To think neurodivergence is more common than neurotypical?

[PrincessOfPreschool]

I'm expecting to get hammered for this and it's only based on my sample size of family, extended family/ in laws, friends, people I work with, children I work with but...

I know a LOT of people who I would describe as 'neurodivergent', I think more than I know who are 'neurotypical'. Some of these are diagnosed (more of the younger generation, a few of my generation and none of my parents' generation - in their 80s). Obviously it's a spectrum so only a very few are significantly impacted in their daily lives (unable to go to school or work) but I can definitely see strong traits in my generation and older, many coping mechanisms being used throughout their lives. I do have quite a high awareness due to training in my work, and knowing friends family with ADHD and autism.

I wondered if it's just my family and the people I know, or if neurodivergence is actually really common to the point of being equally, or even more common, than neurotypical. Why is called divergent if it's actually quite typical?

What's your experience?

And it absolutely is not over diagnosed as the recent gov review showed. Numbers are stable( there had been a long history of under diagnosis in this country) and severity has not dropped.

Autism in women and girls presents differently and for many years both were shut out of the diagnosis process. It’s funny how when understanding and awareness improved as to autism in women the witch hunt started. 🙄

I understand this point.

But for me, being ND is not an excuse but a reason why I struggle, so I don't beat myself up for not understanding things and not being able to do certain things.

I'm beginning to agree with those saying neurodiverse and neurotypical are not helpful descriptors at all.

I don't think it's over diagnosed but I do see a vast range of severity in terms of the ability to relate/ operate in the world as it is.

err no….. Dc2’s dyslexia assessors told me that bright kids whose dyslexia is not that severe can easily pass the screener tests that schools have. Hence DC2 was missed until age 18. It was only when she complained about the frequent use of the word “pebbles” in maths questions because “everyone knows it is such a difficult word to read with alll those Ps and Bs” that I began to understand why she was struggling. Her grammar and spelling is appalling but I didn’t think anything of it because mine was too….. but I’m probably dyslexic as well .

If ND is now more common than NT, then ND should surely be the ‘new’ NT?

That's always going to be the case though for several diagnosis, not just ND related either. It only seems to be an issue for some when it comes to ND related diagnosis though and I'm not sure why.

I’ve run a Beaver Scout group for ten years and at least a quarter of the children are neurodivergent - either already diagnosed or awaiting diagnosis but it seems to be a forgone conclusion. I don’t know whether parents are more or less likely to sign ND children up for Scouting but I’m surprised that we have so many as a proportion.

I think it is 70% of those who are classed as disabled and have autism are not in employment.

There are certain careers that are particularly suited to autistic people. Eg software development, acting, doctor, vet, animal care, video game designer, achivist, admin jobs, technical writer, various types of analyst.

Agree ...I also think many at school in the past mine included had a class for 'remidials' awful name ! These same kids now grown are definatley ,Adhd, autistc , learnibmng dissibilities . I work with many children and I think its now qiite normal to be different .

I was going to say something similar. I was diagosned dsylexia at Uni.

I struggled early with reading - then when tested turned out my comprehension and vocubalary were seriously advanced perhaps masked by poor pronunciation skills and earlier years struggles. My spelling below average but only thing that wasn't advanced. Schools and teachers isnsited it wasn't dsylexia becuase I read well - I read for pleasure a lot.

In end I pushed for testing at uni - and talking to educational psychologist and later lecturers I had been disadvantage quite a bit and still manage decent grades.

I saw a teacher on here descibe it as a drag - like parachute behind a speeding racing car - you can still get to destination and even at a decent time but you have to push harder and sometime get inventive.

I also found that people upon finding out I'm dyslexic would it was mild or insist couldn't read - as that what it meant to them. ASD assessors said same even people in education - let alone lay people - are confused about what the conditions actually are.

It's also interesting having married into a non dsylexic family - coping strategies like checking timetables checking with others based on bitter experinced costing time and money that I can read them wrong - get assigned as persoanlity traits.

I'm clearly not as hampered as someone who can read at all- but it needs a constant awarness and strageries to deal with and it's wider than writing. People do not see that so dismiss it as not existing. Uni was an eye opener as people still tried to say others were working harder - yet I could see the hours I was putting in vs others and I was doing much more.

