Anyone else feel alienated by ND culture?

[VoltaireMittyDream]

I’m ADHD with a PDA kid and an ASD husband.

The NT people I know can’t understand my life at all. They have kids who sleep through the night in their own beds & enjoy school & take part in team sports & happily attend holiday clubs & will probably go to uni & will certainly be able to live independently as adults. The NT families I know go on holidays, and the parents have date nights, and have friends round, and all sorts. There’s this whole universe of experiences they have that form the smalltalk that sustains a social bond.

It’s a different world from my very, very small life with a DH and DC who eat about 3 types of food between them - all UPF - can barely tolerate the outside world and would never leave the house at all if I didn’t drag them screaming into the sunlight every so often. It is not clear at all what the future holds for my DC, and I certainly can’t natter happily away to other parents about skiing holidays or football practice or drama club, because none of that happens for us.

So I’d have thought ND families would be my people.

And yet, any time I meet other ND parents of ND kids, I can’t get on with them either.

All the chat seems to be about board games or crafting or fandom of one kind or another. And nobody will admit to finding SEN parenting hard - it’s all about what a jolly time they have pottering at home in comfy clothes and not doing anything they don’t want to do.

I’m stuck between these two worlds - one characterised by an ease and variety of experience that is inaccessible to me because of my caregiving constraints, and the other characterised by some kind of autistic joy that I’m sadly not equipped with.

Where are all the ND folks without special interests? Who love their kids and also find family life extremely hard sometimes?

I’m guessing they don’t get out much IRL, and may be as put off by all the unicorns and sparkles of the ND internet as I am. But maybe I’m wrong, and there’s an online home somewhere for disenfranchised vanilla ND people…?

I get that - it is tiring, and quite depressing when it happens. I also really don't like the us and them rhetoric of ND vs NT, but maybe it's my bugbear. There were times when I got on better with either group, and times when I felt misunderstood and not heard by either too. It really depended on the person, their flexibility and the situation rather than anything else.

Take care OP

I don’t like the them and us stuff either - I didn’t at all mean to contribute to that, and hope my post didn’t come across that way!

I guess before having kids I was always in ‘mixed company’, so to speak, where everyone was just who they were, and work brought me into contact with a wide range of people.

But I work by myself, and a lot less now, with the demands of caregiving. My social contacts are much more online - which attracts a certain intensity of person anyway - or to do with parenting, where the chat is determined by what you’re free and able to do, so we all get funnelled into silos according to our kids’ abilities and interests.

I’d just love to be able to have an easy laugh with someone about the reality of SEN parenting now and again, without having to learn the rules to an incredibly complex board game first, or educate myself comprehensively about fibre arts.

No, your post did not come across that way at all @VoltaireMittyDream , don't worry!

I found it a bit easier when children were older as social contacts were not about their school/classes. I was also shattered by work and caregiving back then, so had less headspace to manage. I would struggle with complex board game or fibre arts too even now though!

Maybe it's Audhd groups you need to look for. My interests are more like walking, swimming, yoga, reading. Also people who are late diagnosed.

I came across this recently :

www.thelatediscoveredclub.com/

I also think - if what you want doesn't exist - set it up. I can guarantee there will be women in your shoes who are looking for it.

Yeah I identify. It can be a very lonely place. I am late diagnosed autistic with ADHD, but an amazing masker, so no-one would know the extent of my internal distress (unless they witnessed me hitting myself around the head and breaking furniture in the comfort of my own home).

Not ND 'enough' to fit the sometime stereotype of it, not NT 'enough' to fully grasp communication nuances, have proper friendships, be able to hold down a senior full time job, blah blah blah.

I read lots about AuDHD which helps a bit. My special interests are perhaps more NT too - health, fitness, design.

I just don't do people much. I realised after a while that I don't experience loneliness, so I'm not desperately searching for someone, anyone, to fill a gap.

I relate to the differences in special interests. Maybe look more in AuDHD communities?

