Is everyone, everywhere ND - I seriously am confused.

My older relative said this. I pointed out their extended family all left school at 14 or 15, lived in a dilapidated house, kept very unusual hours, lived off the state and odd jobs, one did paintings some of which were brilliant, one did inventions, some of which were very successful. They seem pretty neuro diverse to me.

Say what now? They can re-join when they have 'grasped' how to be NT? Or mask sufficiently to be able to pass? You really have no experience of a child with autism or ADHD do you?

Or alternatively if means people with ADHD can get incredibly effective medication and neurodivergent people now have a better understanding of themselves and can potentially get very helpful therapy.

Did you know that ADHD and autism are cormorbid with numerous serious other probelems? If you know you are ND it makes it easier to avoid them.

People with ADHD have around a 2.6x greater chance of developing T2 diabetes (the number is a recent discovery). People with ADHD are at much greater risk of domestic abuse, alcohol, drug or gambling problems, being in prison, migraine, PCOS, ME/CFS, POTS, hEDS etc . It’s similar for autism.

So be glad that people have a better opportunity to succeed and be useful members of society. . Most ND people do not see it as a carte blanche for bad behaviour.

My eldest (now adult) DD was diagnosed with ADHD at 13, and had to come out of the mainstream school system. I had suspected this since primary but diagnosis was like pushing water uphill with a fork, and had she got more support in primary like she should, I feel she'd have coped better with secondary. Thankfully she's a very successful adult, and I'm fairly convinced that her brain just took more time to mature like the rest of her.

Yes, it's awful. Many families now get pushed to supported living or worse treatment units. (Some supported living is great and right for the people involved just trying to point out lack of options and support. While circs are better than years ago, they still aren't great).

Honestly! How many more threads do we need on this subject? I am going to make this the last one to which I will bite. Trust me when I say there have always been children with autism and adhd, many were failed by the education system in the 1970's. I spent my school years trying to navigate the rules, living in dread of being asked to read aloud and inwardly screaming with distress and discomfort, at the sensory overload.

Girls were rarely diagnosed even in my son's era, so there will be a period of women, particularly in the older generation coming forward for assessment.

My Father spent his school years struggling and didn't meet his potential. He is a highly intelligent man, with a vast general knowledge. He described periods of time in the workplace where he had brain fog and anxiety so bad that he couldn't function. He had a period of burn out so bad, that he sat in a chair and stared into space for three months. He also has extremely rigid special interests, sensory issues and adherence to routines. Dad is so like my son that it has made me cry on more than one occasion.

We have always been here, thankfully there is some help and recognition.

I was diagnosed with Dyslexia as a child, then with Dyspraxia and finally with ADHD and some people have suggested I have autism and I get tested for that. So I am what people say is neurodiverse. However I don't think I ever benefited from being diagnosed as there was never any tailored support, or support full stop for me and I just had to do the best I could and I did eventually graduate with a first class degree and a masters.

The older I get I do think that everyone does indeed have neurodiverse traits. My partner struggles with traits that could be considered autistic and ADHD without being fully either. I find most people I know suspect they have ADHD and seem to struggle a lot with distraction, time blindness, procrastination, disorganisation, finishing or switching tasks, impulsivity and low self esteem.

It's at the point where I think that being mythically neurotypical, where following routines, switching tasks, navigating social interaction and high stimulus environments is easy, where being organised and on top of things is the norm is the rarity. I don't really know anyone like this at all, everyone seems to be flying by the seat of their pants hoping for the best. Even my mum who when younger seemed really on top of things and was almost obsessively routine and bound in a way that wasn't really helpful to her or the people around her, was that really neurotypical? She says now that she often felt stressed and unable to relax and always felt compelled to push on with her routine even if she was tired and just wanted to relax.

I also think that lots of aspects of modern life, while they don't cause these neurodiverse traits of conditions they can make them harder to cope with. Poor diets, lack of exercise, endless potential for distraction even things like the depletion of nutrition in our food from intensive farming isn't helping our minds as people are often low in trace minerals which we are not learning impact our brain health and development quite a bit.

Interesting! Had DS been assessed in 1980 rather than 2000, he would have fitted the PDD diagnosis very neatly.

He was autistic from birth, of course, not "from 30 months", but the signs were more subtle.

I see OP hasn't returned. Hopefully some of their acute confusion has been resolved?

Hmm. Makes you wonder about parenting or genetics.

This can be very course dependant though, people with different strengths and weaknesses gravitate towards different subjects.

In Architecture for example easily more than half of the students were dyslexic, because the strengths that come with dyslexia lend themselves to being a good Architect. This is reflected in workplaces too.

When you have a group of people together whose brains like similar things it isn't that surprising that you may also be grouping a certain SEN.

My father was the standard ADHD kid. Couldn't stand still, couldn't concentrate, inattentive, hyper active.

He was deemed uneducatabled! Yet without a diagnosis, he managed to do very well. He moved into an apprenticeship, started to learn things he found interesting and learned to focus his attention. He evolved in a career that meant he was out and about, talking with people and he was absolutely fine. He still had to learn to adapt and adjust.

As an older adult, he got totally immersed in learning history, astronomy and other things.

