To think perhaps my son isn’t autistic but instead modern society is too challenging for him to cope with.

[SpinningTops]

My son is 7 and on the long waiting list for an autism assessment.

Sometimes I wonder whether he would cope absolutely fine if he was an 80s or 90s child. Maybe it’s rose tinted glasses but modern life seems so chaotic and jam packed, so much to learn at school etc.

He’s in a small class at school and seeing the number of children struggling, so many with ‘special jobs’ to just get them into the classroom, makes me think something is wrong with the system rather than all these children being neurodiverse. And this is an absolutely wonderful school which outwardly he says he loves.

It’s just something I’ve been thinking more and more about recently …

Agree completely. And I include myself in this. I say how busy and knackered I am yet my phone screen time stats don’t lie, I’m binning a good couple of hours every day minimum on scrolling. As well as the dopamine hit I think sinking endless time into screens makes everything else overwhelming as there’s less time to do it

I have two kids with SEN. Their level of ASD/Dyslexia is not extreme so feels more of a difference in personality, ability, way of thinking or whatever. School is a sausage factory and my kids aren’t “pork” or whatever so they find it hard and get in trouble for minor petty things. In the actual real world their way of being and thinking could be valuable, there are more jobs that fit ND brains now, but school is too narrow and kids aren’t encouraged to express themselves or be comfortable and explore this type of intelligence. It’s more strict than when I was in school. Maybe it’s just my kids’ school but I can’t wait for them to leave and start finding themselves, with less fuss over what shoes they wear or going on report for wearing concealer or being shouted at for not wearing their blazer on a hot day while walking out of school. ASD/ADHD kids have enough to cope with and most office jobs don’t care about clothing, make up or shoes.

Talking to the outside therapists was a revelation, they give training but the teachers are stuck in the past and hold the SEN kids to the same standards. One denied ASD was a disadvantage in life. My employer is more disability friendly and I work with many I suspect are ND. Sadly, they need qualifications to get a job and there’s no alternative to the sausage factory.

I dont think the OP is questioning whether or not her son would meet the diagnostic criteria but whether difficulties are amplified by modern life.

I think they are.

A lot of children who would have previously coped in school (and did) no longer do due to the increased demands.

I was diagnosed as an adult. I was an 'odd' child but able to cope and went under the radar because life was 'quieter' all round.

I don't think there are more autistic children today just that it went under/un diagnosed previously and some of us would have just been missed.

I think modern life and the education system is stressful for all children, and of course that’s going be worse for ND children.

The amount of testing is utterly insane. And yet grade inflation is a thing. Kids are going to uni with all their A*s and yet too often appear completely ill-equipped to actually cope with uni than we were with our Bs and Cs.

The system is broken. And too many children are broken by it.

I also think that now all children are sort of expected to achieve whereas previously if you weren’t ‘academic’ that was accepted and there wasn’t this expectation that you would necessarily manage all the work. More manual jobs were available.

I think there is some truth to this. I was still autistic in the 90s though undiagnosed but I can see now that getting a diagnosis might be more critical for my DD.

It's hard to put my finger on how school has changed but it seems a lot more restrictive now than it did especially in terms of the curriculum. I can't believe how little time they spend on things like art and how intensive the reading and writing programme is. There seems to be more rules in general.

There are also subtle changes. Like how parents can't come into the classroom now. It feels like a more siloed environment.

I don't feel surprised that lots of kids don't want to go and find it too much.

The national curriculum is so rigid now, and teachers are under so much pressure to meet targets. That pressure inevitably gets passed on to the children. I have an aunty who went to school in the 70s and 80s, and she went to an open-air school. They were originally set up for children with tuberculosis, but later they took children who struggled a bit at mainstream school, often with things like asthma, or anxiety, and many who probably had undiagnosed autism or adhd. My aunty went there because she had a post viral condition and got tired very easily. They were gentler than mainstream schools, with smaller classes and less pressure. Some children just went for a year or 2 then back to mainstream, and some carried on till they left school. I often think it would be good if schools like that made a comeback. Obviously we have special schools now but only for children who have very severe SEN and it's very difficult to get a place.

I think the exact opposite! I think it was much harder in the 80s. Teachers didn't care about your feelings or upsetting you. It was acceptable to shame you in front of your fellow pupils. You were anxious and scared, of the 'nasty teacher ' and your parents punishing you harshly and shaming you ever more. Kids struggling were labelled stupid and lazy.

I'm going to bring the controversial word....resilience. because however much we don't like to accept it, that's the biggest difference between generations. However hard the experience was for many, kids built resilience through the experience and with it learn to cope.

This is why so many are coming out in their 50s and 60s now seeking diagnosis. Deep inside, the issues were there too, but the previous generation learn to live with it and adjust whereas this new generation rely on others adjusting to them, hence the higher reliance on diagnosis to access it.

Probably society, definitely education. I've been a teacher almost 30 years. I was talking to another long server recently and she actually pinpointed the change in curriculum 12 years ago to the big shift in behaviour changes we've seen recently.
We went to Jodrell Bank recently, they have the old school reports of the guy who conceived it. Today, he'd be described as neurodiverse. Then, he was naughty at school, but great at cricket. British used to celebrate the quirky and unusual if they were from a certain class (obvs the class thing is an issue in itself), now we label but don't necessarily support.

For sure, I remember lots being openly bullied for being different.

School in the 80s and 90s involved the teachers themselves regularly taking the piss out of me for being different. Yes even the bloody teachers bullied me and singled me out in front of the rest of the class. If you think life was easy for neurodivergent kids back then you have no idea.

