'BTW I'm autistic' / 'For context, I have ADHD'

[easytoremember]

Sorry. But I'm seeing these precursors on a lot of posts. Why? It's slightly grating. We're all complicated people living the crazy human experience, diagnosis or not.

They feel it’s as relevant and you clearly feel it isn’t. Given they are the one posting, I’d say they are the ones with the right to post and phrase as they wish.

Given that everyone hates a “drip feed” it makes sense for a poster to give full context in the OP.

There is no biological marker for low intelligence either but it is also testable and scientifically exists.

Many adults are newly diagnosed due to increased awareness of neurodivergence in recent years.

Yes, I'm just a simpleton who doesn't observe new trends and social phenomena.

Many illnesses have no biological marker and are diagnosed based on symptoms presented.

The problem is no two neurodivergent people are alike either. I have several friends with either official diagnosis or have self diagnosed themselves and none of them are like my dd who was diagnosed as a 2 year old and she is unlike my friends ds, my dsd is profoundly disabled and we can’t know how much is the autism.

never make assumptions but I do agree op its increased dramatically in the last 5-6 years, prior very few posters stated having neurodivergence

In The Uk it is. Autism is legally recognised as a disability under the equality act. It’s also one of the criteria of diagnosis that the person is significantly affected by symptoms, if someone wasn’t significantly affected they wouldn’t be diagnosed.

No. Just no.

I have never seen it mentioned where it's not potentially in some way relevant.

There's a good number of people who have a recent late diagnosis, particularly women (for whom neurodivergence has been massively under-recognised historically), and they're making sense of the diagnosis and how it affects their lives and are probably more likely than the average person to be questioning stuff and how being ND does (or doesn't) relate to it. Sometimes people will be overthinking it but that's understandable really.

You're just another one of those people who wants to invalidate and dismiss neurodivergence because you've erroneously interpreted an increase in diagnoses as "a trend". Yawn. I hope you got the attention you were so desperately craving with this deliberately provocative and bad faith OP.

yes it is. no matter if you perceive someone as "low functioning" or "high functioning" (which are made up terms for how much someone's autism is seen to inconvenience other people) it is always a disability. no matter the circumstances. it can have positives, like being good at pattern recognition. but that doesn't make it NOT a disability.

Well it is by definition as you have to be quite significantly impaired in the triad of impairments to get a diagnosis but it is a huge spectrum and some peoole are far more impaired than others and some peoole see their autism as a gift.

Ok, well I'm a teacher. I've worked with genuinely autistic children for years - for the most part, it's been an absolute pleasure: the quirks, the genius, the personality! But I'm now getting more 'autistic' students who are just quiet, or incredibly intelligent, or socially awkward. They get 'labelled' and I don't see how it's helpful. I would have been labelled as autistic by the current standards. It wouldn't have served me.

ADHD. Yes, some children clearly have it - an absolute neurological inability to concentrate and focus. Most of those diagnosed, however, are (I suspect) children who have been on screens since birth and were't conversed with properly.

This is my experience.

SO many situations ADHD might be relevant!

How you prepare for an event or organise your life.
The kind of job you do
Parenting choices
Dealing with illness
Relationships with friends
How you react to criticism
Preferences for TV shows

...I could go on and on!

BINGO!

It took a while but there it is.

"The quirks, the genius, the personality"

What in the fuck are you on.

You think autism is just being a little quirky and the rest is too much screen time.

You have no idea.

And I doubt you're a teacher, and if you are then you're a shit one.

Ah yes of course. Neurodivergence is all down to bad parenting.
Thank you for enlightening us.

This. It’s nothing to do with you if people want to disclose this information, you should question why you are bothered so much about other people

You're absolutely right 👏👏👏

I'll report too

@easytoremember we (my adult child, their partner and i) went out for a meal just before xmas. Everything was fine, then child's partner suddenly got up and walked out of the restaurant. Strange?

No, they are autistic and the size of the menu felt overwhelming to them. They returned a few minutes later, and the meal was enjoyed by us all.

But without the knowledge that they were autistic, my opening paragraph would read like they were very rude.

so it is, I assume, with posters who declare they (or someone they are posting about) is Neuro diverse.

At school my AuDHD DS is quiet, intelligent and socially awkward. At home when the mask is off he's spinning round and round on a chair rabbiting away endlessly to no-one in particular about his niche special interest. I can assure you he had plenty of conversation and little exposure to screens. Diagnosis has been so helpful for him.