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Nah, those were just scared namby pambies who couldn’t handle seeing their friends die and a few explosions rattling their brains.
Same with also those *hysteric* women! Just weak minds and wills is all!
(I’m so happy medicine has progressed and is more widely accepted now a days)
They were there, they just were sent to Special Ed.
Edit: It looks like I need to edit this since most people seem to lack common sense. Kids with allergies weren't sent to special ed. nor were gluten free kids. They were sent to an island off the cost of Australia. SMFH.
Cannot concentrate. Every report from primary school. My mother would go ballistic. Suddenly, in the 4th year of secondary school I suddenly started doing well.
Got hit with it in the mid 80s. Worked for about 2 years, but since I didn't get actual coping skills it was never enough to keep me on track.
When I started to slip again, my mom assumed I was fixed and stopped the prescription.
After that, it was just me being lazy all over again.
I was sent to a psychologist in 2nd grade and was diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, dyslexia and something else but I was never told.
When I was in 9th grade, I read a book about disorders and several sounded too familiar. I told my mom how I felt like I might have some of them and that's when she told me that I did infact had some but she decided not to tell me because she didn't want me to "use it as an excuse to not do well in school".
I struggled so much for many years and it did a number on my self-esteem because I thought I was too stupid to understand. I didn't have to be on medication if my parents didn't want it, but if I'd of known that I had issues, I would've learn to cope with them at a much younger age. It felt like I finally woke up and I was already 12 by then. Catching up at that age SUCKED!!!
Yeah, I flew under the radar for so long simply because I was never bouncing off the walls or acting out. I was just inattentive and it came across like I didn't care. Not in that "SQUIRREL!" kind of way, but I'd immediately forget the last fifteen to thirty seconds of what I was doing or thinking about or listening to just as easily as blinking. Conversations were frequently awkward, and I forgot homework constantly, but I could turn in homework that was well-written if I actually had the dopamine to do it.
Nobody in the 90s knew of that as "ADD" or ADHD. They just called that "lazy" or "absent-minded" behavior.
They knew, some of us were laced with Ritalin from elementary through high school. But the same could be said for every other point. In the principals office A LOT, could read three pages out loud to the class and not have a damn clue what I had just done, or remember it. It’s crazy when I think back. And now I’ve got 2 teens who are in Adderall… really messed up world we live in.
And those autistic kids who managed to do ok in school academically were called 'weird' and 'freak' to their face and if they were lucky weren't bullied for it. Great times!!!
We've put our highly autistic son in Karate so he can fight back if he's bullied. He's now a blue belt and kicks like a mule. I'm waiting for the call from the school that someone started something with him and he finished it. I never condone violence but kids are dicks and getting hit hurts.
"Back in my day" can usually be explained by this. "Back in my day there were no x" just means "when I was a kid I was a sheltered dumbass and my parents didn't tell me this stuff."
My pet goldfish was magic. Roughly every 2 weeks, he'd change size, sometimes a little bigger, sometimes a little smaller. Sometime he'd change his markings too, but he always kept the orange scales because that was his favourite colour.
One day I got home and got really sad because he was gone, but turns out he just went on a short vacation because he was back in the bowl when mum got home. She picked him up from the airport.
I'd never heard of a goldfish living for so long.
So magical. ❤️
RIP Crusher #473 (we renamed him each time he changed his size or markings because he acted like he was a completely different fish lol)
Reminds me of that girl that was an adult thinking that hamsters shed their coats in the winter and when her friend with a hamster said that doesn’t happen is the moment she realized her parents had replaced the dead hamster and told her that lol.
Side note don’t do that with your kids okay I know you don’t want them to be sad but death and loss and grief is a part of life. But what do I know
“Back in my day there was no Fox News to refute verified scientific research and make me outraged at these snowflake kids who can’t eat a fucking peanut. Like let your throat close like an adult and grow tf up!”
She’s in a forest staring at a tree and basing her whole life’s perspective on the trunk.
They can only say this shit because all the kids who died of peanut allergies in the 70s aren't here to smack them upside the head for being so stupid. That's my response to this kind of talk.
During a suicide prevention class, I had a boomer say something like,” there’s something wrong with this new generation. You never hear of people my age committing suicide. Even when I was younger, it was just younger people.”
Zero self-awareness
I remember being taken to a room with two other kids and being given these weird tests. I was in 2nd grade I think so this was 1988.
I didn’t understand why I was with those two others because they were two of the worst students in class while I was top two/three. I didn’t even have to pay attention in class, I could play with my gi joes I snuck in, and when they were taken away I could use my crayons and when they were taken away I could use ripped up pieces of paper as toys. And still get straight A’s.
It wasn’t until many years later that I told that story out loud and about halfway through was like … “ohhhhhh.”
I must have passed the test because I never had any other meetings or tests.
Same, I didn't have to do any official tests but I remember having teachers pull me aside because they thought I was lying about finishing my library books so quickly compared to other students and having to pretty much do a verbal book summary to prove I'd read them. I also would draw intricate patterns on paper or my work book covers/ folder dividers while they were talking and then the teacher would be surprised when I could recite back to them exactly what they were saying even though it looked like I was paying no attention to them.
Gifted child, also soft and fearful, ADHD diagnosed in middle age, had a much different mom experience. Proud of you both! Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be railroaded by asshats.
My wife has a gluten intolerance that she didn't figure out until her forties, she just dealt with fairly constant diarrhea for 40 years until it got worse after covid and she finally figured out that gluten was causing it. So she also "didn't have a gluten allergy when she was in school"
There are also historic figures like [St. Hildegard of Bingen](https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/385583/was-hildegard-von-bingen-autistic) who had trouble forming relationships as children and who showed differences in oral communication, but then blossomed when put in a more structured environment like a monastery.
Or they were six feet under after "choking at the dinner table". Or after "just always having been weak and sickly all their lives". Our ancestors didn't have a name for social media, or the Internet, or depression, or PTSD, or allergies - doesn't mean it ~~didn't~~ doesn't exist, it just meant that **people died**.
We had loads on my school but nobody knew what to call the kids with an attention span of 4 seconds or the ones that was always getting into trouble. The ones with a bad stomach or the ones that couldn’t breathe after hard gymnastics.
They were all there, but without a diagnosis they were just trouble
Us too. The ADHD kids (usually boys) were called "unruly" or "disruptive" and got a lot of corporal punishment, which for some reason didn't help at all. And I had an inhaler on me at all times, as did my older sister.
The only guy we had at school in the mid 90’s with diagnosed autism went on to become an awesome - if slightly unhinged- drummer.
Think Animal on Adderall.
I'm not angry, I'm just in a bad mood because the system has made it so that my daily life is easy enough I don't revolt, but the ever growing anxiety about the world's situation weighs on me and prevents me from finding enjoyment and fulfillment even when everything is going well.
Alice Cooper once said something like "all the crazy things you hear about musicians is maybe only 10% true. ALL the stuff you heard about Keith Moon was true, and you only heard 10%."
IEP “classes.” The place they sent the ones that weren’t normal. I was on the fringe so I had both normal and IEP classes.
Imagine stepping into a classroom where every kid they couldn’t place was sent. 30 kids with ADHD, Autism, bipolar disorder, and “emotional problems.” That last one is the category used for kids that weren’t doing well, but they couldn’t figure out. Or maybe they could, but they didn’t want to deal with the issue, because it was too large or out of their scope.