I think perhaps there are some things that are more challenging, but watching my daughter and thinking about my own childhood in the 80s, it’s become pretty clear that I am probably autistic too. But there was zero understanding and zero support for girls - I was just told to get on with it, that the turtleneck wasn’t going to actually kill me, that I should hug my great aunts and be polite and be a good girl. I think my daughter has far more freedom and much more support.

Confused by 'invented in 2014'.

Sparla

I completely agree.

There is so little room for individuality in schools now.

I've had discussions with some teachers who work in MAT schools where they have scripts for the day, teaching scripts, routine scripts, etc to ensure 'consistency' not only within the the class or across the school but across several.schools. the idea being that if you walked into any class, in any school at any point in the day, you would see and hear the exact same thing. It doesn't allow for any individual differences in staff or pupils.

Elements of it are starting to creep into my school too.

Along with that, the adaptations we are allowed/required to put in place for SEN children in the classroom are designed to minimise the impact of their need in the classroom - to maoe them look/behave/work a bit more like everyone else rather than actually being suited to them and their actual needs.

My (adopted) cousin went to special school because his siblings did, and didn't learn to read until adulthood as a result!

I agree with this. Life was more simple. We spent more time outdoors. Children were not over-parented like they are now. I say this as someone who is ADHD (DC too). Despite feeling a bit different to other people when I was young, and being a bit chaotic and disorganised, I can’t say having ADHD occurred to me. Although I know it was less of a thing back then. Nowadays I find the pace of life and sensory overwhelm to be very much felt. Possibly I am more aware of these things. Possible perimenopause heightens things. But yes, I do agree there is something about modern society, including educational expectations, which is just overwhelming for a lot of people. The idea that we are medicating children so they can sit still in class and conform to our behaviour expectations is actually horrifying to me. What happened to outside time, free play, curiosity…. Everything is so demanding and rigid. I fear for the younger generations really.

Not at all, as I say, my son is on the waiting list for assessment. I don’t know which was it will go.

It’s that I see so many of his peers also struggling and I think perhaps there’s something wrong with the system rather than the children (I’ll say I don’t think it’s wrong to be autistic, but there are clearly struggles if children are fighting to not go into school)

There's an idea that the changing environment is one reason why more people are considered disabled or neurodivergent. The concept of physical disability became important with the industrial revolution, and now the same thing is becoming true for neuropsychiatric disabilities because of the information and tech-rich environment.

My eldest is tricky, too much unstructured time makes him anxious and also causes meltdowns. He needs to get sensory input from throwing himself at things so we do do a lot of clubs, trampolining, gymnastics and a specific Sen club for movement. He needs meals and activities at predictable times etc. we've tried every type of day for him. He's also a ND kid who really thrives with the structure of school. People who unschool etc always leave me baffled because he needs to know the exact rules and structure in order to settle to an activity. He had the teacher this year known for being strictest in the school and he adores her. She clearly states what she wants from him, he knows the consequences if he breaks a rule and she's very very fair but firm. Probably because our school are great at meeting movement needs and ensuring their is free movement and play between specific lessons. He's almost 8 and our issues arise with the change in routine in the school holidays and weekends we've had to make very structured to help him regulate.

No, just a low birth rate year. So 23 in the class I think.

That's reducing adhd down to one particular behaviour though. My child is diagnosed with innattentive subtype, I don't have time to list all the traits and everything he deals with but it's so much more than getting bored and restless.

I do think screens are an issue in society but when you actually have a neuro-diverse child it's just not plausible that screens in and of themselves can lead to a diagnosis of ADHD. It's the way he was born.

I think we don't know what school is for anymore. Back in the 80s it was normal for people to leave school at 16 and start working. Millions of boys started their trade apprenticeships back then.

Now, we have a collective FOMO, a national obsession with "a good" education. But beyond that, what actually is the point of school?

Once you can read, write and count, what are you actually learning in school?

I think we've been confusing activity with achievement.

There are millions of Uni students who right now are studying for largely irrelevant, useless Degrees. Education has become like a religion, and the non-believers are hounded and burnt at the proverbial stake.

We have this very odd criteria for demonstrating intellectual ability. Most people seem to believe that attending school or University makes a person intelligent. It doesn't. Intelligent people do well in school because they ARE intelligent, a GCSE doesn't impose some sort of magical intellect upon them.

Objectively, school is a toxic environment for learning anything. If it didn't exist, and we were to design it from scratch, it wouldn't look anything like the current system. We put fucking labels on kids, ADHD, ABCDEFG, because they won't behave like we think they should when we put them in a classroom . . . which is like having a pet goldfish, but keeping it in a dog kennel and then wondering why it died.

My DH has been diagnosed with ADHD in his 40s, at school in the 80s and 90s he was told he was naughty, shouted at, told he could do the work if he just concentrated, then bounced out of top sets he could academically have coped in and put in bottom sets with cover teachers with kids who ran wild and fought each other. He hated school. As an adult he has 2 degrees a professional job and has just secured another promotion, his employer is very supportive and his boss is the one who suggested a ND assessment, recognising her own traits in him.

I would agree. Some where I work are REALLY struggling. I'm doing what I can to support but I know they'd be better off in home ed given the quiet, calm school placements they need just aren't available. I'd never have said that ten years ago.

I think life in the 80s was simpler for many autistic people and easier to mask and/or cope, but they were autistic regardless of when they were born.