AIBU to ask you what a "neurotypical" person is like?

[SplishSplash123]

I am a bit intrigued as to whether it's reasonable to think that NT people are put on a bit of a pedestal at times and assumed to have none of the issues that ND people have, when in reality I think most of us (NT and ND) have areas of strength and weakness and it's perfectly possible for someone to be NT and procrastinate/be forgetful/struggle with time blindness etc.

This comes from a debate with a friend recently where she said a parking fine should be voided if someone has ADHD because they have a reasonable excuse. She didn't accept my argument that it would then be just as valid for someone without ADHD, who might generally be forgetful, or who was simply having a very stressful day, to have also had a reasonable excuse.

I also see this in work sometimes, where people without reasonable adjustment passports are told to "get on" with things they struggle with (e.g. having to spend more time answering the phones to cover for colleagues who have had this part of their job taken away from them) without any understanding that this can be stressful and draining for some NT people too.

To be clear, I'm not saying people with ND don't have any right to reasonable adjustments/reasonable excuses etc (I believe they absolutely do!) but to want to acknowledge that we can all struggle with things at times and need a bit of understanding/support.

Thanks for engaging!

An interesting situation with your colleague. As someone who worked in the computer industry for 30 years, I don't reckon anything "which makes learning another new work software a pain" doesn't apply to most peeps.

Also, "I expect there would be no demand for these [NT dianoses] though". Hell, I'd pay purely for the interest in the subject. Amd would be fine if I 'failed'. Can the experts who devise the tests for ND produce the opposite one to diagnose ND? If not, why not? Genuine question.

You're welcome, I enjoy the chat! 👍😊

There are no criteria for NT, so we'd need to start with that. It cannot be 'lack of ND'...

Hi! Me too.

Why not? Surely that's the whole point? Logically? Linguistically?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11755421/

Some people may find this summary interesting - covers the current trends in "neurodiversity" in comparison to previous and ongoing social contagions like MPD, gender identity, recovered memory etc.

To be clear, it's not to suggest people's struggles or suffering are made up. Just that the medical categorisation of people in this way is a fabrication.

[Adult ADHD] (and also a category like autism) are now being referred to as ‘neurodevelopmental’ disorders – though there have been no defining brain findings to underpin the biological validation that formally distinguishes a ‘disease’ (like Alzheimer’s) from a ‘syndrome’ (like ADHD, autism, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and virtually all clinical psychiatry). The psychiatric profession has never reminded the general public that these psychiatric categories are merely symptom clusters with indistinct borders, not clustered by nature but by the DSM committees. Lacking proven biological anchoring, syndromal categories are susceptible to cultural trends regarding over-medicalisation and societal contagion. Reference to ‘neurodevelopmental disorders’ is thus ungrounded, an advertising label promoting a new field and essentially disease-mongering.

We are witnessing a spectacular rise from nothing in the societal profile of ‘adult ADHD’, in part fuelled by self-administered checklists. The same checklists would qualify people for other diagnoses – or for none at all – but ‘adult ADHD’ is the diagnosis of the day. Once something is declared real, it becomes real in its consequences. Many people seem relieved to acquire a social identity predicated on the diagnosis, not least the moral shift that may accompany this.

Yes me too. I wasn’t born diagnosed.

I’m just saying why some people are getting adjustments.

I never said anything about world leaders and whether they are ND or NT

nor did I demand perfection for all.

So who are the people who “designed the world” that you know for definite were NT?

No because that’s a routine to follow, get in the car, put seatbelts on. I’m quite rigid with routines like that. Note I also have ASD. It’s the out of the ordinary tasks, tasks which have sensory things attached (drinking, showering), tasks which require a series of steps and affect me etc I struggle with most. It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t ND, I know it sounds stupid. Besides, never remember to put my phone on sound so it’s always on silent, I wouldn’t hear it ring.

But I am ND myself. I’m autistic. This is why splitting ND and NT into two distinct groups doesn’t work. Every ND person is different. ND people often seem to think it’s just NT people who don’t get them (or are like a totally different species who find life really easy etc). But even as someone who is also ND I still don’t get your experience of life. This is my point. Everyone is different. And that includes ND and NT people.

oh how funny - to have a diagnosis of adhd your symptoms have been present ALL YOIR FUCKING LIFE so imagine what that does to work, relationships, parenting, self esteem

Then the chances are you aren’t neurotypical, or you have some other issue that is causing those symptoms and feelings.

If the majority of the population ends up being ND then does that make them NT?

Yeah, calm down sweary Mary.

I wasn't saying otherwise.