I don't relate to neurotypical interests at all. I do like many different typical (ha!) ND hobbies, but I don't LOVE them and they don't give me the level of joy other ND people seem to have. I also have the ADHD curse of starting a new hobby then getting bored after a few weeks. 😅 I accompanied my family to ComiCon last year and I was surrounded by people who were so much like me and not like me at the same time. Very surreal, and I felt very overwhelmed.

Ooh this is interesting. I’ll have a look!

My hunch is that there is not a whole lot of Au in my ADHD.

But then honestly who knows. My life for the last 2 decades has shrunk so much to fit what my DH and DC can tolerate that I don’t know anymore what’s me (or if there even is a me left!) and what’s just how I’ve been able to adapt. Maybe someone without any autistic traits at all couldn’t cope with living like we do.

Though I must say I often feel harrowingly lonely and restless and bored.

@MadameWombat I went to one Audhd group and it gave me trauma! I don't think it was set up very well, but I recognised so much of myself in other people, and at the same time felt totally out of place partly as I dislike groups. I was really confused - I couldn't behave neurotypically as I felt like they would see through me. It also felt very stilted - one person would talk and the facilitator wouldn't always summarise or listen to what they said, but would interject with a different insight , which is very neurodivergent but in some ways just replicated the autistic experience of not being seen or heard.

Catherine Asta's book Discovered is great.

I think the best way I can describe my interests is NT culture through an ND lens.

I used to work in a fantastic job where everyone was very brainy and, retrospectively, clearly ND - and for the first time in my life I was excited about watching reality TV and looking at celebrity red carpet outfits and following the World Cup, simply because my colleagues all had such clever, hilarious, oblique takes on it all and I didn’t want to miss out on any of the water cooler chat.

My interest is primarily people, I guess, and people’s different perspectives - rather than particular activities or bodies of knowledge.

That's what I thought then I went to the bloody group and now I can't unsee it.

It was a coach posting about starting a group - there seems to be a lot of people starting these 'circle' groups. The cynical part of me thinks - yeah it will be a money making initiative eventually. I wish I hadn't clicked on it as I was quite happy in the knowledge that maybe I'm autistic and it will be about 2-3 years until I'm assessed anyway.

I do think autistics have an incredible capacity to suffer when we get further away from our sensory needs being met. I was idly pondering that maybe Jesus was neurodivergent the other day.

Those feelings are important that you identified, I hope you can find ways of getting the opposite e.g. connection, calm, interests etc.

I love that way of looking at things.

I changed careers into an office based role on my early 30s, and can relate to that though now it's more hybrid and Teams :(

Toast Masters is quite fun and attracts a certain type of interesting person - lots of ND types who perhaps recognise their social skills are clunkier, some very highly socially adept people, people wanting to develop their career, homeworkers, people with carer roles. The whole emphasis is on talking etc. I defo need to go back. It's a rare place where men and women do an activity that also feels comfortable.

You might like "ASD with a G&T" on FB/instagram. She is very sweary and funny about the unlovely parts of ND parenting.

I also really like Cartoons Hate Her on Substack. She has a similar flavour of interests to what you describe and she is diagnosed ADHD but not ASD although everyone on her blog is insistent that she must also be autistic, she doesn't think so.

Sorry I know two influencers/content creators is not really a community, although they have comments sections. But we are out there! The people I know IRL who are ND are also mostly normalish as well - yes I do have a couple of friends who are "knit your own yoghurt" types but I have known them since we met in the "Breastfeeding for freaks" club (LLL) and I adore them both.

You might also look to join some kind of social activity which has a mixture of ages, if you have the opportunity. I joined a choir recently and most people there don't have children my DC's ages - if anything it's grandchildren, but a couple of people have grown up or teenage children or they don't have DC yet. So I don't feel like I need to keep up with any kind of competitive how-many-clubs-do-your-DC-do? I can talk about books or TV or listen to them talk about work or random local news etc. There's a surprising amount of talk about which local cafés do good and reasonably priced food 🤷‍♀️ and if I do tell an anecdote about my children then I don't find myself self-editing to try to avoid judgement which I always assume will come from parents of similarly aged kids (no idea why. I am sure not everyone is as extreme as they are on the internet.)