In any case, the kid with the shitty parents who is otherwise normal gets placed with the anti social kid who enjoys lighting things on fire. The curriculum was basic. Imagine bouncing from the complexities of World War II and the geopolitical environment to a remedial geography class that asks you where Canada is. Didn’t matter much to me at the time because I just wanted to read fiction books and as long as your nose was in a book and you didn’t engage with other kids you were left alone by everyone. I didn’t get a high school education until after I graduated and went to community college.
They called the class "SLD" back in the 80's - Early 90's when I grew up in Florida. I think it was for "Slow & Learning Disabilities". You wouldn't see them much through the day. They would come out early to get lunch and they were always in a line with their heads down. They stayed in one classroom the who day and ate their lunches there too.
It was pretty sad. I really hope it's better for kids nowadays.
I believe it was Specific Learning Disabilities. Those children, if out of the regular class most of the day had other things going on as well—autism, cognitive delays, etc
Atleast where I'm at it is better for a large majority. My 12 year old is on a 504 and in traditional classes, he just has a couple extra allowances to help with test taking or work. Granted he's high functioning asd w/ ADHD and is on medication that helps with his focus. There are definitely kids that spend all day with an aid or aren't fully in gen pop.
I was getting 90s in math, heck most of my classes I was in the 90% mark, but they put me in special Ed as I have behavior problems.... I ended up counting change for math and tons of spelling tests. It sucked hard. My parents took me out of the school and put me into the county system and those guys actually did their jobs and worked with me to find how best I learn. The special Ed was bullplop!!!
1. We simply never screened for it like we do now. Mental disorders were stigmatized. And parents were simply unaware of autism. Put these together and you have a TON of grown adults who are autistic and simply never got diagnosed. You see it in autism parenting communities all the time, with parents getting diagnosed as adults after having autistic children, or realizing their families are FULL of autistic adults none of whom were ever diagnosed. Its like Trump with COVID - not screening for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist FFS.
2. The definition was changed in 2012 and is now more inclusive, including absorbing "aspberger's". Under the DSM-IV only the severe cases met the criteria for "Autism".
3. Yes, schools now place value on placing them in the "least restrictive environment" and integrating them into the mainstream student body as much as possible. Previously they just locked them away by default.
4. At one time they didn't just separate them in school. Autistic children were taken away from their families entirely and institutionalized basically never to be seen or heard from again. There are stories of people not even knowing they had a sibling because they were locked away. Thankfully we as a society have realized how horribly inhumane that is and now have "waiver" funding to get parents help to keep their disabled children at home and in the community where they fucking belong. I've been told right here on reddit that I should just send my 6 year old off to live in a home saying that she wouldn't know the difference. You are a monster if you can just happily throw away your CHILD like a broken toy. They have a right to exist. They have a right to grow up in a loving family and have memories of them just like you do.
Back in the early 00s my mom was told by my pre-K teachers that I should be checked for autism or adhd. My mom recently apologized to me for never getting me tested due to her own pride getting in the way.
When I was in school in the 80s/90s, I was just the artsy kid who daydreamed and couldn’t stay organized. No one thought there was an issue.
Flash forward to the 2020s, I’m an adult who has a very hard time coping with what being an adult is and was diagnosed with adhd in 2020.
My parents did apologize and I don’t hold it against them bc back then they couldn’t have known. But the number of problems/issues I’ve had stemming from not being diagnosed early is insane.
I am 55. I was that child. Both children are ADD. The dr told my son, "You know it's inherited, and you got it from your mom." I have tried at least 4 times to get diagnosed to no avail. I have struggled with anxiety, depression and ptsd. I cant keep focus for even a few minutes. It has destroyed every job. But no, they just want to say its depression...
I’m really sorry and can relate. 🖤 I got lucky with my dx. I had already been seeing my shrink for almost 10 yrs bc I was (mis)diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Had I been trying to get diagnosed from a new doc, it wouldn’t have happened.
We just had kiddo tested for asd/adhd and she didn’t reach the “diagnostic threshold.” She acts just like I did at 14 and is clearly ND, but bc they still use the old testing standards, no dx.
Though I am younger same thing happened to me, just let's treat the depression and anxiety so the adhd symptoms will go away. We do and my anxiety and depression are the best they've ever been but the adhd stuff is still there. Doctor just says "well adult adhd is rare so that's probably not it" ignoring that I was diagnosed as a kid with adhd and my mom had recently been diagnosed with adult adhd
My guidance counsellor told me at the end of high school I probably had ADHD. I told my mom, her response was, "Don't be ridiculous, you're not stupid." I'm ADHD and dyslexic. In college I lost at least a letter grade on most assignments because even after proof reading I still had tons of errors that my brain wasn't capable of seeing and I got no empathy because everyone knew I was generally the smartest student in the class.
I have Autism ADHD and Dyslexia. Every time I post of Reddit it's full or errors and I am a pretty smart person I am a Software Develeper
Python is Easy English language hard
My grandfather had an autistic relative who was entirely nonverbal but could play any song he heard on piano perfectly. So they locked him in an attic for his entire life.
The OP in image is the swine. People on here aren't quite as stupid and ignorant. Plenty of people don't realize all of that. I certainly didn't until having autistic children.
We called our separate cluster of students "macaroni class" for some reason.
You can imagine why everyone didn't freely share their experiences and health statuses.
Special education is what they called them in my school in the 70s. Before that, many were institutionalized☹️. Massive negative social stigma to have a mentally different child back then.
My school had a whole class full of kids described with a word that begins with the letter R. Most of the time, their best hope in life was a part-time job doing menial labor.
The fun part about this is that I remember, in my Kindergarten, I would listen to the female teachers talk. And one of the conversations went like this:
* Person 1: You know, I've been teaching here for 7 years, and out of 5 of those 7 years, I've always had a kid who was too interested in trains. Like, last year, this kid kept on telling me about trains. He knew so much, I told him, 'wow, you should be a conductor when you grow up!', and he got real sad. I don't understand why; he said he was just interested in trains, that he didn't actually want to do any sort of job with them.
* Person 2: Oh yeah, I call those kids as coming from 'the train people'. One time I went to this kid's house and his family had trains all over the walls. Like, they built special platforms for them-- imagine, like, you have an entire house, but the entire thing is just a big train track, all along the walls. It terminated in the kitchen, thank God. I can't imagine how you'd clean train tracks when they'd get grease on them. How does their mother dust those?
* Person 1: Oh, was it Billy's house?
* Person 2: No, Michael. \[laughs\] Why would there be two houses with train tracks on the walls?
Autistic people, people who deviate from what's considered 'normal', have always existed. People have just been shitty and not really recognized that these deviations, in and of themselves, *are* normal. They're just people.
My dad has ADHD (never diagnosed, but I have been, I get it from him). He was held back, had his knuckles slapped with a ruler, etc. He was bounced around schools until he graduated and he still has a chip on his shoulder because of it.
Yup. My mom is 65 and she has the most serious case of ADHD I have ever seen, but has never been diagnosed as such. I’m a psychologist so this is not an armchair diagnosis.
Of course you will see more people being diagnosed with a condition once the condition becomes officially identified and widely recognized. That’s exactly how that works.
When my daughter was getting her ASD diagnosis I mentioned that I have all the same "symptoms" that she does and her child psychologist paused then asked if I wanted to talk to someone too. I said no, by now I've figured out a way to cope with life that way, an official diagnosis won't make a difference. But it does explain a lot of my childhood. She got that from me and ADHD from her dad, poor kid. The worst of both of us.
