Is everyone, everywhere ND - I seriously am confused.

You mentioned violence, not me.

I’m talking about fear of consequences.

Yours (and my!) generation became more accepting and bred with those who were 'a bit weird' where previously people like that would've stayed at home with their parents and remained to be seen as 'a bit odd'. There will be more 'odd' kids survived then as medical advances occurred too (ND status often is coupled with other comorbidities that could have been fatal or at least made other life factors including relationships/marriage/kids more unlikely). There are more ND kids now as a result of this.

Having said that, I agree with you for the most part.

I was at school in the 80's & am late diagnosed with autism as was my brother

We both had horrific times at school. Struggled with bullying from peers & with relentless harsh punishment from teachers who thought that strict rules & punishment would do us good.

It did to some extent as the boundaries & rules were very clear but I think it made me very numb & shutdown out of fear.

Myself & my brother both ended up with severe skin picking which we now know calms the nervous system in autistic individuals. I have permanent scars from that 40 years later. A high tactile stim toy has completely cured that for me & I wish one of those was available when I was at school.

My brother dropped out of school at 14 & barely attended for 2 years prior to that. It wasn't that my parents didn't try - they did literally force him into the car & school in his pajamas/underwear on many occasions. He barely leaves the house & has lived with my dad all his life. He is extremely intelligent & home taught himself A level maths & OU degree but has never had a job.

I had what we now know as ARFID & that turned into severe anorexia at 13 that took me 20 years to recover fully from.

One of my own DC has autism & ADHD diagnosed in primary & while I'm not going to pretend that SEN provision is perfect (it's barely adequate at times) the shift from my own experiences are seismic.

The awareness alone makes it easier to understand & develop coping skills so my DC has been able to stay in school with reasonable adjustments - time out, SEN hub, fidget toys etc & has a near normal life alongside neurodiverse & non neurodiverse peers.

We were never allowed on school trips as kids & would never have tolerated the crowds at a theme park but the changes in understanding & accessibility means my own DC can experience these things

I'll be honest I was one of those kids who were more difficult in school. I would storm out of lessons, set off the fire alarm and use it as my reason to escape the grounds or start screaming and shouting when provoked.
My parents were strict as well. It was the setting it was just to much for me to deal with. The school had 1,300 students and I simply felt overwhelmed this was in the early 2000s.
In my last few years they clocked on what was wrong and I used to sit in lessons to listen to the teachers and then be sent off to another room to do my work and I calmed down loads.

There’s always been a belief that screens encourage violence.

in the early 80s it was thought that video nasties (horror films available on video so the children could watch them in their family home as opposed to having an 18 rating in the cinema) were to blame.

heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica were also blamed for child and teenage violence in the 1980s - I remember the whole “these bands drive our teenagers to satanism and violence” thing.

statistically, our society is becoming less violent every decade. Murder rates and other violent crimes are dropping.

and the hidden violence and abuse of the 1970s and 1980s - caneing in schools and the absolutely fucking epidemic of child sex abuse not to mention domestic violence.

the 1970s were far, far more violent than now.

My grandmother worked at a special school in the 70s - children having loud and violent meltdowns most certainly existed.

I have 16 people in my workplace. 2 are officially diagnosed with neurodiverse conditions but I highly suspect another 4 are probably neurodiverse (either undiagnosed or undisclosed). I do think that these conditions are incredibly common and huge numbers aren't even diagnosed.

So I don’t think there were fewer ND kids - just that the environment and expectations were such that most of them managed. Lots of people will say they only managed at considerable cost, but I’m not sure the modern way is much better.

Which then begs the question - is the term 'neurotypical' useful or meaningful?

That’s because teachers, parents, police and adults were routinely violent towards children.

it’s not considered acceptable any more for teachers to cane students.

parents are not allowed to inflict serious physical damage on their kids.

the police were never allowed to beat up people but everyone knows it happened. Hence stuff like the police and criminal evidence act (1984).

I totally agree. Obviously there are children who are ND but the general behaviour has declined and I put it down to over tolerance of poor behaviour and the general view that one’s personal rights trump consideration for everybody else. Only today I stood waiting at a checkout and a child of about 6 was screaming blue murder (ear piercing shrieks) and the Mum just stood there totally ignoring her. It happens all the time. The young woman at the checkout actually commented that if it was her Mum she would have been told to shut up. I would have done the same with mine too. You didn’t use to see all these screaming tantrums as they weren’t indulged like they are today.

I certainly didn’t witness it during my entire school life.

Yet my kids did on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.

The consequences were usually violent.

a smack, a caning, etc.

As someone who has a later diagnosed autistic sibling, I see both sides of this. My sister suffered horribly at school, was horrendously bullied, wasn’t diagnosed. Now she is house bound, scared to leave the house, hasn’t worked for years and is totally reliant on my parents. She’s really regressed and it makes me sad. I wonder if she had the support at school and understanding, or even an EHCP maybe things would have been easier for her. I work with ND children and I know how reasonable adjustments and support make SUCH a difference.

