To be unsure what neurotypical is anymore

[rainingitspouring2]

So this is not to antagonise or offend and maybe it could be because I am on the spectrum myself (but this has never been implied) but I am starting to question what being neurotypical looks like these days.

On social media so many of my suggested reels, posts etc are about neurodivergence and also articles in the media etc. Celebs revealing they have adhd or dyslexia. I have to say a lot of it is relatable to some degree to most people (that I know anyway). I have 2 young DS and so many of their friends have potential ADHD/ASD according to their parents. Or I notice traits in kids but their parents have never said anything (but I would just think they were a neurotypical kid if I didn't have so much awareness now) Even some the parents at the school gate are saying they have some neurodivergence too. So I am finding myself noticing potential traits in almost every individual I have close contact with.
I know people say with neurodivergence 'birds of a feather flock together' perhaps that is the case but I'm just loosing sight of what a neurotypical and what isn't.
I'd almost find it helpful if we had traits of neurotypicals outlined explicitly to see whether we aligne with that or not. I am getting quite confused.
Does anyone else feel the same or AIBU? Again not meaning to offend just looking to discuss

I don’t think Neurodivergence is a real medical term. You seem to be suggesting it has more weight than it has. I think it’s more of a SM term like tradwife, or something. Really although you can have this group of conditions concurrently they have little in common with each other. It’s just nonsense.

@Swiftie1878 you articulated that much better than me. I have started to question if we are all just on one big spectrum - no offence meant to anyone with diagnosed ADHD/OCD etc. The spectrum I mean is simply ‘life’. Sometimes it is fun and we pootle along happily, sometimes it isn’t. How we react to the ups and downs of life is the issue. I follow a local lady on Instagram, I used to work with her - well I did follow her I have unfollowed. I also know her from our town, she is chaotic and always has been and has self diagnosed herself as ND.

In truth when I worked with her she very much liked to pick and choose which elements of her job she would engage with. If she didn’t like an aspect she would be straight to HR and usually the job got passed onto someone else because she had told them it triggered her anxiety. Yet she had no issues with joining the staff parties, her anxiety never showed up there - maybe alcohol helped her before I am flamed.

I do think that some people with really difficult issues quite often do just try and get on with life and at times that must be crippling for them so I am open to labels if that means they can seek therapy or help to work around things. Hey, maybe it is a sign of the times that we are more tolerant.

I would love to hear from people that are confident they are NT. I’ve met one.

But we have diagnosed ADHD and autism in the family, that significantly impairs that person’s life and I feel the rest of us have a lesser version of it and are friends with people of a similar ilk, so the people around me may not be representative.

The difference is prevalence of behaviours though. I have lost my keys, phone and purse on occasions, but it's not a pattern of forgetful or disorganised behaviour that regularly causes me problems in all areas of my life. As someone who takes on the mental load for a dh with adhd, I fully understand how different 'losing your keys' is from 'persistently forgetting important things, including appointments - and keys'. I agree it undermines ND.

I find the recent eagerness to label all personality traits very, very tiresome.

I believe I have ADHD although not diagnosed.

I'd say I feel like I know neuro typical when I see it although it's hard to pin down exactly (which I guess is the crux of the problem).

I think there is a concrete difference but the science is developing all the time and we don't understand enough yet to answer the question. I'd love it if this came in my lifetime.

In observable terms, it just seems like a lot of people don't struggle with running their lives day-to-day. I find life a massive effort, I always have done, I'm so drained by the end of the day I can barely speak or accomplish the most routine task. And even then, and despite making use of every coping suggestion, I forget things and lose things and miss things all the time. I constantly feel about to fall off the edge of a cliff.

I know my friends and family on the whole don't feel like this, not that they sail through life, but that the world seems more suited to their brains somehow?

Hard disagree. Sorry. Although I probably would have said the same myself 5 years ago.

I look at myself and my DD. Both highly academic, introverted and lacking empathy.

My DD has ASD. Since being diagnosed she has opened up much more about how overwhelming it is. It doesn't impact her day to day, she's a Grade A** pupil testing in the top 1%.

I was not diagnosed. It's only because of doing so much reading into ASD in girls that I see that I am also highly likely to be ND, along with almost everyone I work with (City Law). It's true that "birds of a feather flock together". It's also true that the characteristics of the type of autism I likely have made a damn good lawyer. That said, whilst it doesn't impact me daily, I am more aware of what bothers me (noise and smells) and how, without realising, as an adult I have built in "protections" to limit these as issues.

If I had been diagnosed as a younger child, I would have had a much easier time understanding who I am and why I felt a certain way.

Well I certainly consider myself neurological but have been losing keys phones etc all my life.

I’ve got two nd dc who failed to cope in school - think we should be focusing on why about 25 percent of kids don’t get good school outcomes, per Jamie Oliver’s latest campaign.

until we stop failing young people we’re unleashing more failed young adults into a difficult time of it and threads about whether or not someone who has a job is ND or not or ‘the whole world’ is, minimise the struggles of children in school.

I disagree completely. It’s enormously useful. And if it turns out half of us are actually ND, to different levels, then so what?

most of us are functioning and never knew it. But now, for example, I know that I will be quick to anger, but will put strategies in place to mitigate it. I don’t need to medicate but having a label that my brain is likely to react in X way so that I need to do Y for that is surely a good thing?

More than 50% of us can't be Neurodiverse by definition as this means less than 50% of us would be typical. It would then stand to reason that actually those that are currently considered NT are actually the ND ones as their neurological functions are operating outside the standard or normal. The standard would be a ND brain.