However this is not quite correct.

My son is ASD. He had physical symptoms eg inability to swallow for 2 years, prolonged fits requiring hospital admission until aged 6, hypotonia or low muscle tone. He has all the physical issues that created eg poor coordination.

He had a visual evoked potential (VEP) test done ( ordered by a neurologist) when he was 3 and that showed latency of the neural pathway and demylination of white matter.

Yes, but that isn’t going to happen. If the majority of the population was ND the world would be designed in a way that suited ND people even if no one knew they were ND, it would happen by default. But it isn’t.

But the world isn't really designed by or to suit the majority of people, things are very often decided by a small minority of people who have power/influence.

I wonder if this idea is the cause of some of the misunderstandings between 'ND' and 'NT' people. (Of course, I'm not talking here about people who have severe conditions etc., that's different.)
ND people find life difficult and stressful and come to believe that this is how all the NT people like things, and assume that NT people are finding life fairly easy, and that the way things are has been designed for their convenience. But life is very difficult and stressful for the majority of people in this country who aren't wealthy. The cost of living is obscene. A minority of people are getting extremely wealthy, and for everyone else, life is getting harder and harder. The NHS is on its knees; there's no access to decent healthcare if you're ill unless you can pay, and the government won't invest in public health measures to stop so many people getting ill in the first place. Overuse of social media is making us much more unhappy and isolated, crime is high, and the police can barely be bothered to do anything half the time. The state education system is on its knees as well. And thats just a start there are many more things wrong! This whole mess means that almost everyone's walking around exhausted and unsupported.

However, if ND people are all under the umbrella of ND then it’s an issue. You conflate general stress for ND.

For my son ND is not a sense of general stress / unhappiness.

As I have said for my son there were extreme physical issues before he was diagnosed ASD.

NT people don’t have hypotonia muscle tone, swallowing disorders at birth, extreme blue ear ( 2 lots of grommets and adenoids removed resulting in scarred ear drums) bowel disorder and faecal incontinence until aged 10 ,severe motor coordination disorder,prolonged fits lasting over an hour until aged 7. Ongoing,the motor issues and severe receptive language impairment remain.

This constant trivialising of ASD / ND is hugely upsetting be it people who might have more marginal symptoms and want a diagnosis or those who are skeptics because of that I suppose.

For my son,the outside world is hugely problematic. Even a meeting with his ASD support worker at university turned into a whole load of misunderstanding as he did not at that moment have a PA to re navigate the meeting for him and explain the intentions. When semantic pragmatic language are below the 1 percentile the World is really confusing,

The amount of times that teachers, support workers have to intervene to explain what people intended by what they said, the constant upset. This interferes in all communications eg simple task ‘Take a page …’ what does that mean to someone with severe pragmatic language? There were times he came home from school petrified / scared witless because of an innocuous statement made.

As for SPD - at its extreme for my son it means falling asleep on a bus as he cant cope with the journey ( identified as a form of shut down). Literally 2 minutes on the bus and he zones out.

The door at our home is open to him but his further solitary journey is 5 minutes to the local shop. Anything else would be too traumatic for him. He practiced making a shirt bus journey from one site to another with life skills college and would call his dad and then me for reassurance. This was in a quiet town, as fro the city,he bus refuses even with a PA on occasions if the bus is too busy.

The accompanying executive dysfunction is horrible. He has no agency for his own life and without prompts would function in a twilight zone when mornings are nights and breakfast is dinner, when days would blur.

As a carer, it is exhausting having to be in control of everything he does, what he wears where he goes, last week I woke him up in the morning for university and he thought it was the evening and explained to me that he did not have to shower as he already had his pyjamas on! He has no sense of day or night!

Yesterday, I was despairing with the usual thoughts about what would happen when I die. Could he live in a little annex where his sister one day might love? But she wants to live in the country and he would be just left to vegetate. Would he be in the city alone with PA support? He would be so vulnerable and maybe miserable. The fear of leaving him to the care of social services has destroyed a lot of happiness in my life. I try not to think of it but it’s an intrusive and upsetting thought.

It would make me so angry if people do exaggerate to get PIP or whatever, I hope that they don’t as for my DS he has no choice. He is so away with the fairies that he has little inkling into PIP or universal credit, He has a spiky profile where he knows his subject matter for his studies but little idea about the rest of the World.

