Why so many ND now?

[Jumpking]

Had much with 4 friends yesterday. All the ladies told me they're waiting for ASD assessments for their children.

I know so many parents of ND kids.

I don't think I'm unique.

There was around 5 or 6 ND children in my primary school growing up. Now this is per class, minimum. The children weren't in special schools, they just didn't exist in such high numbers.

What do you think has been the sea change in our society that means there are now far more ND children than there were 30 years ago?

(And it isn't because they weren't diagnosed 30 years ago, or we weren't aware... There really weren't children in my school, or the school's of friends I've discussed this with, who had sensory issues, or clothing issues, or only beige and/or dry food, or toileting issues, or obsessive interests issues or all the other ND things which are so prevalent with children today)

"I do find it interesting that the majority of my DD’s teachers are currently reporting an improvement in her presentation and performance in her classes, due to her ADHD medication - even though she generally ‘cheeks’ and then conceals the 2 x pills she is meant to take daily."

Placebo effect by proxy?
This is apparently what is behind the claims that giving children Omega 3 pills made them better at school.

The op is ‘getting stick’ because the opening post states as fact that there was only a very small number of ND children at the school. The op cannot know how many there were, and it’s arrogant to dismiss the possibility that actually there were more than she was aware of all along. She does just that in the last paragraph. Evidence being that everyone got on with eating their school dinner without fussing.

Quite astonishing as it requires highly trained clinicians to diagnose ND conditions, but the op was able to do this across the school population as a primary school child on the basis of observation alone.

The post might would have been better received if it hadn’t been so definitive.

My ds has asd. He probably wouldn't have been diagnosed with anything when I was a kid(I'm mid 30s) just like his Dad who also has asd wasn't diagnosed until ds was. Ds is a high achiever, his grades are excellent, he is polite and respectful in class, all of his parent teacher meetings since he started school have been pretty much the same, intelligent and polite, he is 15 now. No one in his class except his one friend that he told knows that he has asd. We don't use 'the label' as an excuse for poor behaviour, there is no poor behaviour, ds is a model kid, follows all of the rules, does all of his work to a high standard.

You can see asd all through my husband's family tree, it isn't something that has just popped up from nowhere, some modern invention. Nobody took notice of the quiet, well-behaved kids, who followed the rules and kept themselves to themselves that's all.

Do you feel the same way about physical disabilities?

After all, we all struggle with walking,hearing,seeing etc at some level or others so what's the point in adaptations? There's no "normal".

I was a distracted day dreamy but ultra 'good' little primary child. In secondary school I couldn't cope and rebelled went off the rails to an extreme. Not very nice for my parents or teachers I'm sure. I've failed at so much in life. Now, in my 60's I got an ADHD diagnosis last week.

I've mostly gotten over the anger at not being seen as the troubled child I was, not getting help that could have transformed my adult life. I'm so grateful there is now more awareness for young people and older people who missed out on a diagnosis earlier.

ASC and ADHD are highly heritable. Nothing to do with mums using smartphones ffs.

Ignored and/or misdiagnosed.

Covid pandemic has also brought this this to the fore. Lots of children are struggling (personal experience and I also see it in my line of work).

ADHD medication is not without side effects or risk.

i have no idea i was wearing them when i was 12 back in the 80s . but yes more do now although at dds school i dont see very many , everything seems to have bloody doubled though , food allergies in children have been mentioned now , and yes why do so many kids now have food allergies ? because again dont remember any of that amongst my peers at school

Sorry that was for @Gwenhwyfar questioning why someone she knows doesn't medicate their child for ADHD

indeed they were , i remember liver and gravy being served once a week in junior school , omg i wanted to throw up every time !

i had to go to packed lunches as it was all so revolting i was starving all day

Wish there was a like button. Autistic people are autistic. Who they are and no idea why they should no know that and be acknowledged.

on the food allergies - there’s a theory suggesting children’s immune systems are overreacting as they’re not being exposed to such a wide range of friendly bacteria.

@hellrabbitishere

Have you noticed MN are deleting your posts? Ask yourself why...

@idontwanna I didn't say they shouldn't have help... I was just saying that's why there are more people diagnosed because we are recognising these traits more. Some need help more than others...

And yes the same with disabilities and again some people need help, some don't. As I said there is no normal.

The autistic person I am closest too would not need help to cheat on an exam. They are very academically able but they need accommodations in order to help them participate in school and sit the exams.

Horrifying if doctors are lying and presumably breaking their oaths to give inaccurate diagnoses.

Not enough understanding and misdiagnosis. My two best friends and my DP are both waiting on ADOS assessments, although the adult waiting list in our area is 5 years! All are high functioning and were able to mask quite well growing up, instead it has manifested in the way they deal with things and communicated as adults.

BS. I come from a long generation of women who have always worked outside of the home. I’ve always used forward facing pushchairs for all of my 3 DC, their ages spanning 7-26yrs.

