Is everyone, everywhere ND - I seriously am confused.

This is quite an interesting listen (IMO).

BBC radio programme "Understand All Kinds of Minds".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0030m4v

I too am from your generation OP, and while I have fond memories of the 70s I’m not sure it was ‘the best time to be alive’ for everyone.

I have a young adult son with autism and learning disability who will never be able to live independently. I do remember that disabled people often had to put up with the kind of abusive language that would never be acceptable now. I’m thankful that my son lives in a more understanding time.

Diagnosis with what? Autism and ADHD ?

Up until recently how autism and adhd present in women and girls was not included in the diagnosis process. How come now we do know and it’s included with this half of society coming forward you think it’s ok to say tootle off and live in ignorance? Smacks of medical misogyny to me.

Lower employment was because of the need to build after a war. Do you think we need a good war to sort everything out?
The rest, is laughable. There werent lower rates of mental health in the 70s, they dished out valium to housewives like sweeties. Single mums didn't exist on benefits because they weren't offered any, their children were removed for forced adoption instead. And clearly, your post shows that the education system failed too.

I’m a child of the 70s too and I remember some horrific behaviour at school (bog standard local high school). As for throwing furniture, one of the teachers was particularly fond of that.

5 out of the 6 new starters Ive had at work in the past 5 months have said they are either autistic or have ADHD, or both. None have said they have a formal diagnosis though and, interestingly they only declared it when I had to have a chat about their work or conduct being crap 🫠 and funny how when occ health mentioned they had/have mystery illnesses or personal issues to try and stall the capability process 🙄

The one who has never said a word about having any ND is the one who Im actually certain does have autism (and if so thats probably why they're excellent at their particular role and so nice to work with as opposed to the chancers mentioned above).

Dunno what my point is...maybe that a lot of people claiming to have ND are lying and using it to excuse poor behaviour?

And this is what is wrong. Misguided governments closed down huge numbers of special schools in the name of inclusion and this was a terrible mistake that failed vast numbers of children who would have thrived in special schools but were left floundering in mainstream schools. Having said that, I think that there are also large numbers of children who are being failed by their parents and whose behaviour reflects this, rather than them necessarily having a disability.

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
This is not about children and young people with more severe autism who undeniably need extra support and always will. I totally agree that we are doing nowadays to allow these young people to become adults who can function semi independently and happily in society is amazing.

We are talking here about kids who seem like any other kids except that that they don't follow authority, rules, are self absorbed, are triggered at the slightest frustration, unable to concentrate on anything that doesn't involve a tablet etc....and all this is put down to ADHD or autism.

My mum taught at a 'school for the maladjusted' in the early 80s. I had to go in when my own teachers had inservice training. I vividly remember the noise and a kid standing on a table showing everyone that he had nicked the caretakers keys.

My autism is my excuse to wear headphones in the office and do my work instead of making small talk, what a terrible employee I am, how can all the poor neurotypical people around me cope with such concessions, won't someone think of how much they're having to carry me!

I’m 53 and can think of about 3 children in my classes through my school years who were probably ADHD, in fact one has been diagnosed with this as an adult. They were loud, sometimes a bit disruptive but the difference back then was that the teacher did command some respect and ultimately the children listened - if they didn’t they were punished.
Strong parenting seems to have fallen by the wayside these days, children have far too much access to screens and not enough one on one time with parents where they sit quietly to read or look at books, draw, make things. These tasks help to calm a busy mind and help the children to self regulate.
You also don’t see strict parenting these days, children are allowed to run riot, make noise, make a mess and parents hardly seem to correct them. Far too much gentle parenting.
I went on holiday recently and there was a family where the mum was proclaiming to the receptionist that her tribe was ‘neuro spicy’ to explain away the fact they’d thrown all the cushions of the reception area sofas over the floor.
No, they were just bloody naughty and the mother simply wasn’t parenting them.
There are children with genuine disabilities, some that are plain naughty and are the product of poor parenting and with some of these the label is encouraged as then there’s an element of benefit claiming going on (this last group particularly makes me sick)

Sorry I didn't mean any offence and yes ofcourse some people show signs straight away from birth.

I just wanted to point it out more generally on the thread as they quite often get full of people saying it runs in families and is there clearly from birth which isn't always the case. I should have done it as a separate post rather than a reply to you.

I think we've made great strides in understanding neurodivergency. Along the way we seem to have lost some understanding of neurotypicality. We seem to hold, for example, ADHD up against some gold standard grade A exemplar of a human who never gets distracted, never procrastinates, never interrupts etc etc - I've yet to meet such a human in my life!

That's not to say for one minute that I don't believe in neurodivergency. I just think that displaying some ADHD traits is not the same as struggling to cope with day to day life because of ADHD.

FWIW I'm a teacher, and these days we're told to accommodate students as they present, and not to necessarily wait for an elusive diagnosis. But if I say that X/Y/Z ADHD strategies might help a child who's struggling in a certain area, that doesn't mean the child has ADHD.

See, when my generation was at school (1970), we had the lively kids, the quiet kids, the ones who did brilliantly, and the ones who struggled (like me with maths). The less academic kids were usually great at sport or music or art; the most brainy ones scooped up all the prizes at prize-giving, and that was that. Life was uncomplicated and many will agree the best time to be alive.
But when the teacher walked in, all went quiet. No one threw furniture, no one had trouble calming down, no one screamed or threw tantrums....it simply did not happen. We all seemed to be able to control our emotions and get on with things.

What country was this in? Best time to be alive was the 1970s? Blackouts, runaway mortgage interest, food shortages, lack of central heating…

As for no one screaming in class, oh yes there were until they were hauled off, caned and expelled. You want to go back to that? Corporal punishment and only educating the kids who don’t need any accommodations?

