"Where were all the kids with ADHD 40 years ago then?"

[colditz]

Help me to answer my dad, who has delivered a fantastically ignorant diatribe (mainly along the lines of Ds1 "can't possibly be autistic, he's always smiling at me. He's a happy boy Colditz, he's not Autistic") but he has raised a point I can't answer.

Where were the children with ADHD 40 years ago?

Where were the children with High Functioning Autism?

According to him, and many people in their 50s, there WAS no ADHD, or CERTAINLY there wasn't in their school .... so ... where were they?

They were just the naughty ones in the class

In special residential schools.

agree with scurry

They had no 'naughty' children? No odd one?

They were there just called something different and in the case of Autism quite possibly locked away somewhere.

Borstal

Not sure about the ADHD,but as far as 'high functioning autism', I strongly suspect they were around judt the same but given different 'labels', if lucky ended up in jobs which suited their abilities, if not then probably struggled on through life :-(.

in the 'remedial' class or simply not in mainstream schools at all

I'm not being flippant, btw.
I work in forensic mental health, and we have jut diagnosed a 30yo recidivist with ADHD. He's a changed man.

are ADHD and autism the same then??

i think they must have been the ones who got the cane/expelled etc....or 'locked away'...

my aunt had minor learning difficulties and was in a 'home' type place....by todays standards she'd be supported in the community

Borstals were youth prisons. You couldn't get sent to one at age 4. Children with ADHD were in special residential schools. We are talking about the 1970s, not the dark ages.

They were also some in standard primary schools. There was a child in my class with ADHD.

locked away in institutions.
or the more high functioning ASD were simply referred to as the odd man down the road or the simple one.

those with ADHD were seen as naughty and given the cane. then they went to prison.

tell him if ADHD is just us over protective bad parents who simply cannot control our badly behaved children, ask him why when i give my son a high dose of stimulant it calms him down. Why when if i took the same dose i would be swinging from the lampshades does it have a complete opposite effect on DS if there is nothing wrong with him but bad parenting.

then tell him he is an ignorant twunt.

I told him they were probably in schools for disturbed children.

I also lost my temper and asked him if he had ever wondered, considering that Autism has such a strong genetic basis, if he's never wondered about his older brother, who lives in a jet ski shed and builds jets skis all day - every day, and who hasn't been seen at a family event since his mother's funeral 13 years ago...

but apparently "he's just antisocial"

ADHD - they were the "naughty" ones, always in trouble, "never come to any good" etc.

Autistic - the "wierdos" "village idiots" "always was a bit odd" or in institutions depending on the level of disability.

That said there is little statistical information so far as i am aware so it is difficult to say whether there are more or fewer people with either condition now tha then.

Also the type of childhood children had then were better for ADHD - lots of the street games played etc reduce the affects of neuro developmental delay which contributes to ADHD. I agree though they were probably mainly put away somewhere

Either not diagnosed (as has already been said the "naughty" ones) or in special schools. I don't think there are necessarily more cases now, we are just better at diagnosing the "less obvious" cases (for want of a better phrase...no offence intended)

When I was at primary school in the 70s there was a girl in my class who was autistic. Her parents fought tooth & nail to get her into the village school as it was over 20 miles to the nearest special school. She was a nightmare in class TBH & in the end she went to the special school when she was about 8 IIRC. It was the best thing for her back then, as her development came on in leaps & bounds (I sometimes used to play with her - small village). 30-40 years ago "normal" schools just weren't geared up to provide what SN kids needed.

antisocial eh?? where were all these antisocial people 40 years ago.....(was this term used then?)

40 years ago it was perfectly acceptable to be a manly man; poor communication skills, job for 40 years, reliable and very knowledgeable about your specific area of interest and field of expertise.
The men in my family tended to join the forces, work in engineering, and have little truck with stuff that wasn't logical.
Traditional schools suited a lot of HFA children. there was routine, fact-based knowledge, silent working rules and clear consequences and not much of the think, pair share, group stuff that goes on now.
Communication skills, PSHCE and the like weren't part of the curriculum in most of them.
So they were around, they just fitted in with the times better.

My aunt was diagnosed with autism back in the 50s - given that she got a degree, and has always worked she's clearly high-functioning. So even back then it did exist as a label.

'his older brother, who lives in a jet ski shed and builds jets skis all day - every day, and who hasn't been seen at a family event since his mother's funeral 13 years ago..'

I can't list the current half-a dozen members of my family who do something similar or I'd be outed online. But yes, cap fits!

They would have been the ones always getting into trouble, being hauled out of class, the ones the head would say 'not you again' to, the ones no-one wanted to play with, the ones who ended up picked on or ostracised. Because they didn't have a condition, they were naughty.

God, if some of the children in DH's school were in mainstream schools I dread to think how they'd have coped, and how the schools would have coped with them

I'm yet to change my name to "Granny Fanny" but can at least offer opinions based on experience of those days. Your dad, colditz, is factually correct in saying there was no ADHD but this was not because it did not exist. Instead, it was because the behaviours that we would now recognise as typical of ADHD had yet to be described as such.

I recall several children at school who I now realise must have been on the autistic spectrum but were then just given appalling labels like "loony" and "daft" or were just described as "unmanageable" or "very naughty". Since I went to private schools the usual outcome would be swift expulsion with the suggestion that parents find a more suitable (like special) school. Similar things happened in the state sector though.

Goblin that is sooooo true, don't they say that the current methods of teaching completely favour girls and as I think there is a higher percentage of ADHD and Autistic spectrum dc are boys then no wonder the old style suited them so much better.

A borstal is a prison was a completely different thing than a school for 'difficult' children.

Children were not 'locked up' in residential schools. They simply lived there during the week. They went home for weekends and went in and out of the schools to play, go to the local shops and so on.