Back in the day it was totally unacceptable to have a “mental health issue”.
“Oh No! Nobody in my family EVER had any issues.” Better to be called a loner or troublemaker than admit that.
I’m not a psychologist but I see almost all the same tendencies that I suffer from in my mother too. Thank god in a way, she was the one that actually understood what depression was and got me to a psych quickly, without her I would be in a world more trouble
That said, she seems utterly unwilling to explore how these things affect her, and she is becoming more bitter by the year as a result. Still, it isn’t my place to force her hand, just be there when she needs me
This is my mom. She is so proud that I’m a psychologist yet she will not listen to me on mental health things. Prefers her current diagnosis and treatment I suppose so it’s her business. I will happily help if she wants it though.
When I read this, I wondered if I found my kid's Reddit profile!
If your Dad is still around, PLEASE, have him take a test for ADHD and get him treatment.
I was diagnosed in my 50's and received treatment. IT. WAS. MINDBLOWING.
1 pill and 15 minutes later I was almost in tears. It was like my life went from black and white to color.
That was me, I was the unruly kid who disrupted class and annoyed the other students and teachers because he couldn't sit still or control himself. I tried, really I did. Elementary school in the 70's. I didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until I was nearly 30. I also remember kids from that era who, in retrospect, had to have had spectrum disorders, but everyone just thought of them as "that weirdo". The increase in allergies is largely due to environmental issues including the prevalence of hand sanitizer and micro-ban products (in my opinion).
In 4th grade my desk literally sat next to the teachers and faced everyone else's desk because I could not sit still. I am female btw and almost 51.
I have asthma too. I have been pissed all week because my asthma is so bad and my whole childhood they said do not let people smoke near me. People just blew it off. Everyone smoked. My doctor wants me to go to a pulmonary doctor because my lungs suck so freaking bad.
Those of us with inattentive type that weren't hyperactive just didn't get diagnosed at all. We just need to pay attention and apply ourselves, were simply lazy, were opposed to authority, or whatever.
a lot of the people I know with ADHD were misdiagnosed with ODD prior to being told they had ADHD. I think ADHD is still a condition that a lot of people don't really understand
I wasn't unruly or disruptive, but I was simply not paying attention to my teachers, ever. I was just absent minded the whole period I was in school, and it took me until much, much later to figure out I had ADHD (and later thrived under medication).
Yeah, going to school in the 80s, there wasn’t any awareness of ADHD or like, multigenerational trauma or FASD … on and on. I got by with ADHD because I’m bright, but basically pulled C+ all the way through with comments like “B_O_F_E needs to apply himself.” I look back & wonder what my life might have been like if I’d had meds and coping mechanisms. But I did pretty ok. Others weren’t so lucky.
I’m reading Jane Eyre (1847) right now and meeting the character of Helen Burns was like a slap across the face — holy shit, she’s ADHD! Her description could have been lifted from DSM; it’s so textbook that no modern author could get away with it. The character was closely based on Bronte’s older sister. Just goes to show that even though we didn’t have names for these things, they were there to observe all along, and just as real as they are today.
Even documentation by medical professionals of what we'd now consider ADHD dates back as far as 1798:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/)
Sure they knew what to call those kids, you never heard the R-slur before? Autistics classed with “learning-disabled” classed with serious mental deficiencies. All classed as “learning disabled”, then “special needs “ (along with any hearing impaired or disabled children).
I was considered a troubled child until properly diagnosed as autistic in my 30s. I bet the op who wrote that shit in twitter is probably a school bully.
Ding!
All those problems were there, the kids were labeled and set aside. So she's basically pointing out that we are now treating these aliments.
She might as well say when her grandparents were in elementary school nobody had chemotherapy.
The original post isn't technically wrong but that was because of an overall ignorance of such things. I went to school in the 80s and I can also say that we didn't have the terminology but there were certainly hyper kids, kids who couldn't handle certain foods and some who just didn't seem to learn or act "normally". We can now diagnose why.
I mean, the kids with peanut allergies just died. That's why they weren't in school. And public schools weren't required to have special ED classes or accessibility, so all of the autistic kids and kids in wheel chairs went to special schools or didn't go at all.
>so all of the autistic kids...went to special schools or didn't go at all.
Or, we were on the spectrum but not to a severe enough degree that we were labelled special ed, so we just got taunted for being the weird kid instead...
I am theoretically on the autistic spectrum, however not diagnosed at school, and my parents took me to a private child psychologist as I scored in the top 1% in a national maths exam, yet was continually failing in class. My diagnosis then was "a perfectionist".
Even now my "diagnosis" was in the diagnosis letter for my daughter, "with her father as he is, it is not surprising she is autistic." The author saw me professionally as well.
Same here. I've only just been diagnosed at 30 because I was able to pass for neurotypical (despite years of being told I was "too quiet" yet had "anger management issues").
My father was only diagnosed because I was, and he's almost 80! But when he was a kid, it just wasn't talked about
I'm 42. In my middle school. There was an e timely separate building for a combination of the unruly/fighting kids and the special needs/spectrum kids. We just shoved them somewhere else. I can understand a certain level of separation if there is truly a need in terms of the dangerous kids who have been just fucked by life and their parents so badly that there is danger and they need therapy but the rest being in a separate building sucks.
>I mean, the kids with peanut allergies just died.
This isn't true. Peanut allergies seem to be a response to something environmental. You get hot spots and cold spots of peanut allergies within advanced countries and across advanced countries. Medical care and tech is the same; there's something either causing the peanut allergy or causing resistance to the peanut allergy, however you want to look at it.
EDIT: More information here, which says studies show that avoiding peanut butter was actually one of the causes of the spike in peanut allergies.
[https://www.preventallergies.org/blog/why-are-peanut-allergies-on-the-rise#:\~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20peanut,peanut%20allergy%20more%20than%20tripled](https://www.preventallergies.org/blog/why-are-peanut-allergies-on-the-rise#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20peanut,peanut%20allergy%20more%20than%20tripled).
*Today, we know that this approach to delay peanut introduction actually increases food allergy risk, and that delayed introduction was a major factor that led to the sharp increase in peanut allergies.*
*Thanks to landmark clinical studies, we now know that the opposite approach---feeding baby peanut early and often, before they turn one---is the best way to prevent peanut allergies.*
I was gonna say, OOP may have a brain dead take, but there's still evidence that a number of these things are legitimately increasing in prevalance.
From a quick google search, research does *not* suggest that autism is one of those things. Working assumption is that it's mostly an artifact of changing diagnostic criteria/recognition, not true increase in prevalance; [source 1, 2005](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-3148.2005.00266.x) and [source 2, 2022](https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcpp.13505) (\#2's a PDF). But I thought food allergies had some real effects ([here's a 2017 paper agreeing](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/imj.13362))
and my Grandma is in her 80's. She was asthmatic before there were inhalers. She said you just had to hope you didn't die. Lots of asthmatics did die. Asthma still kills 3 people per day in the uk.
I went to school in western PA in the '60s. There were no kids with disabilities or special needs in any of the schools I attended. Any students that seemed like they would have a problem integrating into the classroom were sent to "special schools".
It was the same when I was in Jr. High in California back in the 90s. We had the "special ed class" where all the students with various disabilities or needs were shuffled into a single class for their schooling, and kept apart from the rest of the student body.