Do people actually love a label though or do they just love finding out what is wrong with them after suffering/struggling for a very long time?

This. For context, in our area it’s a 4 year wait for an adult ADHD assessment on the NHS, similar additional wait if you want to try medication, so if anything it’s massively under diagnosed

As a late diagnosed AuDHD woman in perimenopause, I can see that all sides of my family (and dh’s) have it. What happened to us in the 70s and 80s? we flew under the radar as ‘having potential / gifted at X, if they could only put their mind to it for everything else / stop getting distracted etc’ and routinely got belittled, shouted at and smacked for not behaving at school or home

These kids (us included) did exist back then, they were either in the naughty pupil unit at my secondary, or if more severe needs, the local special school

What we’re seeing now imo, esp with more women being diagnosed later in life, is that girls and women are starting to be recognised as a distinct group that may present and experience ND differently

My autistic son will likely never do any of those things, whatever school he goes to. He cant talk, nor understand spoken language. He has never been violent in his life. He can’t wait his turn, because he has no idea what a turn is. It’s likely he wouldn’t be interested in whatever it was that other people were waiting for anyway.
He’ll never live independently.
It took us 3.5 years to get him into a specialist school. The council kept telling us he was ‘coping’ in mainstream. If ‘coping’ meant sitting in a corner sobbing and harming himself then I guess they were right.
Do you think there are 1000s of specialist school places sitting empty, waiting for all these kids to
come and fill?

Oh yeah.

i remember my history teacher throwing the blackboard rubber (it was wood) at kids. 1990s

Looks like there will be (are) more ND people in the world than NT.

Maybe ND is the way things should be geared towards, and NT treated as the outliers. .

I have three NDs in my immediate family. One of whom developed it along with Cerebral Palsy when the poor child had a stroke in utero. That is not generally the case I'd imagine, as the other two didn't have anything like that happen. But who knows?

Something happens to the brains of NDs more than likely as their brains are developing, well obviously, but whether that's during gestation, or as they grow and develop I don't know.

I guess it’s better than the 1950s when autism as blamed on being a “refrigerator mother” who couldn’t connect with her baby.

I couldn’t agree more OP. I’m also a child of the 70s. I spend a lot of my time eye rolling these days.

The rest, is laughable. There werent lower rates of mental health in the 70s, they dished out valium to housewives like sweeties. Single mums didn't exist on benefits because they weren't offered any, their children were removed for forced adoption instead. And clearly, your post shows that the education system failed too
What a lot of nonsense! Children removed for force adoption 😂 you are talking about the 1970s not 1770! Diazepam has been replaced with pain and sleep medication addiction!

You're living in a bubble if you think people are happier nowadays than they were in the 80s overall.

Domestic violence is rife amongst that generation. It's swept under the carpet just like all the child abuse was. Lots alcohol addiction too. But yeah, it was the golden age, no one had any problems back then. Let's go back.

Any time I see 'is everyone ND now', I'm reminded of studies that show men perceive conversation time as equal when women speak only 15% of the time, and they feel women are dominating when they speak 30% of the time. Just because a group appears to be dominating doesn't make it so, even if ND people are more visible now than before.

Many are confused when, like the OP, they mix up children who cannot emotionally regulate and express that loudly and violently with neurodiversity. There are plenty of quiet, compliant-appearing, neurodivergent children. There are also plenty of children who can not emotionally regulate and express that destructively for many reasons other than neurodiversity.

They are confused because they think as a child, they think they had a complete picture and somehow would have known about the children who were excluded from education or otherwise disappeared from the classroom. There is also often a very rose-tinted view that all children before today behaved with a Do not do that thank you. We did not.

My brother and I were both quiet, complaint children until we both hit a wall. He went a outwardly destructive route and got expelled. I went the quiet destructive route that included walking out classes when overwhelmed to go cry in the toilets and showed up to school hours late because I could not get out of my head - enough that many staff found me a nuisance, not enough to get rid of me. I was far from the worst when it came to behaviour in my classes. I definitely experienced other kids being explosive in the classroom.

My younger sister also went the quiet destructive route, but turned to drugs to quiet her mind, having an alcohol abuse problem by the time she was 14 and was shipped off to a different school. To all the other kids, she just moved, there were old classmates she met years late who had no idea - back then, kids like her were swept under the carpet. Now so many pretend kids like her didn't exist.

And while discussing drugged up, let's not forget how much our parents were self-medicating with alcohol and 'mother's little helpers' to get through the day.

Also, many studies show that physical activity and ability as being positively associated with cognitive ability and academic performance - the idea that kids are good at one or the other is true at times, but not generally. Plenty of kids are great at academics, sports, the arts, while plenty are also poor in all of those areas. Many children will not have seen the children who never get rewarded for anything or spotted that many of the top set kids are also the kids dominating in sports and creative pursuits. People, especially children, generally like the clear categories of smart kid, sporty kid, art kid even when they're often the same kid in different contexts.

There is confusion because of the thinking that the concern about the future generation is unique to people of a certain age. There are many quotes that share otherwise, but one I heard recently while listening to a lecture from 1964 discussing how young people need to accept the challenge of maturity rather than running from it, that goes on about how emotionally neurotic all young people are, how they all just want to be perpetual children and lacking proper guidance to move on to adulthood.

We have many different issues now, but many of the young folks are alright, just as you were, and many of those young folks that are alright - then and now - are autistic, ADHD, dyslexic, and/or many other variations of neurodivergent.

I was diagnosed autistic two years ago, at the age of 69. Autistic kids were clearly around in the 1950s!