In his 80s, he is still hyperactive and can't stand still for longer than 1 hour. It's just who he is. A lack of diagnosis didn't ruin his life!

Quite a few people mentioning corporal punishment - I wasn't personally alive/old enough to form memories when this was commonplace, but anyone who was alive at that point seems to have the same recollection that there would typically be a few pupils who were constantly getting punished and yet it did not actually curb their behaviour. In fact I have heard that some boys even saw it as a sort of badge of honour.

I find it far more likely that most people didn't encounter children having "chair throwing" type distress behaviour because children prone to enter that level of distress were only very rarely even in mainstream schools to begin with.

There are states in America where corporal punishment is still used in schools and organisations advocating against it bring up these cases all the time - it is typically the children who are in extreme distress who end up physically punished and it does not curb the behaviour because distress behaviour is not a conscious choice.

Well I was a 70s kid, a bit weird but quiet and obedient. Diagnosed via a psychometric test last year.

So kids had nd in the 70s we were just disciplined into masking at school.

My cousins have dyslexia as does my Aunty my mum had dyscalculia and old.

I'd struggled and was misunderstood for ever, but now I understand how my brain actually works I'm starting to thrive and step out of the box the 70s put me in.

Lots more children were institutionalised, sent to special schools or ended up in borstals, so you didn’t encounter them in your mainstream school.

The mainstream is far wider and expected to accommodate far more different needs now.

I think there’s a mix of neurodiverse children struggling with the support or lack support available. And a lot of “easy” diagnosing - a lot of “suspected” diagnoses and a trait leading to a sofa diagnosis. “She can’t sit still, we suspect it’s ADHD. Meanwhile, no instruction, incentive or consistency to get child to sit still.

Parenting has lost its way and children rule the roost. I think there’s a lot of mild diagnoses that actually resolve because the child didn’t have a different brain makeup or processing, they just had personality characteristics and inconsistent parenting that meant they ticked a few boxes.

Parents expect very little from their children these days in terms of behaviour and discipline.

The employment statistics of the 1970s and 1980s do not show that anyone could just leave school and walk into the apprenticeship of their choice.

Read Looks and Smiles by Barry Hines or the Ken Loach film adaption or Union Street by Pat Barker or Class Work by Peter Rowley.

I agree that not everyone needs to go to university but don't look back on the past with such rose tinted glasses either

I think there's a giant dollop of rose tinted glasses going on here. I grew up in the 80s rather than 70s but we also "didn't have neurodiversity". By which I mean, we absolutely had nd kids, they were just subject to punishments and ridicule for behaviours they couldn't help.

Physical and sexual abuse was also wildly prevalent, many fewer safeguards for children. Anyone who struggled was written off early rather than helped.

I don't think things are perfect now, but they weren't perfect then either.

I love how these type of OPs are always along the lines of

'we didn't have anything like this in our day and we turned out just fine. Drinking from hoses, smacking kids, not going home till the street lights were on blah blah blah'

Fine by whose standards exactly? Because none of us are looking up to you thinking 'i wish I could be more like her she's so healthy well adjusted and happy'. You just sound bitter and resentful that the world has changed and you haven't caught up.

Hi 👋🏼 from another 1970s educated child.
I was one of those quiet brainy girls who was teachers pet, always getting great grades but never even bothering with the homework. Of course I love the structure of school life, it made my needs. It was every other aspect of life that was challenging, confusing, and exhausted me. Unsurprisingly no one my family could help because we were all the same, high achievers, but struggled with social engagement.
With the greater understanding we’ve developed over the last couple of decades it’s absolutely obvious my family is genetically predisposed to neurodiversity. My parents were Neurodiverse I’m sure, and I suspect some of my grandparents were too. My siblings are definitely neuro diverse and all of our children have diagnoses. Getting my diagnosis last year I finally understood why I found some things so challenging that came naturally to others.
Your question about ‘ his ND everywhere’ i’d answer, no. However, it is far more prevalent than we ever recognised before and those of us with relief of finally understanding ourselves are shouting from the rooftops and trying to get appropriate support for our children so they don’t have to go through what we went through.
I’d also agree with those who say ND is not an excuse for bad behaviour. Even with neurodiversity there are basic rules in society in the workplace which should be adhered to, and if your needs mean you transgress these rules there should be the understanding to recognise this and apologise in a way in which the person is able to do this.

We have always been here, thankfully there is some help and recognition
Exactly, yet people decades ago seemed to get on with life without a diagnosis much better than younger people do now with one and all the adjustments in place older generations were never given, so how is it helping?

Most modern ADHD stimulants would not cause someone with ADHD to behave ‘manic’. Most of the stimulants would be titrated to the correct dose by the prescriber and they would usually have the opposite effect on someone who has ADHD. The medication would have a general calming effect. I don’t know anyone who has prescribed ADHD medication who acts manic when taking their medication and if they did the prescriber should investigate and suggest a different medication. There are other conditions that can also cause behaviours that can appear manic and then down.

For example, a person with ADHD interrupting someone else who is talking, or being late all the time - it’s still impolite to do even if you have ADHD so the person needs to learn strategies to manage those tendencies rather than just shrugging and saying “I can’t help it”

That’s like saying someone in a wheelchair needs to learn to walk instead of saying
“I can’t help it”

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.