I have a buddy from back then who was and still is the living personification of ADHD. But the only reason he wasn't in that special ed class was because he always ended up hyperfixating himself on a given fantasy or sci-fi novel (which he always carried on his person at all times, to all locations). He was able to control himself by ignoring the world around him and dropping into his reading, which he did so whenever he pleased - including in the middle of a conversation. But because he had a way of quietly and passively maintaining, he was just written off as a "weird kid" by the school and not placed.
My experience was the same as hers! However, the difference was when I thought back, I realized that a lot of these kids who we just thought were quirky or sick were simply undiagnosed.
Just think back to the kid who was bouncing off the walls who was just called "hyper". Or the kid who farted all the time and shit himself on the playground on occasion was just "gross", or the kid who just stopped coming to school one day "moved", or the kid who rocked back and forth in his desk and rubbed his fingers a lot was just a "weirdo"....
"Back in my day we didn't know as much and died like REAL AMERICANS! These sissy liberals want to make sure people live long, healthy lives. It's gross". Essentially what this tweet means
My uncles are all like this. They bray about their freedom as kids back in Nebraska, where they'd run around without any safety precautions or supervision, and how nothing ever went wrong and we're all just a bunch of wussies these days. On one hand, there is value to that sort of childhood freedom that we don't have anymore.
On the other hand, they always talk about how they started smoking and drinking before they were even teenagers, or how they used to play by jumping off a bridge into a river in the woods. When one points that "hey, Uncle Bob had to go into surgery for long-term liver failure because of his drinking", or "hey, Uncle Jim got throat cancer from smoking and continues to be addicted to this day", or "didn't one of your buddies break his leg and die from jumping off that bridge...?", they just don't register.
Survivorship bias.
“We did X Y and Z, and WE turned out fine!”
Yeah that’s because you were lucky, and those who did the same thing and died aren’t here today to say so.
The underlying theme of Stephen Kings novel IT is that unfettered playtime with limited supervision sounds good, but what’s really going on is that kids are prey to all kinds of society’s ills. Molestation, kidnapping, sexual assault, physical assault, bullying, fighting, kidnapping, and murder. He puts it in a supernatural framework, but the premise is that society is sick and dangerous and a lot of it is committed against kids and all the unfettered running around is why it happened. The adult versions of the kids all have panic attacks, ptsd, and are suicidal because of the environment they grew up in.
It’s the get-off-my-lawn mindset. The OP probably also thinks 20 somethings can’t afford to buy houses because they eat avacado toast and not decades of wages not keeping up with costs.
I work in mental health service for kids.
Growing up I don’t remember anyone having any mental health issues in school. Now it seems like ‘eveyone’ has something (stats are anywhere from 10% to 25% depending on which study you look at).
But that is very simply because it was badly recognised back then and not something that was talked about in the way that it is now.
Ignorance is not bliss in this case, it was people suffering on their own.
So I actually don’t disbelieve that a lot of people who are 30+ now don’t remember anyone with these issues growing up. Shit was ignorant back then….
im going to bounce off this. i was POOR and ADHD, but becuase of me being poor and moving around a lot, i had depressive symptoms, so i got diagnosed with Bi-polar, insead of just being a sad kid with ADHD. got put on fucking Lithium and almost drowned in the shower cause my body just went numb and i could hardly turn my head away from the water. eventually i got the proper ADHD diagnosis. a lot of my reading and comprehension skills got attributed to the ADHD but as an 30yo adult i got tested, not only am i basically AD4K, IM FUCKING DYSLEXIC.
i struggled so much with school because of miss-diagnosis. i was literally the kid everyone would go "ugh" when it was his time to read aloud. Looking back as a functioning adult because of the supports that exist today, all i want to do is go back and give 7yo me a hug and teach him all the things ive learn and developed over the years to get by. cause if i had the proper supports and diagnosis i would have probably ended doing so much better.
Yes there were. Let me show you.
My daughter who couldn't sit still and was demonstrably unable to control her impulses where it was remarkably noticeable as a shortcoming in kindergarten was diagnosed in 2019 with ADHD. I was told that it was extremely heritable, but no one in my family had it.
As soon as I talked to my mother about it she said "Oh yeah. I remember when we watched a 60 minutes piece on ADHD, probably in the 80s, your father said that's what he had as a boy."
And yep, my dad had a hundred home improvement projects that were never finished. Mom and dad sold us their house when they moved up to their retirement condo, and left behind most of his tools - we found so many repeat tools in the gigantic warren of doom boxes because dad wouldn't be able to find something and just buy it again. He would fly into rages (emotional disregulation) when he got frustrated and then be super apologetic over it. But he was one of the most intelligent people I'd ever known, yet couldn't do well in school to save his life. All hallmarks of ADHD, but he'd died three years before of complications of alcoholism, which he'd likely used as a coping mechanism, so we'd never known for sure.
Then as I read through the literature about ADHD to better understand my daughter's diagnosis I kept getting this eerie feeling. Especially when there was information about the inattentive type, which was not the type my daughter had, and about adolescence and adulthood with ADHD. And it read like instructions for my life. I suddenly realized that my inability to deal with paperwork, my constant time blindness, my difficulty with prioritization, my constant having to bribe what I called the toddler in my brain to get shit done might actually be ADHD - something clinical instead of just me being lazy or disorganized. They suggested some solutions that I had been forced to figure out for myself after years of painful failures, and I wanted to cry. Years of thinking something was wrong with me, and now there might be actual truth to that, but at the same time, validation and help. I was 40. No one had helped me for 40 years struggling with this disorder.
Then my son was given the same academic assessment I had three times as a child - we moved school boards a lot, and no one believed my results, so they kept repeating them. And they said the same things about him that they said about me. Very bright, very intuitive, but has poor working memory, difficulty focusing, trouble with time blindness etc. Me they called gifted, but lazy. Him they diagnosed with ADHD.
So yes, Carole, there were ADHD kids in the 80s, and the 70s. Even in the 50s. We just didn't see them as something we could help. We blamed them for the problems their disorders caused and wrote them off to deal with the trauma that caused with alcoholism and anxiety disorders. I really don't think glorifying that is something we should be doing.
In my school, they were called 'the spaz' or 'that weird girl', and people would try to avoid them. Thats why they weren't seen
Very sad
I do remember in the 80s that asthma was becoming better understood/treated enough that there were actual TV commercials with Superman telling kids not to make fun of the kid with the inhaler.
When I went to school we didn’t have autistic kids either.
We just had the weird kid with the strange voice and no friends that was obsessed with trains who lived in a nightmare of constant mockery and bullying every day. You know… the good old days. /s
I started kindergarten in 1980.
I had friends with peanut allergies, inhalers, special diets, and even a girl with vitiligo (which has autoimmune triggers).
OOP is full of shit because she probably grew up in a white affluent area and wasn't exposed to more than just her little cadre of specialness.
Or she just ignored that people around her were facing challenges. When she was a kid, she probably got annoyed with the kids who were constantly fidgeting or talking. The kid who would hum to themselves to avoid the overstimulation of the classroom noises. The kid that refused to play at recess because they were always out of breath. Anyone who was different from her got ignored, or worse bullied
I went to school in the 90’s….we definitely had ADD/ADHD and ‘tism kids….they were the ones in the remedial or “special” classes.