I found it useful to find out - even that late - despite people insiting there was no point. Self esteeem - understanding and few more tricks plus I accessed support group and found that it was common for our coping stratergies to be brittle - so we often had sudden collapses of coping/not. I had hoped it would get kids diagonsed fast if they showed signs - sadly no.

I do find it very annoying in RL and on here a lot when becuase there is SEN means kids can't be academic there are stratergies that make the drag less if do not elimiate entriely.

So similarities I see from 20+ years ago from my diagnosis - is people not having first clue about the conditions but insisted they know more than the experts and those affected and actually maybe it's not a real condition at all and if it is isn't as wide spread as claimed.

How my kids and I experience dsylexia seems different to how other do - we do not have moving letters some describe and non affected often seem to expect or insist is what the condition is - but we do not hear all sounds in words and all have various degree of audio processing delays - we also have common co-moribidties that also affect us.

@GloriiaDS2 doesn’t have significant mental health conditions. His autism and ADHD absolutely impact on his life and he needs considerable support to live up to his potential. Thanks to EHCP and now at uni DSA (and parental advocates) he may be able to achieve independence with support. The support allows independence. Without the support he would not be independent.

I don’t believe that those who are not physically disabled but required support throughout school and beyond and still require support to work and live independently are commonplace. Remove the support and the independence it enables crumbles.

Perhaps you are referring to fictional people who never relied on support but nevertheless received a diagnosis. I’m not sure how this would work given that diagnosis requires functional impairment.

ADHD is absolutely not the new anxiety and depression. To be diagnosed with those you just have to visit your GP who will happily prescribe. Hell, I even went to my GP with severe tonsillitis and he told me I must be anxious or depressed because I couldn’t cope with my degree and tried to push antidepressant medication until I insisted he look at my tonsils whereupon he shamefacedly prescribed antibiotics.

ADHD can’t be diagnosed by a GP and not even by a psychiatrist without extensive evidence/MDT and meds are controlled.

DS2 received an ADHD diagnosis at 13 via right to choose due to wait lists but had been observed in school by a NHS specialist nurse at 7 who said he had a 30 second attention span, advised ADHD medication and also advised autism assessment.

Discussion around cutting benefit or the undeserving needs more understanding of the actual process.

I haven't said anything about aids at all. I'm saying that government sources and advisory bodies like the CAB advise that ND conditions such as autism and ADHD are technically disorders and are not automatically considered disabilities in every individual case. And that I think that's fair given it's consistent with what some people write about how they experience their own neurodivergence on platforms like Mumsnet. Some people are quite open about the fact that they do not consider their ND a disability and others live with a level of impairment that can be overcome with some carefully planned strategies and a bit of willpower. There's nothing wrong with that but it isn't ok when they assume that everyone is living with this more moderate degree of impairment and you get people saying "well I have ADHD and I can do that so if you can't then you must just be lazy/not trying hard enough/making excuses". This is damaging for people with more severe presentations that cannot be overcome with willpower and well thought out strategies, which isn't to say that those in the former group don't have the disorder and shouldn't receive help if it makes their lives easier.

