Why are there more autistic kids these days?

[Myeyesareopen]

It can’t just be that more kids are being diagnosed, as teachers are reporting how much more difficult it has become over the past few years in the classroom. If there were the same amount of autistic kids before simply without a diagnosis, we would have seen the same behaviours in the classroom, just without the ‘label,’ surely?

Is it a parenting issue? I see repeatedly online: “if that were my child I would give them a thrashing,” or “If I had behaved like that as a kid I would have gotten the belt.”

Should parents of children with symptoms of pathological demand avoidance simply just beat their children until they comply? Won’t put shoes on? Beat them. Won’t listen to instructions? Beat them. Won’t put toys away? Beat them. We would be beating them non-stop. Not to mention it WOULDN’T WORK. If your behaviour escalates around a PDA/Autistic kid, it just makes THEIR behaviour escalate, until you are caught in a cycle of dysregulation.

What autistic children and PDA/ADHD kids need is someone who understands what they need to feel safe and regulated to a point where they can stop focussing on survival and start to focus on learning and thriving. But when you have a class of 40 kids with 2 teachers, how can this be achieved? Or when you have a full-time job, other children, a home to run and life happening, no other support, and lets face it, probably neurodivergent yourself, how do you give your kids the attention they need?

How do we build resilience into our autistic/ADHD/PDA children in the long-term to be able to navigate a world that isn’t built for them? Struggling to follow instructions as an adult could lead to, in extreme cases, joblessness, homelessness, suicide, prison, and at the very least an inability to be self-sufficient. Will we have a generation of kids living at home with their parents unable to face getting the bus?

what would the world look like that was ‘built for’ autistic/ADHD/PDA children? Given that so many NT adults think the current setup is crap, that we are cogs in a wheel, just pointless consumers, and the world is run by, and for, big corporations?

Good grief.

Robert.F.Kennedy, is that you?

This seems like an autism bashing thread…

I would recommend listening to "the autism curve" podcast on BBC sounds. It covers all of these questions and gives evidence based answers. Then please come back and post again if you have more questions.

1. There aren't as many more autistic kids as headlines imply - they used to exist but just not get recognised, and also part of the recent "surge in diagnosis" is all the mums of recently-diagnosed kids getting diagnosed as well because it wasn't recognised in females at all last century.
2. The current situation with more and more visible autistic populations in schools is twofold - children with higher needs are being forced into mainstream education, and the mainstream school system itself is not the same as how it was twenty or thirty (or fifty) years ago and is particularly well-tailored for setting off visible issues in ND kids in the present form.

Huh 🤔

This post is odd.

i like being autistic. It isn’t a problem. My child being autistic isn’t a problem.

Many asd adults get good jobs and buy homes. We function in society. We form relationships. We get married. We have wonderful babies with autism. Those ASD children will perpetuate the cycle and have more wonderful ASD children.

do NT people sometimes make our lives difficult? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with my existence or my child’s.

Some of us were misdiagnosed with other things

The spectrum includes pretty much everyone

That's why

Posts like this always forget that not all autism is intelligence and masking. There are more children with severe needs, with learning disabilities, with incontinence and no speech. It’s an important question, why?

The neurospicy brigade drown out parents who are struggling to care for severely disabled children who will eventually be severely disabled adults.

I think there is a lot to consider really. I don’t think it’s necessarily any one thing.

I do wonder how much of it is environmental, we all have micro plastics/ forever chemicals inside of us. Our diet is chock a block with upf. What impact does that have on fetal development? Maternal age is increasing, does that increase incidences of autism? The impact of screens on developing brains.

A lack of parenting probably does play a part, also what behaviour is acceptable in public has changed. I feel like we’ve lost our anchors. I do think children thrive within discipline, not being smacked around, but with strong boundaries.

The autism spectrum just includes autistic people.

In DD2’s case, my refrigerator parenting and all the chicken nuggets I fed her were probably the main causes.

more recognition
more dc with needs in mainstream schools
older fathers
environmental.

I don't think it's unreasonable to question why we seem to have more children with learning disabilities, etc but I find the way a lot of people seem to ask why, is the parent blaming, etc

I do understand that genetics play a part and I think I read on here being premature does. I have a friend whose DS had Autism because of his chromosome syndrome

OP @Myeyesareopen your post is confusing people. You start off with an inflammatory statement about more autistic children today (proven to be wrong, UK under diagnoses compared to the rest of the world and as others have said females are finally being diagnosed). But then you go on to talk about how to support neurodiverse children, and how beating them isn't the answer but changing society/school systems is.

May I ask what your actual question is?

I understand why some people are confused by my post, I apologise. It is very much a stream of consciousness from a frustrated parent of young children with additional needs who loves her kids very very much and wonders what needs to happen to make life better for them. I just wanted to put my 'aaaargh' out there and see if there was anyone out there who had similar thoughts or positive or constructive ideas.

Its a good question, and one I ask myself as a parent of young ND children. In the schools, certainly, more understanding of ND from teachers and how to teach ND kids, more staff available to support the kids to stay regulated and learn (where is the magic money tree for that, right?)

From the wider community, a better understanding of ND so they understand that people who display traits aren't 'rude' or 'bad,' and I get less "your kid needs a good hiding" comments. My kids have been ostracised by some their schoolmates and parents because of their behaviour. Others get it and have been lovely. It makes the world of difference.

I'm not suggesting that societal structures change overnight to accommodate for ND, and I honestly don't know what the future looks like for my kids, whether they will learn how to regulate themselves and be able to function relatively normally or if they need lots of support, or what support that looks like. Perhaps parents of grown ND kids can share their experiences.