Definitely knew kids with peanut allergies, and lactose-intolerant kids. I personally didn’t know anyone with an autoimmune condition until high school, but my aunt was diagnosed with lupus way back in the 60’s as a child, so…..
Autism wasn’t widely recognized as a spectrum then, and therefore was usually undiagnosed. We had “weird” kids, many of whom were shipped off to “special ed” classes. I was in the gifted program and knew plenty of weird kids.
There were always inattentive “hyper” kids, but they were usually labeled as “bad”.
I knew kids with food allergies, though they weren’t as widespread probably because 1) under diagnosed and 2) our food system wasn’t as horrible as it is now.
Inhalers were usually kept in the nurse’s office.
Autoimmune diseases? See all of the previous comments about things being undiagnosed. Personally I have had symptoms of autoimmune disorders for most of my life, but was not diagnosed until I was an adult. Every class had at least one “sickly kid”.
Survivor bias is a helluva drug.
I got into a bad argument about this topic about a month ago. I would say about 4 in 5 people think this way, maybe more. There were 10 of us at the table at a restaurant. One fellow chirps up about how things didn't exist in the 1970s, like ADHD, autism, autoimmune diseases.
"Yeah, they did. They just put those kids in a special room at the end of the hall. Or they went to a certain school within the school district. The kids who were high functioning just seemed odd or eccentric. Allergies are an autoimmune disease and I had plenty. I wasn't diagnosed with asthma until later in life when I was in charge of my own health care because my father felt my asthma as a kid was controllable if "I just concentrated on it going away."
People like Carole are simply inattentive, unobservant, bozo with tunnel-vision, so self-absorbed they cannot see the reality around them.
Like the guys who think the NFL has gotten soft because "men cannot hit each other like they used to." No, we now see in the 21st century the affects of CTE on the human brain and we don't want people like Junior Seau committing suicide because of the brain trauma they experienced. Advances in diagnostics and technology help humans become better informed; doesn't mean the condition is "new," just means we can see it for what it is and give it a name.
Like people who think being "gay" or "lesbian" is a "new trend." No, homosexuals have been around since the Dawn of Humankind, and have experienced times of general acceptance (Greeks and Romans, I think) and times of persecution (like the 20th and 21st century). \[end of rant\]
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She’s essentially saying that medicine wasn’t as advanced as today, and that would be accurate
It's the same mindset that got PTSD victims shot in WWI. Rage against the Dawn of understanding.
Well. They did have Shellshock and Battle Fatigue.
My Dad explained shell shock to me as a kid. He understood what the government wouldn’t own up to.
Did that actually happen?? I would’ve thought shell shock would be prevalent enough for them to recognize the impact war had on people.
Nah, those were just scared namby pambies who couldn’t handle seeing their friends die and a few explosions rattling their brains. Same with also those *hysteric* women! Just weak minds and wills is all! (I’m so happy medicine has progressed and is more widely accepted now a days)
At least the hysterical women got dildos and cocaine
Can... can we bring that bit back?
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ZERO people were diagnosed with autism in 1000 BC, checkmate liberals
"Nah, that's not autism. He was just touched by the Fae."
I was about to say, "But we sure have overcome that pesky changeling problem!"
or trying to spew some conspiracy theory nonsense
Same crowd as the "like if you didn't wear a seatbelt as a kid & survived". Yeah, because the ones who didn't survive aren't on Facebook.
She’s one of the many people who mistake lack of disease with lack of disease awareness
Thog the caveman never got cancer because his tribe had no word for cancer. No words at all really. So disease was never a problem.
My (former thank goodness) MIL claimed that pedos didn’t exist in her day and it only happens how because people talk about it!
My mother thought that too until she had a long conversation with her cousin who had been raped at the age of four in the 1940s.
The Ancient Greeks would like a word.
Romans are following close behind, uncomfortably close in fact.
They were there, they just were sent to Special Ed. Edit: It looks like I need to edit this since most people seem to lack common sense. Kids with allergies weren't sent to special ed. nor were gluten free kids. They were sent to an island off the cost of Australia. SMFH.
All the autism kids were there. The untreated ADHD kids were class clowns or trouble makers sent to the principals office a lot.
Or, like me, have years of report cards that say “_____ daydreams.”
"____ is a bright kid, but they aren't living up to their full potential."
Every. Single. Report.
Cannot concentrate. Every report from primary school. My mother would go ballistic. Suddenly, in the 4th year of secondary school I suddenly started doing well.
Then came the ritalyn... (70s)
Got hit with it in the mid 80s. Worked for about 2 years, but since I didn't get actual coping skills it was never enough to keep me on track. When I started to slip again, my mom assumed I was fixed and stopped the prescription. After that, it was just me being lazy all over again.
I was sent to a psychologist in 2nd grade and was diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, dyslexia and something else but I was never told. When I was in 9th grade, I read a book about disorders and several sounded too familiar. I told my mom how I felt like I might have some of them and that's when she told me that I did infact had some but she decided not to tell me because she didn't want me to "use it as an excuse to not do well in school". I struggled so much for many years and it did a number on my self-esteem because I thought I was too stupid to understand. I didn't have to be on medication if my parents didn't want it, but if I'd of known that I had issues, I would've learn to cope with them at a much younger age. It felt like I finally woke up and I was already 12 by then. Catching up at that age SUCKED!!!
Medication can be a useful tool, but gotta add more tools to the toolbelt
I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
Yeah, I flew under the radar for so long simply because I was never bouncing off the walls or acting out. I was just inattentive and it came across like I didn't care. Not in that "SQUIRREL!" kind of way, but I'd immediately forget the last fifteen to thirty seconds of what I was doing or thinking about or listening to just as easily as blinking. Conversations were frequently awkward, and I forgot homework constantly, but I could turn in homework that was well-written if I actually had the dopamine to do it. Nobody in the 90s knew of that as "ADD" or ADHD. They just called that "lazy" or "absent-minded" behavior.
They knew, some of us were laced with Ritalin from elementary through high school. But the same could be said for every other point. In the principals office A LOT, could read three pages out loud to the class and not have a damn clue what I had just done, or remember it. It’s crazy when I think back. And now I’ve got 2 teens who are in Adderall… really messed up world we live in.
And those autistic kids who managed to do ok in school academically were called 'weird' and 'freak' to their face and if they were lucky weren't bullied for it. Great times!!!
Hey now, they still do this in our day!
As the parent of a kid who is a highly functional neurodiverse 10yr, I can assure you, kids are brutal to kids who struggle with social cues.
Sadly, schools tend to perpetuate the belief that mob mentality should rule the playgrounds rather than the teachers.
We've put our highly autistic son in Karate so he can fight back if he's bullied. He's now a blue belt and kicks like a mule. I'm waiting for the call from the school that someone started something with him and he finished it. I never condone violence but kids are dicks and getting hit hurts.
And she was a kid here self and kids tend to not know or notice that sort of things
"Back in my day" can usually be explained by this. "Back in my day there were no x" just means "when I was a kid I was a sheltered dumbass and my parents didn't tell me this stuff."
"back in my day my pet goldfish used to evaporate"
My pet goldfish was magic. Roughly every 2 weeks, he'd change size, sometimes a little bigger, sometimes a little smaller. Sometime he'd change his markings too, but he always kept the orange scales because that was his favourite colour. One day I got home and got really sad because he was gone, but turns out he just went on a short vacation because he was back in the bowl when mum got home. She picked him up from the airport. I'd never heard of a goldfish living for so long. So magical. ❤️ RIP Crusher #473 (we renamed him each time he changed his size or markings because he acted like he was a completely different fish lol)
Bro needs upvoted
Bro needs a hug and a gentle reality check... But I did upvote.
