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Original poster

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

242 replies

colditz · 19/05/2010 19:29

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?

OP posts:
bumpsoon · 19/05/2010 21:39

My mum who taught primary for a good 30 years says she had children who now would be classed as AHAD ,but back in the day she said you just had to keep one step ahead ,this was before TAs where a teacher would have a class of 30 odd kids without additional help. She had her own time out methods for when little jonny became a bit giddy ,he would be entrusted to walk to the far end of school to get four pieces of blue card from another teacher in another classroom , little jonny was happy because miss trusted him and she thought he was a great help and he got 5 minutes of quiet reflection and nose picking on his travels ! She also says that when she first started teaching most children walked to school ,so had expended quite a bit of energy before they got there. She also says that there is so much more loud bright shouty media in childrens lives , including games which she says are quite stressful for certain children yet are billed as entertainment . Of course some children were shipped off to residential homes only to reappear when the care in the community thing happened and they were totally institutionalised .

nickschick · 19/05/2010 21:41

My friend has a son with autism and weve had many nights sat together whilst she cries about it,why did we not have this when we were at school she sobs,why does xxxxx have autism why does your ds have ME?

I tell her the same thing every time and it seems to give her comfort....when I was a little girl we had a boy in our class who was seemingly much bigger and taller and stronger than us....he couldnt catch the ball he couldnt speak so good but he was 'one of us' when we did our work if we were good at it or were patient the teacher would say 'nickschick go and sit with Darren and show him' and me and several of my classmates would spend ages showing him how to add up hundreds tens and units with unifix,when we were writing in our weekend books lisa who lived near darren would help the teacher choose what had happened that weekend- at milk time we knew to put Darrens straw in his drink,we knew that if he sat next to the window he would start to 'flap' we knew if he sat near the radiator the warmth would agitate him,at story time he would sit stroking someones hair or the teachers leg.....and we got through school all of us as a community,we werent experts in autism and how to cope but we knew Darren and how his mind worked- looking back Darren did have some spectrum disorder but we were better people for having had Darren with us.

nickschick · 19/05/2010 21:43

And i also think (getting my 2 pennorth in) that M.E has been around a lot longer too they were the 'poorly' children in convalescent homes and if schools didnt put so much pressure on children and let them be errrrr children the world would be a better and nicer place.

lottiejenkins · 19/05/2010 21:43

My late husband was thirtyfive years older than me, he can remember a lad who he knew later was autistic, the lad just used to run around with a long piece of grass. He never went to school!

MollieO · 19/05/2010 21:47

When I started school 40 years ago there was a separate classroom for children with SN. It wasn't called SN rather it was the remedial classroom and a range of ages of children were taught together. I remember finding that a bit weird at the time. We all played together but they would go back to their own classroom (about 15 in the class) and we would go back to ours (40 in our class! - one teacher and no TA).

2shoes · 19/05/2010 21:48

they were there, just not DXed

minxofmancunia · 19/05/2010 21:50

Agree with you nickschick re schools and pressure. dd starts next year and I'm dreading it. v coloured by me being so so unhappy at school. repeat over and aver

edam · 19/05/2010 22:07

Dunno about 40 years ago but 80 years ago my great-uncle was put in a home after developing epilepsy as a toddler. My Great-Gran was told to forget about him. Fortunately she didn't and visited him every week - which was far more attention than most of the inmates got. My Gran, his older sister, then took over.

He was treated as sub-normal, as someone less deserving of respect than others and who could never ever be allowed to live in society with other people - only taken out for a day here or there. Nobody ever taught him to read or write. I'm sure the nuns thought they were being kind but looking back from today's point of view, it was horrifying. (And it's funny how there was no attempt to teach him normal things but they managed to teach him to recite so many prayers - he could do a full set of rosary beads with all the different Hail Marys.)

BoffinMum · 19/05/2010 22:19

They were there.
It's just people hit them with canes or board rubbers, stood them in the corner, or expelled them so they had to move schools regularly.
Like dyslexics.

uglymugly · 19/05/2010 22:23

I despair at the kind of comments such as where all those kids with condition all those years ago.

But I can understand those comments: when I was at primary school (all those 40+ years ago) there were very few children with behavioural/learning difficulties. Doesn't mean they didn't exist.

Firstly, there were a whole load more "special" schools, so those children wouldn't even have been seen in mainstream schools.

Secondly, back then, children who didn't conform behaviourally quickly got to know what the consequences were. And those consequences were painful.

