How common is autism among close family and friends?

[momtoboys]

Posting here for traffic. It has long seemed to me that very frequently a post on mumsnet includes mentions of SEN, autism, etc. Posters mention children having these traits, the poster has these traits, a friend or a partner. It appears that it is way more prevalent that I could have imagined.

How many of us have a person who is close to them (either family of friend) that has been diagnosed with autism? Thanks!

No the reason being people like Kemi Badenoch and Bigel Farage spread such myths re autism and others fall for it. hugely offensive and abelist to boot

Might I add that we are a relatively ok off family so the carers allowance I get got a 40% tax hit.

My sons pip is taken with weekly counselling and PT trainer.

He gets UC for university as he is unfit to work but then we have had to have him far longer as a child at home eg 2 years life skills and 3 years sixth form.

There is zero financial benefit and huge costs.
Even our wills cost thousands as we had to have specific vulnerable person trust drawn up.

We will have to share some of DH retirement monies to put a hefty house deposit down for DS as the alternative will be supported living or HA at their will placement. The mortgage will be arranged by a HA.

Over the years we have spent thousands on SALT therapy and various reports eg Ed Psych SALT and OT. The NHS reports reached the same conclusions but are scant eg 2 sides. The NHs tended to say ‘ it’s really bad and nothing can be done ‘ eg his memory impairment meant his receptive language could never improve.

I had a holiday without my so this year and event it was a huge effort in planning.
i had 2 PA staying at my home. Its all so intrusive.

Frankly I hate all of it. I want to wage a magic want and make it all go away.

Maybe in the 19th century he would have been the lad who was slightly odd who could be found a job in reality he would not have survived.

Well actually after the taxes my husband and I have paid I too would have liked adequate healthcare, treatment and education for my children. We didn’t get any of it and the money we have had to scrape together for private care to keep my dc alive is frankly appalling. Then you get the care costs and impact on our jobs. Where isthis money we’re supposed to have had from the tax payer because we haven’t seen a penny.

I don’t find it confrontational. That word is always produced when posters reply with facts, highlight ignorance- and are autistic themselves. Not nice.

This is a serious question, so I hope it's not offensive or worded wrongly. But how does one know they've got suspected autism and not another issue (for example anxiety) or it's just their personality? Thank you.

My maternal side of the family 4 of 5 cousins diagnosed and all of their children are neurodiverse
Thw paternal side of the family no diagnosis in my generation but many work as engineers or in computing and have traits.
7 of the children have diagnosis

In my friendship group, everyone has at least one child with diagnoses or awaiting diagnosis

As a number of people have said, genetics play apart and we gravitate to those like us.

My son was diagnosed mid way through primary school, Dh and I last year. Most of my friends are neuro diverse, or have a neuro diverse child. I think that is because you meet other parents with similarly diagnosed children. I also seem to have a radar for like minded people.

Dh has a brother who almost certainly was on the spectrum and I believe one of his nieces is. His cousin also has a child on the spectrum.

Before my son was diagnosed at 2 (he's now 8), he's on the severe side of the spectrum, I didn't know anybody know of anybody who was autistic but now I can definitely see traits in the family.
To be honest I didn't know much about autism and it was very much something that happened to other people.

There are a cluster of conditions which are commonly co-occurring which are things like dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, autism, OCD, EDS, POTS, fibromyalgia, hypermobility, allergies, dysautonomia, I've probably missed some. Being born premature also has an overlap with several of these (it is likely to be causative). I think this is why a lot of people find the "neurodivergent" umbrella to be useful because it can describe a kind of sense that there is some common thread running through several of these conditions.

I think dyslexia had its big recognition movement in the 90s/00s - there seemed to be loads of children at my school diagnosed with dyslexia. I suppose because it is fairly easy to spot and tends to directly cause issues with learning to read/write, which obviously are a big focus at school.

When I moved to college post-16 and studied a creative course our course leader had a whole thing about dyslexia, because her daughter was, and how dyslexic people are more likely to be creative and said if anyone felt comfortable to share, to raise their hand if they were dyslexic, and it was nearly half of our class. This made me curious as well because out of my friendship group at secondary school we had been 60/40 dyslexic and not, and in my friendship group outside of school I can't remember now who was and who wasn't but there were definitely more than should have been statistically representative. Friends I made at college outside of my course were also something like 80% dyslexic. Out of all the long term relationships I've had, the two most significant (including DH) were dyslexic. I am not - I could read within a few weeks of starting school, aged 4, and have always found reading/writing/spelling to be basically instinctive. So it made me wonder why it was so overrepresented in my friendship group - I was later diagnosed with ADHD and looking back, I'd be astonished if most of my dyslexic friends don't actually also meet criteria for ADHD or ASD.

It's not on the website any more, but the Lorna Wing Clinic used to have a short history of autism diagnosis on their website where they said that this was a fairly common pattern - that in the late 90s/into the 00s dyslexia was being widely diagnosed but that many children identified as dyslexic at this time would also meet criteria for ASD or ADHD but this was much less likely to be picked up and a lot was explained away by the dyslexia (because this can also cause processing and sequencing issues).

Thank you. And yes, I agree: it’s a word often used inaccurately to describe a factual and typically autistic style of writing.

I am so sorry to hear what your family has been through, as well. It is horrific.

There is a genetic link between families with ND. Some services will screen the parents if a child attends for assessment because the link is strong.

I was recently at a family wedding and realised that our neurodiversity runs rampant through it. I didn't realise it until I saw us all together in one place.