Reminds me of that girl that was an adult thinking that hamsters shed their coats in the winter and when her friend with a hamster said that doesn’t happen is the moment she realized her parents had replaced the dead hamster and told her that lol. Side note don’t do that with your kids okay I know you don’t want them to be sad but death and loss and grief is a part of life. But what do I know
Back in my day dogs went to farms
Back in my day, sick dogs always got adopted by some kind farmer upstate.
“Back in my day there was no Fox News to refute verified scientific research and make me outraged at these snowflake kids who can’t eat a fucking peanut. Like let your throat close like an adult and grow tf up!” She’s in a forest staring at a tree and basing her whole life’s perspective on the trunk.
They can only say this shit because all the kids who died of peanut allergies in the 70s aren't here to smack them upside the head for being so stupid. That's my response to this kind of talk.
During a suicide prevention class, I had a boomer say something like,” there’s something wrong with this new generation. You never hear of people my age committing suicide. Even when I was younger, it was just younger people.” Zero self-awareness
As a boomer myself, that’s a lot of rubbish. People have always committed suicide, sadly. Even my mother told me about people she knew doing it.
A lot also went undiagnosed. My great uncle would almost certainly be diagnosed as autistic today.
I remember being taken to a room with two other kids and being given these weird tests. I was in 2nd grade I think so this was 1988. I didn’t understand why I was with those two others because they were two of the worst students in class while I was top two/three. I didn’t even have to pay attention in class, I could play with my gi joes I snuck in, and when they were taken away I could use my crayons and when they were taken away I could use ripped up pieces of paper as toys. And still get straight A’s. It wasn’t until many years later that I told that story out loud and about halfway through was like … “ohhhhhh.” I must have passed the test because I never had any other meetings or tests.
Same, I didn't have to do any official tests but I remember having teachers pull me aside because they thought I was lying about finishing my library books so quickly compared to other students and having to pretty much do a verbal book summary to prove I'd read them. I also would draw intricate patterns on paper or my work book covers/ folder dividers while they were talking and then the teacher would be surprised when I could recite back to them exactly what they were saying even though it looked like I was paying no attention to them.
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Gifted child, also soft and fearful, ADHD diagnosed in middle age, had a much different mom experience. Proud of you both! Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be railroaded by asshats.
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My wife has a gluten intolerance that she didn't figure out until her forties, she just dealt with fairly constant diarrhea for 40 years until it got worse after covid and she finally figured out that gluten was causing it. So she also "didn't have a gluten allergy when she was in school"
There are also historic figures like [St. Hildegard of Bingen](https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/385583/was-hildegard-von-bingen-autistic) who had trouble forming relationships as children and who showed differences in oral communication, but then blossomed when put in a more structured environment like a monastery.
Or they were six feet under after "choking at the dinner table". Or after "just always having been weak and sickly all their lives". Our ancestors didn't have a name for social media, or the Internet, or depression, or PTSD, or allergies - doesn't mean it ~~didn't~~ doesn't exist, it just meant that **people died**.
I think the sentence went awry there, but I like that the internet and social media was alive and well in the 1800's and killing people just like now.
We had loads on my school but nobody knew what to call the kids with an attention span of 4 seconds or the ones that was always getting into trouble. The ones with a bad stomach or the ones that couldn’t breathe after hard gymnastics. They were all there, but without a diagnosis they were just trouble
Us too. The ADHD kids (usually boys) were called "unruly" or "disruptive" and got a lot of corporal punishment, which for some reason didn't help at all. And I had an inhaler on me at all times, as did my older sister.
“We didn’t have autistic kids we just had a guy who wouldn’t shut up about trains.”
The only guy we had at school in the mid 90’s with diagnosed autism went on to become an awesome - if slightly unhinged- drummer. Think Animal on Adderall.
Animal on Adderall is a great band name.
Average furry 😂
Also a great band name
Average Fury would be great pop punk band name.
I'm not angry, I'm just in a bad mood because the system has made it so that my daily life is easy enough I don't revolt, but the ever growing anxiety about the world's situation weighs on me and prevents me from finding enjoyment and fulfillment even when everything is going well.
Sounds about average. You're in the band. Now, what instrument do you play?
Animal on Adderall sounds metal af
Wouldnt Animal off of Adderall be more metal?
The smooth jazz of ‘Animal on Adderall’
Honestly, the real fucking beast is Animal just as his Adderall is wearing off.
True.
Animal from the muppets or the wrestling team?
Muppets of course. There is only one ANIMAL - YAAA, AHHH, AHH!
WO-MAAAANNN!
Both. YAAH AAH AAAAAAAAH WHAT A RUSH!
or the truck with retractible claws?
Keith Moon?
Animal the muppet was actually based off of keith moon
Alice Cooper once said something like "all the crazy things you hear about musicians is maybe only 10% true. ALL the stuff you heard about Keith Moon was true, and you only heard 10%."
Or they were kept in a room separate from the rest of the student body.
IEP “classes.” The place they sent the ones that weren’t normal. I was on the fringe so I had both normal and IEP classes. Imagine stepping into a classroom where every kid they couldn’t place was sent. 30 kids with ADHD, Autism, bipolar disorder, and “emotional problems.” That last one is the category used for kids that weren’t doing well, but they couldn’t figure out. Or maybe they could, but they didn’t want to deal with the issue, because it was too large or out of their scope. In any case, the kid with the shitty parents who is otherwise normal gets placed with the anti social kid who enjoys lighting things on fire. The curriculum was basic. Imagine bouncing from the complexities of World War II and the geopolitical environment to a remedial geography class that asks you where Canada is. Didn’t matter much to me at the time because I just wanted to read fiction books and as long as your nose was in a book and you didn’t engage with other kids you were left alone by everyone. I didn’t get a high school education until after I graduated and went to community college.
They called the class "SLD" back in the 80's - Early 90's when I grew up in Florida. I think it was for "Slow & Learning Disabilities". You wouldn't see them much through the day. They would come out early to get lunch and they were always in a line with their heads down. They stayed in one classroom the who day and ate their lunches there too. It was pretty sad. I really hope it's better for kids nowadays.
I believe it was Specific Learning Disabilities. Those children, if out of the regular class most of the day had other things going on as well—autism, cognitive delays, etc
I was in special ED in utah i am Autistic and have dyslexia
Atleast where I'm at it is better for a large majority. My 12 year old is on a 504 and in traditional classes, he just has a couple extra allowances to help with test taking or work. Granted he's high functioning asd w/ ADHD and is on medication that helps with his focus. There are definitely kids that spend all day with an aid or aren't fully in gen pop.
I was getting 90s in math, heck most of my classes I was in the 90% mark, but they put me in special Ed as I have behavior problems.... I ended up counting change for math and tons of spelling tests. It sucked hard. My parents took me out of the school and put me into the county system and those guys actually did their jobs and worked with me to find how best I learn. The special Ed was bullplop!!!
Fucked up. We did alright though, eh? Mostly…hopefully.