I think it depends on degrees of ND. My son at mainstream school was the one on the SEN table, othered and obviously disabled. Amongst his peers there m have been many who I would have no idea were disabled or ND as seemingly they can ‘mask’. I think that the ability to mask is a major divide as adults / kids that are more extreme have no idea about the concept of masking. When my son wants to talk to himself, walk on his tiptoes and grimace he does All thar. Also for the verbal more extreme ND they have atypical gaits, atypical speech patterns and it more closely resembles brain damage. My son has a spiky profile which means he is brilliant in his chosen topic but struggle to sequence eg take one away from two thousand even at the age of 18. He has zero executive functioning. The issue is there might be someone on the 30 percentile say for executive functioning claiming to be disabled against someone like my son on the 2 and 4 percentile . Arguably they are disabled but on hard stats not as disabled as my son. Same with motor coordination eg someone on the 30 against someone of the 0.5 percentile. My son is classed as complex needs but in reality that could test all people with ASD for these things and have exact ideas of disability eg pragmatic language ( ability to understand conversations / intentions etc) Sadly they only do all these tests at the more extreme end usually when it’s getting to 30 percentile and below. Also on social media not a single person with ASD that I have seen shows any ASD speech dysfluency which is quite remarkable. We get parents talking about their non verbal kids at one extreme and adults or young teens speaking with amazing fluency and ability showing no traits of ASD language issues which are very noticeable and impossible to put on unless you are the most amazing actor ever. Perhaps if people saw more of that they would realise how profoundly non profound ASD can be even when kids have language. However parents at school who have to fetch their SEN kids ( ones at the more extreme end ) all know who they are ( as does the school ) as they still have to get their kids from school at aged 17 and still have to fetch them from disability social events at aged 35. Yet we face the same pip review rubbish despite our kids going to disability groups and having social care. At school, they are usually on high needs low incident funding and not just an EHCP with dedicated 1:1 and usually off curriculum and sat separately with no PE etc.

I can tell you know that there were only 3 or 4 in say 8 classes per year that presented that disabled out of SEN school.

But I’ve seen teachers on here cite a 20-40% neurodiversity rate in their classrooms. Some more. No way do 20% of people, or more, have red hair.

Tbh given so many children with ASD seem to be anxious and unable to do anything or even go to school, I doubt Beavers attracts more autistic children than the norm. In fact I would hazard a guess of the opposite. Maybe ADHD a bit more. But 25% sounds about right.

The stats are hugely out of date and fail to properly corroborate all data on waiting lists and actual diagnoses.

Ok but does anyone actually choose to struggle at anything? I’m going to say no - so basically anyone that struggles with something other people seemingly find easy is autistic/adhd. And that’s going to be pretty much everyone, because I don’t know anyone that doesn’t struggle with something to a fairly significant degree.

I’ve heard a theory that NT kids are more likely to be doing sports, drama, dance clubs etc. and don’t have time for Scouting but ND kids will have more evenings available. I’m not sure whether there’s any evidence to back that up though. Certainly, a lot of the ND kids manage well or cope at Beaver Scouts but struggle with moving up to Cubs and are more likely to drop out at that point.

In a classroom of 30, 20% would only be six pupils. Is it unrealistic for 6 pupils in a class to have red hair? I don't think it is actually... the way that random distribution works you will have some classes with 6 redheads and some classes with none.

ND in schools is also not totally random distribution, anyway. It's possible those schools with the 20-40% in every class have something going on, either it's a very deprived area which generally has higher rates of pupils with SEN of all kinds, the school is known to be good for SEN so all the local SEN pupils end up there, or it's one of the things where the local schools all try to put off parents of ND children so they all end up funneled to the one school which is meant to be "good for SEN" or the school has an unofficial policy to try to push things through for every pupil possible in order to get things like extra time on exams, more funding etc.

But TBH I would also take things with a pinch of salt on MN as I have seen those threads get very mixed up with people sometimes using figures for all SEN, figures for assumed (not diagnosed) ND, inflating things, using an example of one class in their school rather than an average across the whole school, etc.

By definition that's not possible. If it really was the case then we'd have to swap the terms around.

I think this is an awful lot of bending to make your stats fit what seems to be a far more progressed picture.

I’m not exaggerating when I say every other poster on here has a child who is ASD, ADHD, or auDHD. There is simply no way the stats are not massively outdated. Either that or I think they’ve simply failed to collate the data properly as there’s no official way of doing it, given private diagnosis clinics.

The stats are out of date. Young adults now have between 20 and 40% SEN.

The school level SEN statistics are collected on census day which happens 3 times a year. They are pretty up to date. They do a whole year round up which is released in the june of a year.

What do they class as SEN? If you have adhd but no EHCP are you classed as SEN?

The definition of SEN is set out in section 20 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

It is based on needs, rather than diagnosis. Yes, a pupil with ADHD but no EHCP can meet the definition.

School level SEN Support are those pupils who the school has coded as K i.e. those identified as having SEN and receiving additional support but who do not have an EHCP. Those with EHCPs are coded as E.

there's a lot of self diagnosis happening