I also see the other side of it. I often wonder if now my sister knows she is autistic, she has totally just given up trying to build resilience and ‘fit in’ and actually has no interest or confidence in trying to reintegrate into society. I highly doubt she will ever work. She can’t leave the house without a panic attack/meltdown so she hasn’t for years. She’s in therapy and medicated but she’s just given up and she won’t even do her own shopping. She quit her job during Covid as it was retail and I wonder sometimes if she was pushed a bit to ‘get on with it’ again after Covid if we wouldn’t be in this situation. I’ve gently suggested jobs that aren’t as stimulating or retail but she has no interest. I really see both sides of this because on the one hand not having a diagnosis messed her up massively, on the other having one has given her permission to live this way.

This may seem like a harsh take but I will be responsible for this one day. I love my sister and my parents. It’s definitely a nuanced and sensitive subject .

When I was at school (70s born, 80s school years) in junior school a boy in the year above me (so about 11 or 12) brought a pen knife to school and stabbed another kid in the leg. I don’t know how things went in secondary school as he went to a different school to me for seniors, but as a young adult he died by suicide. He was clearly struggling throughout his teens and didn’t get the help that he needed.
I also had a friend whose younger brother was (then) diagnosed as hyperactive (most likely ADHD in today’s terms). He was always destroying things, hitting other kids etc and was constantly in trouble at both home and at school. Sadly his dad’s solution was to give him a spanking with a slipper- this did not change his behaviour in the long term, just dealt a quick punishment at the time of any incident. No longer in touch with the family, so I don’t know about the long term impact and another friend who had selective mutism and almost certainly autism- had no idea how to communicate with anyone or make friends. Also knew two boys (brothers) who were sent to a specialist boarding school for children with behavioural difficulties, as their family couldn’t cope with them. There absolutely were neurodiverse children but they were either ignored, moved out of mainstream schools or bullied mercilessly by the other children for being different. We just have more awareness and understanding now than we did in the 70s/80s/90s.

Our small town had a school for mild-moderate learning disability, a school for 'physically handicapped' and a school for severely cognitively impaired kids, plus the school for 'naughty boys'.

So the other kids left in mainstream schools were typically developing and academically average.
Nd girls who masked and held it all together at school but struggled as adults 'suffered with their nerves' if they had a husband or family to look after them or were locked in an institution as a lunatic.

I do wonder how many women reached peri-menopause and got incarcerated...

Please know for every person who feels like the original poster, there's another person who doesn't.

I'm sure there are parents assuming ND means they don't have to actually parent.

However, I voted YABU. My late mum was born in the 60s, struggled in school and was allowed to just wander off to the art department and do her own thing. Still got good A levels, didn't go to university but managed a professional career, break for kids, went back to it then spectacularly burnt out. All sorts of issues and conflicts with different colleagues and managers along the way. Diagnosed with AuDHD and other mental health issues later in life.

My almost 90yo grandmother is also obviously autistic in the way we understand it today (despite being verbal and so on), and it's caused her lots of personal conflicts that I think people would understand better with some context today.

No meltdowns - was it just easier to exclude people? No consequences for prolonged school absence? Because I know my mother hit another child over the head with a folding chair in primary school and no action taken.

You're also prob forgetting about people who were profoundly dyslexic, given no support in school - for example one who was on the channel 4 programme about illiterate adults and was out mowing the school lawns instead of in classes.

I am a teacher and I do find there is a hugely increasing number of students with SEND. No issue with that but sometimes the accommodations given are a lot, eg print every tiny guillotined resource on their chosen colour of paper; I have one class with 6 students whose documents say I'm not allowed to ask them a question. If the alternative is that they're not in school, then yes definitely better that they're in and getting something from the class, but you usually see them underperforming later as many of these (not all by any means) will not engage even with a private conversation about their work.

So regarding children being diagnosed..I've been through the system of diagnosis for autism,twice with two of my children,then lastly for myself.
My eldest was diagnosed at age 3 fairy swiftly.. approximately 24 years ago
My second diagnosed age 7 ..but that took a longer time , because waiting lists were horrendous by then ..
There's so many hoops to jump through,your doctor has to agree to refer,the school has to agree to refer, so much information is needed and collected and professionals in school seeing your child have to agree ..it's not a quick process at all ..and it can take years ,(while you watch your child slowly fall apart in a system that is not suitable for them) .but ..in my experience it's very thorough .
Then it all starts again , trying to get an EHCP ..and lea refusing to assess means parents are fighting every step of the way ..just for the crumbs of support finally offered .
Unless someone has been through the system, fighting for diagnosis and fighting for EHCP and support,you have no idea how much parents are chewed up and spat out by a system that is supposed to care ,but simply has got enough resources to do so adequately

Not a gotcha, genuinely - surely at that point they're not conditions, they're just part of the human spectrum of personalities and behaviours?

More children who would've been in special schools or not educated at all in the past are expected to be in mainstream schools now.

Your views sound a bit archaic to me.

Fair point.

Although I do think there’s been a rise in ND kids and adults, and not just a rise in diagnosis.

Childhood looks vastly different now compared to the 70s, and I don't know why it's so often reduced to screens and poor parenting.

That is OPs point. These kids were undiagnosed and in ordinary classrooms. There was no chair throwing or melt downs. There was day dreaming and not achieving your full potential.