Thirdly, parents of children who were not "normal" or "mainstream" got guilted into sending their children away to special boarding schools.

So, that's why your father has no memory of ADHD children 40 years ago - he probably never met one when he was young.

BoffinMum · 19/05/2010 22:25

It can be inherited and indeed frequently is.

There are different types of ADHD and they think it is related to different genes, but it is also exacerbated by environment.

iwastooearlytobeayummymummy · 19/05/2010 22:40

just had to add that this thread has reminde of the 'shameful secret' neighbours kept, that their son was 'a mongol'and was 'kept' in a home.

This was in the 70s

So much for the good old days

annoyingdevil · 19/05/2010 22:47

I'm pretty sure I have ADHD, as does my Dad. I just got shoved in a corner at school and was made to feel stupid (even though I knew I was far more intelligent than most of the 'sheep' at school)

OldMacEIEIO · 19/05/2010 23:00

Where I lived they got all the problem kids with anti social tendancies or other problems and gave them a blue suit, a pointy hat and a speed radar gun.

bastards

Goblinchild · 20/05/2010 07:59

'Where I lived they got all the problem kids with anti social tendancies or other problems and gave them a blue suit, a pointy hat and a speed radar gun.

bastards'

It's a real problem when you come across someone who's moral compass is unambiguous isn't it? Where a rule is a rule and shouldn't be broken just because you feel like it?
My son tells people off for parking on the pavements and smoking in no smoking areas. But fortunately for him, he's big and looks too scary to mess with, So the prats he challenges usually back down and mutter.

Goblinchild · 20/05/2010 08:00

Bugger. Whose moral compass.

RunawayWife · 20/05/2010 08:04

Oh they were sat at the back of the class labeled stupid and trouble makers, of given a whack round the head and sent to the heads office....

nickschick · 20/05/2010 08:11

Minxofmancunia - probably school will be fab for your dc,but at least you will be watchful-dont worry .

I remember being about 14 and my little sister was playing with the boy 3 doors down,the boy was downs and quite severe-theyd played with duplo and tipped everything out.

The boys mum came for him and I said he will be ready in a few mins hes just gotta help tidy these away......later I saw her and shed been crying,when I asked her what was wrong-she said Noone had ever treated him like a 'normal' child and even she had never made him pick up bricks hed messed but seeing him made her see he could do it .

BeenBeta · 20/05/2010 08:41

Where were they 40 years ago?

Well there were two boys with ADHD in my village Primary school Infant 2 class. They sat at the front next to the teacher who had no teaching assistant and 27 children in two year groups to teach as well.

They were not labeled, they came out of that school able to read, write to a reasonable functional level albeit 4 years behind their peers.

cornsilkcottagecheese · 20/05/2010 08:57

4 years behind their peers is a functional level for a child with ADHD is it Beenbeta? ADHD is not a learning difficulty. Clearly their ADHD was preventing them from reaching their potential if they were 4 years behind their peers and the teaching environment did not help them.

BoldChislers · 20/05/2010 09:00

Looking back on my school days now I can quite clearly identify one boy from primary school as having had ADHD, and one boy from school who had Aspergers Syndrome. So clear to me now (with one child on the spectrum).

cory · 20/05/2010 09:02

I get this even with a totally physical disorder: my mum wants to know why, if dcs' connective tissue disorder is hereditary, it's never been a problem before.

"Hmmm, when your mum was ill and unable to attend school, her parents took her out for a year so she could go and live with relatives on a farm and breathe healthy country air and nobody batted an eyelid about that. When my dd was ill, the LEA sent Education Welfare officers round to criticise my parenting and the head rang Social Services." Slight difference in expectations there.

Yes, it's easier to get a diagnosis these days- but we don't half need it!

BoldChislers · 20/05/2010 09:04

Colditz, my parents struggled to accept my son's dx. What finally brought them up short was all going on holiday together. That punctured their forcefield of denial.

heading4home · 20/05/2010 09:09

Six years ago, I lived in Portugal for a year, and I used to wonder out loud to my husband how come we never saw a person with Down's syndrome, never saw anyone (adult or child) with SN, rarely saw physically handicapped people...

Where were they? I dread to think
This was actually one of the reasons we stopped living there - something very 1940s about it.

heading4home · 20/05/2010 09:10

The point of my post is that I am so, so glad that Britain has changed in the last 40 years.