to ask this without expecting a backlash?

[Fleurflowering]

I know that people will accuse me of being goady etc, but I would like to ask these questions without a tirade of hate being posted at me. I'm genuinely ignorant about this and want to understand it better.

I was born in 1978. When I was at school, there was a flicker of a mention of autism, but it didn't seem to be commonplace.

Did children have autism? Did ADHD exist then? Or are these new problems and why have they arisen?

Every school class seems to have children with SEND - autism being very common. But, when I was at school, there were "Remedial" classes, but behaviour was nowhere near as bad as it seems to be nowadays and teachers didn't need to differentiate lessons like they have to now. I hear so many people saying that their kids are on the spectrum, or that they themselves have autism.

I also don't remember any school refusers. Is this a new mental health symptom, or are children more autonomous and possibly less resilient nowadays?

I know I'll be flamed, but I'm not denying these conditions exist. I'm trying to learn whether they are new or not.

I’m mid-late 50s, 3 kids on the spectrum/adhd/dyspraxia- my family of origin are also on the spectrum- parents engineers etc. I’m definitely autistic- spikey academic profile- bullied in school, acted out- got it together for college/Phd (I liked the structure and security)- numerous boughts of severe depression, many special interests- can’t really cope in the workplace so have settled for underpaid part-time work. Manic episodes, struggled to parent my complicated children. Have always had difficulty maintaining friendships.
Autism definitely existed then! My siblings are also autistic and both have had breakdowns, periods of unemployment and ultimately have ended up in low stress employments (they don’t have children).

I think it’s partly that modern life is making things worse for all kids, but especially ND ones. I have ADHD, as does my wife, I realise looking back on our childhoods in the 90s, that it would have been so much easier for us to stay regulated than the kids of today.

We had so much more freedom and time outside keeping active to burn energy off, no devices or internet, no one online to compare ourselves to, no social media etc. By the time all this came along we were teenagers and it was in its infancy, so nothing like it is today.

I dread to think how anxious and hyperactive I would have been if I had the childhood of today’s kids, it’s no wonder they’re struggling to cope more than previous generations.

I was at school in the seventies and there were a lot of supposedly naughty children. In primary school I remember several boys who spent many days standing facing the wall for large parts of the day.

So you've noticed changes in behaviour of the children over the past couple of decades? What differences have you noticed?

I went to a very naice gels grammar school in the early 90s.... back then there were no lesbians ... no trans people... too slow to get changed after PE ? You were marked as a lesbian and cast out... didn't have a boyfriend from the posh boys school down the road...?you were "a frigid"... (as asexuality didn't exist)
Point is... of course there were lesbians/ trans people at my school... society just hadn't accepted it...
Same with those living with neurodivergence.. pupils learnt how to mask and some were able to take the mask off at uni... others suffered terriblebmental health ...
It's just more accepted in today's world. Good to see it.

There are a whole bunch of reasons why there seems to be more about now than back in the 80s when you were at school.

While autism was known and diagnosed in the 70s (and for several decades before), the threshold for diagnosis was higher so a lot of kids who would be diagnosed today were just considered slow or badly behaved. The same was true for other SEN. All so, there was less. Older parents, particularly older fathers increases the risk of autism, adhd and intellectual disability significantly. So the percentage of kids with SEN, whether diagnosed or not, was likely lower in the 70s.

Along with there being fewer and diagnosis being restricted, special schools were more widely used. Nowadays many kids who would have been shipped off to a special school are managed within mainstream schooling. Similarly PRUs were more numerous and kids who disturbed the classroom (whether that was down to autism, other development issue, or because the teacher goaded them and they reacted or they were just badly behaved ) were more commonly expelled and likely to end up in a PRU or on a home tutor pathway.

As they got older some of these kids self excluded and there were plenty of school refusers, but that was not followed up on as diligently unless the kid got into trouble with the police. So they received no education but also they weren’t in the classroom to disturbed others (and may well have been assigned to the “remedial” class or expelled by this point so not necessarily noticed by most kids in their school).

Kids left school earlier on average, especially if they didn’t feel they were up to academics because focus and stillness was difficult, and there were a lot more jobs that were more suitable for people who have difficulty in a classroom setting.

Also, smoking was a lot more common in teens in the 70s, which may have been used by kids with ADHD to help manage symptoms and keep them focused in school (and for adults, in work). But that’s only really relevant to secondary schools. Even in the 70s, smoking wasn’t common in primary school children.

That was unnecessary. The OP was asking to be informed and its responses like yours that put people off asking questions, people who want to understand.

Younger brother was born 1975, diagnosed autistic around the age of two, went to the school which had been set up by this guy in the 1960s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Vern-Barnett

Older brother diagnosed with ADHD mid-1980s, was prescribed Ritalin.

It’s worth remembering that both autism and ADHD are spectrums. They absolutely existed in the 1970s we just didn’t understand them in the same way. A lot of people were (and are) on the mild end of the spectrum and may never receive a diagnosis. Back in your school days someone with autism or ADHD would have been described as quirky/shy/daydreamer/difficult/highly
strung. Take your pick. Most likely, if you or someone you know have were described that way routinely as a kid they are somewhere on the spectrum. For an adult diagnosis today, clinitians require evidence that traits were present in childhood. There has to be a consistent history showing the same patterns of behaviour over time.