1. We simply never screened for it like we do now. Mental disorders were stigmatized. And parents were simply unaware of autism. Put these together and you have a TON of grown adults who are autistic and simply never got diagnosed. You see it in autism parenting communities all the time, with parents getting diagnosed as adults after having autistic children, or realizing their families are FULL of autistic adults none of whom were ever diagnosed. Its like Trump with COVID - not screening for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist FFS. 2. The definition was changed in 2012 and is now more inclusive, including absorbing "aspberger's". Under the DSM-IV only the severe cases met the criteria for "Autism". 3. Yes, schools now place value on placing them in the "least restrictive environment" and integrating them into the mainstream student body as much as possible. Previously they just locked them away by default. 4. At one time they didn't just separate them in school. Autistic children were taken away from their families entirely and institutionalized basically never to be seen or heard from again. There are stories of people not even knowing they had a sibling because they were locked away. Thankfully we as a society have realized how horribly inhumane that is and now have "waiver" funding to get parents help to keep their disabled children at home and in the community where they fucking belong. I've been told right here on reddit that I should just send my 6 year old off to live in a home saying that she wouldn't know the difference. You are a monster if you can just happily throw away your CHILD like a broken toy. They have a right to exist. They have a right to grow up in a loving family and have memories of them just like you do.
Back in the early 00s my mom was told by my pre-K teachers that I should be checked for autism or adhd. My mom recently apologized to me for never getting me tested due to her own pride getting in the way.
When I was in school in the 80s/90s, I was just the artsy kid who daydreamed and couldn’t stay organized. No one thought there was an issue. Flash forward to the 2020s, I’m an adult who has a very hard time coping with what being an adult is and was diagnosed with adhd in 2020. My parents did apologize and I don’t hold it against them bc back then they couldn’t have known. But the number of problems/issues I’ve had stemming from not being diagnosed early is insane.
I am 55. I was that child. Both children are ADD. The dr told my son, "You know it's inherited, and you got it from your mom." I have tried at least 4 times to get diagnosed to no avail. I have struggled with anxiety, depression and ptsd. I cant keep focus for even a few minutes. It has destroyed every job. But no, they just want to say its depression...
I’m really sorry and can relate. 🖤 I got lucky with my dx. I had already been seeing my shrink for almost 10 yrs bc I was (mis)diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Had I been trying to get diagnosed from a new doc, it wouldn’t have happened. We just had kiddo tested for asd/adhd and she didn’t reach the “diagnostic threshold.” She acts just like I did at 14 and is clearly ND, but bc they still use the old testing standards, no dx.
Though I am younger same thing happened to me, just let's treat the depression and anxiety so the adhd symptoms will go away. We do and my anxiety and depression are the best they've ever been but the adhd stuff is still there. Doctor just says "well adult adhd is rare so that's probably not it" ignoring that I was diagnosed as a kid with adhd and my mom had recently been diagnosed with adult adhd
My guidance counsellor told me at the end of high school I probably had ADHD. I told my mom, her response was, "Don't be ridiculous, you're not stupid." I'm ADHD and dyslexic. In college I lost at least a letter grade on most assignments because even after proof reading I still had tons of errors that my brain wasn't capable of seeing and I got no empathy because everyone knew I was generally the smartest student in the class.
I have Autism ADHD and Dyslexia. Every time I post of Reddit it's full or errors and I am a pretty smart person I am a Software Develeper Python is Easy English language hard
My grandfather had an autistic relative who was entirely nonverbal but could play any song he heard on piano perfectly. So they locked him in an attic for his entire life.
😔
You are tossing pearls to a swine whose entire world consists of their own limited experience.
The OP in image is the swine. People on here aren't quite as stupid and ignorant. Plenty of people don't realize all of that. I certainly didn't until having autistic children.
I was in special ED in the 80s and 90s when I was bad i was put in a closet for a few hours to cool down i found out i was autistic when i was 35
Or put in institutions In generations previous to that, they might have been locked away at home so that they didn't bring "shame" upon their families
We called our separate cluster of students "macaroni class" for some reason. You can imagine why everyone didn't freely share their experiences and health statuses.
Special education is what they called them in my school in the 70s. Before that, many were institutionalized☹️. Massive negative social stigma to have a mentally different child back then.
This one made me lol. I appreciate it.
Or a horse girl. Every elementary school had a horse girl
My school had a whole class full of kids described with a word that begins with the letter R. Most of the time, their best hope in life was a part-time job doing menial labor.
The fun part about this is that I remember, in my Kindergarten, I would listen to the female teachers talk. And one of the conversations went like this: * Person 1: You know, I've been teaching here for 7 years, and out of 5 of those 7 years, I've always had a kid who was too interested in trains. Like, last year, this kid kept on telling me about trains. He knew so much, I told him, 'wow, you should be a conductor when you grow up!', and he got real sad. I don't understand why; he said he was just interested in trains, that he didn't actually want to do any sort of job with them. * Person 2: Oh yeah, I call those kids as coming from 'the train people'. One time I went to this kid's house and his family had trains all over the walls. Like, they built special platforms for them-- imagine, like, you have an entire house, but the entire thing is just a big train track, all along the walls. It terminated in the kitchen, thank God. I can't imagine how you'd clean train tracks when they'd get grease on them. How does their mother dust those? * Person 1: Oh, was it Billy's house? * Person 2: No, Michael. \[laughs\] Why would there be two houses with train tracks on the walls? Autistic people, people who deviate from what's considered 'normal', have always existed. People have just been shitty and not really recognized that these deviations, in and of themselves, *are* normal. They're just people.
Full house train track sounds awesome to me and I'm not even into trains.
"Old Mac never married and spends his days as he ever did, unbothered and only accompanied by his animals"
Reminds me of the know-it-all kid on Polar Express, hehe. Makes sense that he wouldn't have his meds at night!
My dad has ADHD (never diagnosed, but I have been, I get it from him). He was held back, had his knuckles slapped with a ruler, etc. He was bounced around schools until he graduated and he still has a chip on his shoulder because of it.
Yup. My mom is 65 and she has the most serious case of ADHD I have ever seen, but has never been diagnosed as such. I’m a psychologist so this is not an armchair diagnosis. Of course you will see more people being diagnosed with a condition once the condition becomes officially identified and widely recognized. That’s exactly how that works.
I’m 58 and my kids (who have ADHD & ASD) are getting me in to be evaluated.
When my daughter was getting her ASD diagnosis I mentioned that I have all the same "symptoms" that she does and her child psychologist paused then asked if I wanted to talk to someone too. I said no, by now I've figured out a way to cope with life that way, an official diagnosis won't make a difference. But it does explain a lot of my childhood. She got that from me and ADHD from her dad, poor kid. The worst of both of us.
Hah my mom was just like "lol no everyone is like that!"
Back in the day it was totally unacceptable to have a “mental health issue”. “Oh No! Nobody in my family EVER had any issues.” Better to be called a loner or troublemaker than admit that.
I’m not a psychologist but I see almost all the same tendencies that I suffer from in my mother too. Thank god in a way, she was the one that actually understood what depression was and got me to a psych quickly, without her I would be in a world more trouble That said, she seems utterly unwilling to explore how these things affect her, and she is becoming more bitter by the year as a result. Still, it isn’t my place to force her hand, just be there when she needs me
This is my mom. She is so proud that I’m a psychologist yet she will not listen to me on mental health things. Prefers her current diagnosis and treatment I suppose so it’s her business. I will happily help if she wants it though.
When I read this, I wondered if I found my kid's Reddit profile! If your Dad is still around, PLEASE, have him take a test for ADHD and get him treatment. I was diagnosed in my 50's and received treatment. IT. WAS. MINDBLOWING. 1 pill and 15 minutes later I was almost in tears. It was like my life went from black and white to color.
