I'm going to fail at being cheery, because this perception is pissing me off, so I am going to rant here about it, and then blog......
I wonder where all these people are who just hand out Dxs like smarties, when anyone who has actually had anything to do with the system knows how difficult it is to access specialists and even then to get any kind of Dx at all.
This is especially true for girls and women for whom ADHD presents differently than for males. The same goes for ASD and indeed many physical health issues.
Even with a Dx, PIP and/or UC are nigh on impossible to get and these difficulties almost always fall onto the shoulders of women.
Women who have had to leave jobs and careers to care for their children, because working when you have a child with ANs is nigh on impossible, given that schools are so poorly funded and seem to uninterested in providing full time education to children with ANs, and therefore call the mother to collect that child.
Women who, because of society's view that women, mothers, are naturally the better placed person to care for that child give up everything to do that. So those women are then placed into the group 'economically inactive' and castigated for being so. Their pensions are being taken away, because caring is seen as a 'choice'.
Women who, when their husband/partner decides that they've had enough gets to just walk away and then quibble about how much maintenance they are willing to pay for their children, when the added financial burden of having a child with ANs is ignored, are just left to get on with it. (and the stats for divorce when there is a child with AN in the mix are high, much higher than the national average)
And yet there are continual 'examples' of women who are 'setting out' to get their child Dx'd for things so they can 'claim benefits' for them. There are easier ways to get money, like working for example.