I don’t understand any of it. I don’t understand how his brain is as it is but is there something wrong? Yes he had a VEP evoke potential test done when young and that showed demylination of white matter,

There is a suggestion by some experts that they might need to separate early physical signs accompanying ASD diagnosis from other diagnosed ASD with no physical signs eg no hypotonia, no significant eczema / asthma /significant motor issues / fits / bowel issues / language impairments etc

@Noras Your son clearly is severely affected which as I said wasn't what I was talking about. I'm so sorry things are so hard for him .💐 I think it would be good if they separated asd into different categories.

Even with an almost 50/50 split it's not that straightforward. Globally, for every 100 women there are 101 men, however we still have a massive misogyny/gender based violence problem.

I said this earlier on but no one could give me a decent answer. If the world was “designed” by ND people how would it look? Because all ND are different. For example. I read on here all the time that schools are not designed for ND people because of all the sitting down at desks and working and having to be quiet and wear a uniform and it’s too structured. For me, as a child with autism (who didn’t know I was autistic at the time) I loved that. I thrived in a silent classroom doing my work. If a child was playing up it totally distracted me and I could no longer focus. And constant noises (pen tapping, humming, tongue clicking etc) would mean I could no longer concentrate and in extreme cases would almost totally shut down and stop working completely (which led to me getting in trouble for not finishing work). On here you read people saying classrooms should be more ND friendly so less structured, no uniform, more movement breaks, children allowed fidget toys and clickers. I would have absolutely hated that. In fact I’m not sure how much I would have coped and I may have ended up doing absolutely terrible in school. Luckily (for me), I always attended quite strict schools. But I do wonder if being in a school with constant noises may have caused me to start in school meltdowns (at the time these were purely at home only).

Now I do actually appreciate that some children do NOT thrive in the same environment as I love. But what is the answer? This is my question. How do you make schools inclusive to ALL types of ND children. I once pointed out to someone on a similar thread that if their child was playing with their fidget toy next to me in school I wouldn’t have coped. I was told I was ableist and in that situation I should have to leave the classroom and be educated elsewhere as their child was entitled to adjustments and I either needed to suck it up or leave. So as usual, the quiet ND children get told to shut up and suck it up. To be honest though, I would have loved to be educated in a classroom totally by myself or just with other quiet children. It would have been my dream. But then surely the accusations of “othering” would start. Or separating the “good” from the “bad” children. I really don’t think parents of the noisy children would allow that. There would definitely be complaints. Also what if I child could only cope in silence but they themselves needed to make noise? What class are they in? As we all know our own noises are often different to other people’s.

So again, in this utopia of a world designed by ND people, how does it work in include and make life easy for ALL? How does it work for people with ADHD and time blindness when they might be late and it would be easier for them to start work whenever they turn up? But remember, surely you can’t discriminate and tell them they can’t do certain jobs if that’s what they really want to do? How does that work with people like me who love strict time keeping and want my world to run on time all the time? (Obviously I know it can’t and I’ve developed coping mechanisms to deal with that). But on here if you suggest coping mechanisms to someone with ADHD you get told it’s impossible and everyone else needs to learn to live with it instead.

'But on here if you suggest coping mechanisms to someone with ADHD you get told it’s impossible and everyone else needs to learn to live with it instead.'

The affirmative, identity based movement took things to extreme, resulting in this exact conclusion.

If you insist your behaviour is 100% based on biology ( eg seeing ND as biologically based neurology based, totally different from NT, regardless of any differences inside the ND umbrella group), does it mean that any attempts to change your behaviour are pointless and the world HAS to adapt as otherwise it is ablist? That you have no real control over your actions and choices? And even suggestion that perhaps you can look at making some changes is conversion therapy in disguise?

I'm autistic but totally disagree.

This is such a good point!

I do think theres also a problem with grouping people into NT and ND (and I know I've done this myself in my post), that we then assume the needs of each group are the same. As someone sensibly pointed out earlier in the thread, what one ND person would consider their ideal world is not what would suit another ND person.

You're absolutely right to point out that the world is designed more by the richer, more powerful minority and that the rest of us can and do find it hard in many ways!

So your overall point is everyone would benefit from support to the level they need it?

What is your point - like yes? obviously in an ideal world? What has that got to do with being NT or ND - do you really think ND people get anywhere near as much support as they need to cope in this world?

Many people could do with many things in a perfect world, this isn't a perfect world and it's nothing to do with being ND or NT.

@Noras I'm so sorry to hear how difficult life is for your son.

In my previous comment I acknowledged that it's really problematic grouping into ND and NT as theres so much difference between people in those groups, and your son's case very much illustrates that. I would hope no one would wish to minimise his struggles.

I guess the examples referenced in my original post are probably more applicable to people with milder presentations of ND.