Good for you that your child being autistic isn't a problem. My children being autistic is a very big problem. They struggle massively at school and are ostracised by others. I can't find childcare for them as they are kicked out of holiday clubs. We are regularly threatened with expulsion. I can't quit my job and care for them full-time as I have a mortgage to pay. This is where my frustration comes from, not any kind of negativity about the abilities of ND people.

@Myeyesareopen

your first post comes across as very offensive.

we are constantly being told we are something to be fixed or cured. While some individuals face such profound difficulties they would wish their ASD away if they could, not everyone feels that way. You will find similar sentiments to in every community of people that deviate from the mainstream.

If you want constructive help we need to know where your children are now.

I can give advice for what interventions worked for my child’s particular style of ASD, but those won’t apply to a different style. Her deficiencies are in oral instructions, losing papers, classroom noise, inability to ignore other students misbehaving, handwriting fatigue, general rigidity, perfectionism, hyperlexia, and general asynchronous academic and social development. These could be addressed by things like letting her use noise cancelling headphones, never pairing her with students who tended to misbehave, putting copies of all work online (her school is supposed to do this anyway but some teachers were better than others, we also bought a scanner and scanned everything the second she walked in the door), giving her instructions in writing, letting her work in pen or on a computer instead of using a pencil, even in the earliest years (invest in cases of frixion pens they are fantastic and cheaper in bulk), giving her strict guidelines on projects so she doesn’t over-do them (this one was huge for us, she would take things to the extreme), and giving her extra time on tests so she doesn’t panic and sabotage herself.

we also had some excellent teachers who just saw ways to let her be herself. One teacher let her spend her time after she finished classwork writing a novella and then gave her have a few minutes each week to read an excerpt to the class.

over the years we have adjusted her plan down to the bare basics because she is old enough now that most of these things just happen by default. She is in advanced courses, so there do not tend to be misbehaving students. We don’t have to have that written in her plan anymore. No one cares if she writes in pen or types in year 10, so we dropped that. So we adapt as she ages.

The podcast is about exactly this issue, I.e. the rise in autism diagnoses.
It's only 4 half hour episodes and so doesn't take long to blast through.

Autistic and disabled children are simply more visible nowadays. They are allowed to attend school for one and be in mainstream classrooms. Even 30 years ago, children with any additional need were either put into special needs classes and kept away from NT peers or specialist schools or did not attend school at all.

Those who were able to mask and make it through the school day were considered quirky. Parents did not persue diagnosis years ago unless it was very obvious as it was considered shameful to have a SN child. Even in the 60s and 70s, many severely disabled children were hidden away or sent to orphanages/ care homes and considered dead to their families.

The modern structure of the school day and life in general also doesn't help with making SN more visible. Life for many is fast paced, schools are busy, fast paced environments nowadays. Every little space in schools is in use. Most schools do a Literacy/ Spag/ phonics/ session and a maths session every day. There is a lot of writing and sitting. Breaktimes and lunchtimes are much shorter than they were 30 years ago. My mum (in her early 60s) talks of 2 hour lunch breaks. My dad's school had a 90 minute lunch break. My own school lunch break was 1hr 15 mins with 2 20 minute breaktimes. My DDs current school have 1 15 minute morning break and a 50 minute lunch with only ks1 having a 10 minute afternoon break. Longer breaks give longer time to regulate. Nowadays children barely get to the toilet, eat a snack and outside before it's time to come in again. Especially at schools that lock their toilets in lesson times.

There was PE AND swimming every week, nowadays it's 1 PE session and swimming instead of PE for 6 weeks of the year.

Then there is modern life, with tablets, phones, computers. Lots of electronics buzzing away in the background. We are all living on top of each other. After-school activities and holiday clubs. Plus the food we eat, microplastics ect.

There are also people like my DH's nan who was diagnosed with autism a couple of years ago at the grand old age of 84. She has spent her entire life been described as a "quiet girl, who is a bit odd and really likes animals but not so fond of people". She is a fantastic masker in public but the reality is she's spent pretty much her entire adult life as a shut in with her 3 horses and 2 dogs.

She is a nervous wreck when it comes to leaving the house, has to work herself up to it for hours. She can only cope with going to the supermarket on a monday afternoon at 2pm when it is quiet and worries about if things have moved since her last visit. Has a very strict rigid routine that she finds incredibly hard to stray from.

Cannot cope with unexpected visitors - you must ring 2 hours before you want to visit as a family member, a friend must ring at least 24 hours before. She is then a nervous wreck until they come and according to grandpa she paces the house and rehearses and plans conversations. If you turn up unexpected she doesn't answer the door or is just on edge the entire visit.

She is an incredibly fussy eater and cannot tolerate changes to recipes or certain textures. She will only eat certain brands of foods. She will only eat at one local pub, only for special occasions and only on the day a certain chef is on and only 1 thing on the menu. She gets grandpa to ring before and check that they will have fish and chips and garden peas and that it is the "correct chef" working. If there is no safe food or a different chef she becomes "ill" and cancels the occasion.

She refused to see her Dr for 6 months after the surgery had a renovation and wouldn't go for a full year because her Dr retired and she had to see a new Dr. She needed to go and it took a serious fall and several family members seeing the new Dr before she gave in and saw the new dr. She will only see her 1 assigned dr.

There is more but the new Dr she saw basically asked if she had ever been tested for autism and it may be beneficial for it she needed to go into a care home in the future. She did the test and was diagnosed with autism.

There is an interesting book called "The Age of Diagnosis" that I think explains a lot of the increase in numbers.
Although I do agree it is a bit strange that it seems to be so common nowadays. I know it didn't used to get recognised as much but even accounting for that it does make you wonder if something environmental going on?