Diagnostic criteria has also evolved a lot over the years. What we now call ‘autism’ wasn’t conceptualised as a spectrum until recently and ADHD has gone through criteria changes (used to be called ADD), similarly Aspergers is now defunct as a label.

Better awareness and screening and continuous redefinition mean more people are recognised as having a neurodevelopmental condition in this day and age. That doesn’t mean cases are increasing in volume.

Also worth remembering that today we have more focus on early childhood development and that illuminates a lot of things that used to fly under the radar! Philosophies like attachment parenting and better early-years education mean quirks are easier to spot and picked up instead of being overlooked.

We now recognise that some problematic behaviours are actually traits or features of a condition, for example, meltdowns can be a result of sensory overwhelm or other autistic triggers. In ADHD, impulsivity would have been classed as ‘naughty’ and inattention ‘lazy’. In many schools, children were caned or physically punished for being behaviours that today might prompt a referral for assessment.

Rather than discussing whether or not the conditions exist in a larger capacity than before, the bigger question is whether labelling is helpful at all. For some, a diagnosis provides clarity and validation. For others it can feel very limiting.

For me personally, I think the labels are helpful even for those on the mild end of the spectrum and I am glad to live in a society that recognises these conditions more readily. I feel so sorry for those in past generations that felt ‘othered’ with no support at best and outright vitriol and worst.

I believe it’s always been around just the same, we just understand and recognise it these days. Those kids that would have been labelled quirky, odd, shy, naughty, troubled ect, may have been on the spectrum. Of course those things can just personality traits, but it’s important not to dismiss it as a possibility. I think they say 1 in 5 children are neurodivergent. So, in a class of 30, that’s 5 children (statistically) that’s actually quite a lot……

In a nutshell, autistic people have always existed just the same as today. It just feels like there’s more autism because it’s more known about, mainstream.

As some pp have mentioned children with any form of disability or special ed need rarely went to mainstream school but I can still pinpoint several kids in my year who definitely had adhd and a couple with autism. Maybe nit school refusers but definitely serial truants!
Within our local area there were 2 special needs schools (in quite a small area) where kids who I saw out and about went. They were possibly higher needs asd.
The difference now is many special schools have shut. We now have 2 in our large authority which means many children who would have attended are now in mainstream schools so are more visible.
My Dsis works at a day centre for adults, some 18, some late 60s who have never attended a mainstream schools due to their needs.
Another relative, nearly 70 has struggled much of his life, labelled 'thick and stupid ' he hated school and would nick off . He has recently been recognised (not fully diagnosed - no point now , his words but has taken several online assessments and discussed with his doctor ) with both asd and adhd. He is 'grieving ' for the life he has missed out, that he could have had .
So yeah it has always been about but those children with the most severe special needs weren't 'seen'.

I'm older than you. I wasn't diagnosed autistic till five years ago. I was clever at school but really struggled socially. We were the lost girls. I was so unhappy as a child and teen because I just didn't fit in.

I was also born in 1978.

The Labour government brought in the SEND Act in 2021. This is when mainstream education was expected to include a much broader range of children. Before that children with any kind of additional need were educated separately.
Yes, we have SEND settings now, but the vast majority of children with additional needs are educated in the mainstream alongside their peers.
There were children in my village who went to special school, it wasn't even a possibility they would have gone to our school. Nowadays many of these children would be in mainstream.

Thank goodness we don't hide children away these days and pretend they don't exist.

Also (and I can see why it can be confusing) but autism and ADHD are neurodevelopmental conditions, not mental health issues. For example, a meltdown in autism usually comes from sensory overwhelm or difficulty processing their environment. A similar outburst in someone with poor mental health might be a reaction to stress or a difficult home life. Behaviours can look the same but the causes are very different. Other posters can correct me if I’m wrong but I believe neurodivergence is largely nature whereas some mental health challenges result from nurture.

I went to a huge comprehensive in the 70s. There were lads who were disruptive and I suspect not NT. There were also people who were borderline learning disabled.

Half and half really. There were definitely kids that had ASD/ADHD back in my day when these things didn’t formally exist to diagnose. However, it was more ‘clear cut’ back then with people in ‘groups’.

-what was deemed classic autism back in the day, which was extremely obvious and those kids went to ‘special school’. Unfortunately back then special needs were not really differentiated and people didn’t want to understand. Our local ‘special school’ was called ‘Xxx School for the Retarded’ (that was its actual name and I have just identified it for privacy of location’. It had kids with both developmental and physical disabilities. So, for example, kids with cerebral palsy, who were completely capable of learning in a mainstream school were put there, lumped in with kids with classic autism and none of them were really taught anything.

-kids who were just ‘weird’ but not weird enough to be sent to the special school. They tended to be shunned and isolated due to behaviours, and were not given educational support they required, so literally shoved in a corner socially and educationally. Now we would support as ASD.

