be aware that by claiming it's 'fashionable' means that you're minimising the experience of people who genuinely have a disability, and that you're making this statement with zero evidence of whether someone's explanation is credible or false because of your own bias that you are the expert as to whether someone is or isn't neurodiverse.
You also seem to be unaware that people with ND can be performance managed like anyone else. The idea of reasonable adjustments is small adjustments to enable someone to do the job, not to give them a free pass not to do the job. I'm not sure what kind of workplace you're in, but in any well managed company, managers don't just shrug their shoulders if someone under performs. They manage them, and people can and do get dismissed if they can't do a job. If a company fails to do so, it's usually because they haven't met their basic legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments, meaning that they can't legally take action against the employee. That's on the employer though, not the employee.

Exactly, there is a reason grammar schools are stuffed full of and kids- strong work ethic, attention to detail, preference for rules and hyper focus are but a few.

What has this got to do with hard worked GP’s

Do you think you go to your GP and get diagnosed within the 10 minute window your appointments for and the GP just diagnoses you and writes you a prescription

GP’s are not qualified to give a diagnosis or prescribe meds. It takes years of being on waiting lists and filling out forms and phone calls and meetings before you can get a diagnoses.

You don’t seem to understand anything and seem quite proud that your dyslexic sister works 10 times harder than everyone else just to be in the position she is in

Have you ever thought how help with her dyslexia would have rocketed her career past where she is now or that her luge would have been easier.

Your nephew is probably “drugged” up in order to behave like a someone acceptable but no one would tell you because of your opinion

As for proudly going to war
I can’t think of a single generation of my family who went off to war. So that dispels that theory.

Now we wouldn’t be called on to go to war because we would likely get bored and go for a wander

I'll share your taxi. Of course autism and dyslexia have always existed. But I think there has been an overmedicalisation of what is a normal spectrum of personality traits.

You mean women and girls are now included in the diagnosis process. Why shouldn’t they be?