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 remember E numbers being a thing, sunny delight anyone!!??

I'm a 1980 baby. The naughty kids I remember prob were/are ADHD, my brother being one and was diagnosed at 39 when being assessed for PTSD. There was not many "odd" kids but there was a clear "above intelligence geek" group who were likely autistic.

Sadly I think its a label being vastly overused, especially with access to private diagnosis mainly done by questionnaire, which detracts from the genuine in need children. I do still think and maintain that some children are just spoilt/naughty/parented badly rather than ADHD/Autistic.

In my class, of around 30 children in the '70s, there were several people who seemed to be unable to function in the school environment. They weren't extreme enough to be sent to a "special school".

It's not THAT broad - you still need significant evidence in three different areas.

Diagnosis rates are somewhere between 1 and 2% and the autism charities think it should probably be around 5%. Comparable figures in other developed countries.

So 19 out of 20 kids even on the most generous assessment aren't autistic.

Let's face it, if the government weren't trying to detract from their woeful record on education, we wouldn't be hearing about this.

They are trying to make our kids scapegoats.

I was born in 76 and looking back, there was definitely people with autism. It just wasn’t known

Slow, naughty, delinquent, truants.

Of course these things existed. What a ridiculous view.

The kid with ADHD in my Mum's class was tied to a chair!

I was born in 1974 and know I went to school with kids who would now be diagnosed with autism or adhd

they were the naughty kids, disruptive kids, sent to the bottom sets.

or they were the super bright and nerdy kids who learned to mask

or they were always in trouble for day dreaming or not paying attention

they were there

I’m certain that people with Autism have always existed but it wasn’t diagnosed as a condition until the last century.

Teen DS has diagnosed Autism. It pretty obvious that his dad and I also have some degree of autism and the paediatric neurologist agreed it was highly likely. DH and I are both academic and worked in HE until retirement.

However, I’m 60 and I’m pretty certain my older brother 78 also has autism (he’s a retired mathematician) and I’m convinced my deceased dad had it too. He was born in 1922 and was in the RAF during WW2. He was an engineer and worked with computers in the 70’s when I was a kid.

This was something I only realised after DS was diagnosed as a lot of his traits follow the same behaviour patterns. Poor dad was an alcoholic and I assumed it was related to his wartime experiences but now I think it’s more likely related to being autistic.

While I’m sure they don’t cause autism, I’d be pretty confident they do ‘rewire’ brains and impact ability to concentrate, behave and operate in a classroom environment.

My own very adult brain operates better if I have a 6 week screens detox - I can only imagine the long term impact it’s having on neuroplastic children’s brains.

I know this is super tin hat of me (and probably negligent given I’ve not done any research in this area), but I do think screens and the prevalence of UPF must have had an impact on the increase in neurodiversity. A huge part is better recognition, but we talk now about examples of half a class being neurodiverse - even when we were ignoring it, it can’t have been that prevalent.

And this is not to blame any parent either - it’s a societal and capitalism issue, it’s almost impossible to live any other way.

when did they get rid of special schools ? I think after you left - lots of kids were not in mainstream .

others were labelled bad and naughty

some problems may be increasing in severity - there may be evidence that junk diets make adhd symptoms worse. That will go down well I know

in some ways there was less tolerance for autistic behaviour- girls in particular forced to mask to a very high degree - and bizzarly in hindsight more flexibility in the classroom - I recall being allowed to work on the staircase which was quieter ?

Oh look, a goady OP who never returns to their thread. Can we stop falling for this clickbait shit please

In North America around that time there were a lot of kids on Ritalin because they were ‘hyperactive’ (that was the word at that time) who most likely has ADHD. So it was fairly common.

Also without conflating the two - kids generally (NT and ND) are more badly behaved now for a multitude of reasons. Ask anyone in education.

So better diagnosis and better help than when you grew up OP but generally kids behaviour has deteriorated.

One of the issues we have in schools these days are that there are no meaningful consequences a school can threaten children with for poor behaviour. The police have a similar issue here in Scotland. So a child can repeatedly assault other children, be charged by the police with assault etc but the school can only exclude them for a few days every fortnight or so and being charged with assault as an under 25 here in Scotland means little more than a note home to your mum. What is stopping bored children attacking classmates or teachers day after day after day? Pretty much nothing.

As a direct consequence of this, school is a place where kids cannot relax or feel safe anymore, which is one of the reasons for school refusal and soaring anxiety. My son’s crippling anxiety melted away as soon as he left school and went to work for instance.

We need to return calm and safety to our classrooms if we are ever to pull back from some of the current issues schools are facing. We need to remove violent and disruptive children from mainstream schools immediately.