-kids who were ‘naughty’ or ‘didn’t pay attention’. They tended to just be punished, and often left school illiterate and innumerate, and went on to manual labour jobs. Now we would support as ADHD.

-kids who were quirky, but rubbed along socially (tended to find a similar quirky tribe) and educationally (some excelled, some didn’t), and generally left school to go onto uni or other work. Now we would support as ASD.

I think it’s the last two groups where things have changed. They were always group that just rubbed along at school and then in life to varying degrees. Now every second person is in these groups and society tells them all sorts of things because they are different. If you take people in my profession, looking at people my age, there would be LOTS of folk that would have been diagnosed as ASD if that had of existed when we were kids or even as adults starting a career. Most surgeons and anaesthetists of my generation would definitely have ramped it in. However, people just got in with it. I would say the incidence of people now coming through is the same, but the difference is they all believe they have something wrong with them, and have spent their lives to that point with everyone telling them they can’t just ‘get on with it’ but they need this, that, and the other to survive which has resulted in a self fulfilling prophecy and zero resilience.

The problem is also that the buckets have been screwed up so now everyone has ASD. I have a child who was diagnosed Asperger’s quite a while before it ceased to exist. All of their friends were also. Now they are told they have autism, and society now treats them as special needs. None of them believe it and all will tell you they don’t have autism. It’s not that they believe they are any better or worse than someone who does, just different. We have a close family friend with a (now adult) child with autism who can’t speak intelligibly, has severe behavioural issues, is not toilet trained and had to be institutionalised when old enough. My child doesn’t relate to this at all and does not believe they have the same thing (and yes, even taking the ‘spectrum’ into account). They consider it entirely different and believe it’s like someone putting people with asthma and people with diabetes together and saying ‘now you all have asthma’. I also believe if they had of been told and treated as though they had autism when diagnosed, none of them would now be as they are in life and certainly not doing the jobs they do. They would likely all be sitting in disability, believing they couldn’t do things.

I was born in 1974. I was the strange, smart girl. The very strange, very smart girl. Today girls like me get diagnosed with autism.

thank goodness because being that girl was hard.

This in spades.👍

I’m a similar age to you, and remember we had the ‘remedial’ kids at school. These tended to jbe the slow learners.

I don’t remember autism being around. There was a growing awareness of E-numbers and hyperactivity.

I remember the first time I heard of ADHD. It was late ‘90s and in a newspaper article, and I was at work. The symptoms listed seemed to be common to most children.

Now we are all grown up, it’s obvious which adults have adhd, and many of us are all the autistic spectrum. I guess we found coping mechanisms at school to combat it.

@Fleurflowering I still have the uni dissertation I wrote on autism in 1983. I tried to visit a specialist autistic school in my home town, but there was a very long waiting list to go as a 'research visitor'. (My dissertation was OK for its time, but is now horribly out of date).

My aunt has been a teacher for 35 years and says that ND was always there in similar numbers to now, it just wasn’t diagnosed.

Goady thread though. I have only been on here for half an hour tonight and this is the third questionable ND thread I’ve seen. They always come in waves. 🤔

Yes. Autism did exist. Looking back I can say with absolute confidence the kids who had it. My sister is 53, she’s been dinginess as an adult withnADHD, looking back on her time at school and school reports, it’s plain as day that she has it.

My mom, born 1950, didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until she was 59. Decades ago, lots of women with ADHD were dismissed as ditzy scatterbrains, and the ones who weren’t were working many times harder than everyone else to reach the same level of success. My mom was a SAHM with an only child, so you’d think day-to-day life wouldn’t be that challenging, but she was always losing things and leaving chores half-finished around the house. Sometimes out of nowhere, she’d gasp and say, “I was supposed to go to my doctor’s appointment/lunch with Mary/that parent volunteer meeting today! Oh my God - “ And then she’d start phoning people to apologize and reschedule.

I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 22. My kids got diagnosed when they were 8 and 6. Their childhoods are totally different from mine because the adults around them know about their needs, and they aren’t growing up feeling inadequate.

Yes, it existed, but it wasn't recognised.

I struggled a great deal, but I was very academic and reasonably well behaved, so nobody cared. It was many years later that I was diagnosed with adhd, but the symptoms were there all along.

Looking back, I can see that there were quite a few other kids with varying types of neurodivergence. Including one girl in my year who sadly died by suicide at the age of 18. With hindsight, it is blindingly obvious that she had ASD. At the time, she was simply described as "weird". It is more than 30 years ago now, but I feel so sad when I reflect on how badly she was let down by the whole system.

My DD has autistic traits. In addition to the factors mentioned above, I wonder if modern teaching styles and standards of behaviour in schools may also be an issue. My experience (limited, I know) is that my DD struggled to cope with group work, noise and poor behaviour (generally, not just from ND children) in her classes, whereas I suspect that the environment when I was at school, where group work was pretty unknown, classrooms were generally quiet and there was generally pretty strict discipline and routine, would have suited her particular needs better.

I also wonder if the physical fabric of modern schools, with lots of hard and noisy surfaces and bright lights, might be making it harder for ND children to cope.