Myself and my own DC were never allowed to walk home by themselves until the last year of Primary School and my DC would never be left at home alone after school (latch key kids) until we feel they that they are mature enough. Adult DC didn’t come home to an empty house until she was 15 and I was on Maternity Leave at the time.

Let’s not push the divisive ‘Stay at Home Mum vs Working Mum’ divide. Some of us working Mums set a bloody good example for our kids.

DD has ADHD. Diagnosed at 17 and some ASD traits were noted but enough for a formal diagnosis. The moment the ADHD diagnosis was made everything fell into place but she was a high performing child who was just a bit quirky but struggled more as the teenage years hit. She took a high 2.1 from a renowned Oxbridge College and has a classically trained voice. She starts a Masters in speech and language therapy shortly.

Her boyfriend is almost certainly high functioning ASD. Square peg in a round hole at school but speaks three languages fluently, is conservatoire trained in a specialist instrument and training to be an actuary.

They are highly talented, socially awkward individuals who have thankfully found each other. FIL was undoubtedly high functioning ASD looking back, BF's mother is undoubtedly somewhere on the spectrum; neither ever diagnosed and neither is dd's bf although he acknowledges with hindsight he is. I suspect I have ADHD traits but they didn't hold me back.

We are all different but a generationnor three ago all of us above would have been regarded as "shy" "quirky" "anxious". It has certainly been beneficial for dd to have a diagnosis and to be medicated. Although when she was 15/16 and cutting and poisoning and not eating there was no help whatsoever on the NHS to support her in any way via CAMHs. Without a diagnosis she would have undoubtedly dropped out and would not have recovered. I recall the CAMHs nurse laughing in my face after crisis and the ADHD diagnosis that she was too old at 17 for that. A blessing that we had BUPA and an additional £6k to spend on getting her the right support. A funking tragedy that it isn't there for those without the money to.pay for it privately. Providing support at an early stage and turning young people round would mean they could be independent and contribute more personally and collectively. It is so very shirt sighted.

It's the age of reproduction.

I think even a few years ago unless you were really struggling nobody offered help. I’ve known my DP was dyslexic since I met him as it was so obvious but he’s always said he wasn’t as it was never picked up at school. He started a new job in January and mid training they sent him for a dyslexia assessment.. it was positive.

His Mum is in complete denial as he passed his GCSE’s. I can only imagine how much he struggled to do so though! I have absolutely no doubt his ADOS test will come back positive either, it’s blatantly obvious. He mentioned to his Mum he’d been referred after it had been suspected and she laughed in his face!

In my much larger secondary school, 7 or 8 forms per year, there were a few physically disabled kids but no autistic kids.

There were, you just didn't know.

I can't understand why adults choose to be assessed for ASD/ADHD, what difference is being assigned a label going to make?

If you have spent years feeling like shit because you can't fit in properly, you are confused by things that everyone else seems to get, you haven't got any friends and you feel like you're not as good as everyone else and it's all your fault, it's actually really helpful to get a diagnosis. Plus it means you can access support, what there is of it.

I am exceptionally good at pretending so it minimises YOUR experience of my autism, not mine. This masking comes at a huge mental and physical cost. So just because you don't see or experience it doesn't give you the right to make assumptions about it.

Perfect, @Absolutechaos

Those posters saying things like "yes but lots of people didn't like school food", as if autistic people are making it up or complaining about things they should just cope with - if someone has a diagnosis of autism, it means they have been through a rigorous process with strict criteria set by NICE, it takes hours, you have several different assessments delivered by different specially trained people including a psychologist or psychiatrist. If someone has autism their experience of the world is different from yours. Your experience of the world is irrelevant, it can't be compared. The only way to find out what it's like to be autistic is to forget about yourself and ask autistic people.

*I’ve always used parent-facing pushchairs
(Accidentally sent too early)

This is almost definitely a large part of it. There is an expert on ADHD called Russell Barkley who reads every single paper about ADHD. He says it definitively is not caused by screens, parental inattention, or even smoking during pregnancy (they thought it was that for a while but actually it turned out that women with ADHD are more likely to stop and more likely to have a hard time quitting during pregnancy, so it was correlation). There are some environmental causes such as acquired ADHD due to a traumatic brain injury, or hypoxia at birth but largely it's genetics and some mutations which increase in likelihood with the age of parents. I believe that is the same for autism. We don't know enough about genetics to identify the exact genes yet and it's complicated being parts of different strands of DNA that interact with each other (kind of like you need all the parts for it to happen) but we might know more about this within the next few decades. I kind of hope that the ND acceptance movement advances faster than the science - I don't like the idea of parents being offered a guaranteed autism/ADHD-free baby via the likes of CRISPR etc, althouh I think this can have many positives with other conditions. I think there are benefits to neurodiversity especially across a team e.g. having some NT brains, some ADHD, some ASD in a workplace, as long as everyone understands each others' quirks and works with rather than against them.