It is totally possible to be aware of traits that you have that can be managed using various strategies without needing a ND diagnosis or label.

I know where you're coming from. I have two diagnosed ND children and so have spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff!

I guess what it comes down to is that a diagnosis is not just ticking off traits, which are all aspects of human experience that many people will identify with somewhat. Those traits have to have a significant impact on multiple areas of your life.

My ND teens developed significantly differently to their peers, and still experience noticeable difficulties in everyday life compared with most children of their age. Things like spending regular amounts of time in school curled in a corner with hood up. Struggling with continence issues into secondary school. Not able to speak in front of strangers. Literally unable to identify or name any of their own emotions. Getting sidetracked and forgetting what they're supposed to be doing to the point where they are crying with frustration at themselves. Distressed for a long time by me dropping a saucepan. (At the same time they are uniquely hilarious, extremely loyal and trustworthy, and academically ahead of peers.)

Yawn.

To reach clinical diagnosis a person must have persistent deficits in a number of things and in multiple areas of life - work, home, school etc. So yes, while neuro-typical people can display some neuro-divergent traits, they are unlikely to be such that they cause significant distress or difficulty in daily life.

As an aside, the correct term for autism, adhd, etc, is neuro-divergent, ie a divergence from the norm. Neuro-diverse describes the entire population, comprising neuro-divergent people and neuro-typical people.

Its good to hear it doesn't impact you daily, however lots of people on this thread are saying that diagnoses are made on the basis that the condition is affecting daily life very severely. If it doesn't impact you or your daughter's life day to day then how did you reach the threshold for diagnosis? Sorry if this is an ignorant question!

I agree.
I've heard someone say they must have autism because they don't like the sound of polystyrene and another because they don't like the texture of scrambled eggs...

It is normal for humans to have sounds, activities, foods etc that they don't like or they struggle with.

That is COMPLETELY different to living with being ND.
It bothers me when I see people minimise it to these sorts of things.

Yes, sensory issues can be an indicator, but it is so much more complex than that and it kind of makes it all a mockery so people don't even take it seriously now when I say I am autistic. It affects my daily life in so many ways that it has caused me to be agoraphobic for many periods of my life because I really, really struggle with so many aspects of the world.

Grrrr, sorry, had to have a little rant

It's much more complicated than this but there are loads of online quizzes you can take to see if you might have autism, postnatal depression, adhd etc.

They quite often say that e.g. the maximum score for the autism test is 40 and if you score more than about 20 they recommend you talk to your GP about getting assessed. Me and my family took one of these tests just out of curiosity to see how accurate it was. Dc1 who has a diagnosis of Aspergers syndrome since he was 9 but gets lots of comments about how he "doesn't look autistic" scored 23. Dc2 who is currently being assessed aged 17 and masks scored 35. Dc3 who has adhd and probably has autistic traits as well scored 20. Dc4 who is ND but not autistic scored 10. Dc5 who was showing signs of autism since birth and was diagnosed aged 6 scored 39. I am ND but not autistic (although I get a lot of "are you sure you're not autistic" ) and I scored 15.

There will be loads of people who think they are autistic but aren't. Someone who is disorganised and hates change might think they have it but would score 5-10 on these tests. I would think there would be a very small number of people who would score 0. A lot of people seem to think that NT people are the ones who score 0 and have no symptoms at all. In reality, there are loads of people who are not autistic but score between 1 and 19 on these tests and have some symptoms. Obviously a proper autism assessment is much more complicated than an online quiz but that is the simplified version.

Hard agree @FeministUnderTheCatriarchy

Yanbu the bar on what's classed as Nd these days is so low almost everyone fits into it. I think at somepoint they will have to specifically categories things like autism 1 and autism 2 because its massively unfair on families who have children with autism who will never, walk, talk or live independently to be in the same category as someone who struggles a bit socially.

I think that’s where some of us diagnosed years ago struggle with so many people being diagnosed nowadays. I don’t know about anyone else, but my diagnosis was very much born out of being extremely different in my way of interacting, and seeing the world in a noticeably different way to most.
I think the boundaries of ASD and ADHD are being widened now, so more people are fitting into them. Back in the 80s and 90s they were no where near as broad. You had to be quite noticeably ‘different’ to get a diagnosis. Perhaps this meant a lot of the lower end of the spectrum were missed… or is it simply that actually that the barrier between NT and ND sort of blends together. If so, where do we place that barrier? Are we moving it back and back, year on year?

I fear we are tipping into the territory of normal behaviours being lumped into the ND category. If this is the case, it won’t be long until everyone can say they have ND tendencies. Thats where we are headed. Thats when the education system will implode.

If half or more people get diagnosed as Nd it switches and they become NT. Which at this rate will likely happen in the future

I agree thought that everyone has elements of neurodiversity - surely that’s obvious? But some people manage to mask successfully and without a huge impact to their wellbeing because their circumstances and the nature of their ND traits helps them to cope better than others.

Most "ND traits" are things that everyone will do occasionally. That is why it is so easy to relate to TikTok lists.
They only add up to a diagnosis if many of them happen all the time and to a level where they impair your everyday life.

Bahhahahaha I am ADHD (diagnosed decades ago) and have NEVER lot keys 😁
Oing ADHD wrong I guess

My niece is one of them, every new experience or future plannning is framed around the anxiety that her parents have spent most of her life telling her she has 😢