I take comfort that for every poster, there are probably 5 lurkers, and for every 5 lurkers, at least one will actually get a better perspective from reading the posts. So even clickbait threads can be positive in the long run.

It could be the age at which we have children now contributing to rise. That and screens destroying dopamine circuitry before they even learn to write their name.

I think for autism, depending on the person’s level of support needs and the areas where they struggled schools in the 60’s, 70’s may have been easier to cope with. There was less open plan, more structure maybe, less sensory stimulation, possible smaller class sizes. All of these things may have made the symptoms less obvious and the school environment easier to cope with.

There are more on the spectrum as it is now being grouped together with people with Aspergers syndrom - See below, so 1944 the less sever traits were being recognised

The syndrome was named in 1976 by English psychiatrist Lorna Wing after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, who in 1944 described children in his care who struggled to form friendships, did not understand others' gestures or feelings, engaged in one-sided conversations about their favorite interests, and were clumsy

FASD rates should be at least the same and yet no one sees the diagnosis rates increasing. FASD is an acquired ND which is avoidable, as opposed to autism, but with much more stigma attached.

The diagnostic criteria, as well as what counts as impact or even evidence tbh, are indeed very wide. And expanding.

Baroness Warnock backtracked and said inclusion had gone too far and had regrets so many special schools had been shut.

The study was carried out and centered on very academic schools not your bog standard comp. She said her findings were misinterpreted, I rmmeber seeing her interviewed on tv.

Any child that had very obvious additional needs was sent to the local special school. There were some kids that were a bit naughty they got slippered in front of the class. it was always boys but the sort of firefighting my friends who are secondary school teachers have to do on a daily basis now just didn’t exist.

All classes were streamed as well so once you had exams that was it you were in classes with your ability. I was in high sets after first year so there was zero bad behaviour.

I was born in the 1960’s, there was still work that was low skilled available in manufacturing. Repetitive boring work but still work. I live somewhere now where there are huge mills that shut down and the closed mines are just up the road as next place over is a pit village. They employed thousands.There is also so much pressure to achieve now.

I remember schools being worse than they are now. Children hated school and were forced to go in. Illiteracy was common into the early 2000 and many children left at 16 with no qualifications. There was no send recognition or support at all. Schools now have a problem with overcrowding, send support is pointless for a child going into a class of 30 with one teacher.

It was a thing, it always was a thing, but kids and adults masked it because it was the way, and only people with very noticeable stuff were noticed. I have the theory many many people has something, most have in in the low end of the spectrums but nowadays is more visible because we are more vocal about it.

I’m a little older than you and my school experience is the same as yours OP. Remedial class for small number of kids with learning difficulties, no autism or adhd, no school refusers, no anorexia, no self harm. There was some fighting, a few teenage pregnancies, some kids got picked on, some teachers got picked on. Normal school stuff in those days. Some kids thrived, others just toughed it out till it was over.

I often wonder about this too. I was born in 1979, grew up in rural Ireland. I went to a small school with 150 kids. There were 5 teachers, one of them was teaching principal. The teachers taught 2 classes together. Nobody had autism, adhd etc. Well they might have but nobody knew or did anything about it. We didn’t even have remedial or extra help in anything. I remember a little boy starting in junior infants, he was severely mentally and physically disabled. He was just left to crack on with things. No sna! It beggars belief really. Thinking back to kids who were always in trouble they were just considered difficult or badly behaved.
Now my own kids have all gone through school I see how different it it. My 12 year old is in 6th class in a small village school. It has 2 special needs classes and a new autism class opening in September. We have plenty of sna’s and extra English and maths classes for kids who need them. It’s incredible really that we all made it through school in the 70’s & 80’s with nothing. So many kids must have been suffering and it’s only now in their 40/50/60’s that they are getting diagnosed. So sad really.

Classes now have max size 30 and always one TA, often more. Used to be no max class size and no TA. My mum taught a class of 50 on her own in the 60s.

My parents were teachers from the 70s and differentiation absolutely was a thing they talked about doing. By the 70s and 80s there was more focus on group work with differentiation rather than whole class teaching and rote learning.

And there were kids in my primary school, nice, high achieving school, used to top league tables, who nowadays would absolutely have some sort of SEND diagnosis. Probably about 5-6 of them, so that's up to 20% of the class. My secondary was less naice and the difference was obvious, around behaviour. I wonder how a lot of them would be assessed today. Lots of truancy for example, but did some have anxiety around school?

In the 80s they also started to close down special schools so more kids with SEND were in mainstream schools.