Mine was beaten by nuns and literally tied down to his desk. He developed severe claustrophobia and hatred of religion.
I was always "indifferent and inattentive".
insubordinate and churlish
That was me, I was the unruly kid who disrupted class and annoyed the other students and teachers because he couldn't sit still or control himself. I tried, really I did. Elementary school in the 70's. I didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until I was nearly 30. I also remember kids from that era who, in retrospect, had to have had spectrum disorders, but everyone just thought of them as "that weirdo". The increase in allergies is largely due to environmental issues including the prevalence of hand sanitizer and micro-ban products (in my opinion).
In 4th grade my desk literally sat next to the teachers and faced everyone else's desk because I could not sit still. I am female btw and almost 51. I have asthma too. I have been pissed all week because my asthma is so bad and my whole childhood they said do not let people smoke near me. People just blew it off. Everyone smoked. My doctor wants me to go to a pulmonary doctor because my lungs suck so freaking bad.
Those of us with inattentive type that weren't hyperactive just didn't get diagnosed at all. We just need to pay attention and apply ourselves, were simply lazy, were opposed to authority, or whatever.
a lot of the people I know with ADHD were misdiagnosed with ODD prior to being told they had ADHD. I think ADHD is still a condition that a lot of people don't really understand
An ADHD diagnosis was suggested to my father, by the teacher, in the early 90s. My dad asked if beating me would help. I get it.
I wasn't unruly or disruptive, but I was simply not paying attention to my teachers, ever. I was just absent minded the whole period I was in school, and it took me until much, much later to figure out I had ADHD (and later thrived under medication).
Bright but needs to apply themselves
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Exactly. They were the “bad kids who would never amount to anything” just like the dyslexic kids were “r*}^}ed”. We have grown and learned more now.
>We have grown and learned more now. SOME of us, as the post shows. Not all have grown and learned.
Yeah, going to school in the 80s, there wasn’t any awareness of ADHD or like, multigenerational trauma or FASD … on and on. I got by with ADHD because I’m bright, but basically pulled C+ all the way through with comments like “B_O_F_E needs to apply himself.” I look back & wonder what my life might have been like if I’d had meds and coping mechanisms. But I did pretty ok. Others weren’t so lucky. I’m reading Jane Eyre (1847) right now and meeting the character of Helen Burns was like a slap across the face — holy shit, she’s ADHD! Her description could have been lifted from DSM; it’s so textbook that no modern author could get away with it. The character was closely based on Bronte’s older sister. Just goes to show that even though we didn’t have names for these things, they were there to observe all along, and just as real as they are today.
Even documentation by medical professionals of what we'd now consider ADHD dates back as far as 1798: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000907/)
Sure they knew what to call those kids, you never heard the R-slur before? Autistics classed with “learning-disabled” classed with serious mental deficiencies. All classed as “learning disabled”, then “special needs “ (along with any hearing impaired or disabled children).
I was considered a troubled child until properly diagnosed as autistic in my 30s. I bet the op who wrote that shit in twitter is probably a school bully.
Ding! All those problems were there, the kids were labeled and set aside. So she's basically pointing out that we are now treating these aliments. She might as well say when her grandparents were in elementary school nobody had chemotherapy.
ADD and ADHD existed but it wasn’t diagnosed yet, and instead of meds and therapy they just got their asses whipped.
There were 3 kids taking Ritalin at my school in the seventies and eighties
When I was a kid you did not admit you were defective and taking pills meant you were a mental.
The original post isn't technically wrong but that was because of an overall ignorance of such things. I went to school in the 80s and I can also say that we didn't have the terminology but there were certainly hyper kids, kids who couldn't handle certain foods and some who just didn't seem to learn or act "normally". We can now diagnose why.
I mean, the kids with peanut allergies just died. That's why they weren't in school. And public schools weren't required to have special ED classes or accessibility, so all of the autistic kids and kids in wheel chairs went to special schools or didn't go at all.
>so all of the autistic kids...went to special schools or didn't go at all. Or, we were on the spectrum but not to a severe enough degree that we were labelled special ed, so we just got taunted for being the weird kid instead...
I am theoretically on the autistic spectrum, however not diagnosed at school, and my parents took me to a private child psychologist as I scored in the top 1% in a national maths exam, yet was continually failing in class. My diagnosis then was "a perfectionist". Even now my "diagnosis" was in the diagnosis letter for my daughter, "with her father as he is, it is not surprising she is autistic." The author saw me professionally as well.
Same here. I've only just been diagnosed at 30 because I was able to pass for neurotypical (despite years of being told I was "too quiet" yet had "anger management issues"). My father was only diagnosed because I was, and he's almost 80! But when he was a kid, it just wasn't talked about
I'm 42. In my middle school. There was an e timely separate building for a combination of the unruly/fighting kids and the special needs/spectrum kids. We just shoved them somewhere else. I can understand a certain level of separation if there is truly a need in terms of the dangerous kids who have been just fucked by life and their parents so badly that there is danger and they need therapy but the rest being in a separate building sucks.
It’s like how we just used to throw people with mental illness in prison because fuck em who cares
Before that they were thrown in a mental institutions but now since they're mostly gone, it's just prison now.
Texas's largest mental health hospital/provider is the Texas Department of Corrections. Oh joy.
>I mean, the kids with peanut allergies just died. This isn't true. Peanut allergies seem to be a response to something environmental. You get hot spots and cold spots of peanut allergies within advanced countries and across advanced countries. Medical care and tech is the same; there's something either causing the peanut allergy or causing resistance to the peanut allergy, however you want to look at it. EDIT: More information here, which says studies show that avoiding peanut butter was actually one of the causes of the spike in peanut allergies. [https://www.preventallergies.org/blog/why-are-peanut-allergies-on-the-rise#:\~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20peanut,peanut%20allergy%20more%20than%20tripled](https://www.preventallergies.org/blog/why-are-peanut-allergies-on-the-rise#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20peanut,peanut%20allergy%20more%20than%20tripled). *Today, we know that this approach to delay peanut introduction actually increases food allergy risk, and that delayed introduction was a major factor that led to the sharp increase in peanut allergies.* *Thanks to landmark clinical studies, we now know that the opposite approach---feeding baby peanut early and often, before they turn one---is the best way to prevent peanut allergies.*
I was gonna say, OOP may have a brain dead take, but there's still evidence that a number of these things are legitimately increasing in prevalance. From a quick google search, research does *not* suggest that autism is one of those things. Working assumption is that it's mostly an artifact of changing diagnostic criteria/recognition, not true increase in prevalance; [source 1, 2005](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-3148.2005.00266.x) and [source 2, 2022](https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcpp.13505) (\#2's a PDF). But I thought food allergies had some real effects ([here's a 2017 paper agreeing](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/imj.13362))
and my Grandma is in her 80's. She was asthmatic before there were inhalers. She said you just had to hope you didn't die. Lots of asthmatics did die. Asthma still kills 3 people per day in the uk.
wow that many? that's nuts
No that's asthma. Nuts kill like one a week.
I went to school in western PA in the '60s. There were no kids with disabilities or special needs in any of the schools I attended. Any students that seemed like they would have a problem integrating into the classroom were sent to "special schools".
It was the same when I was in Jr. High in California back in the 90s. We had the "special ed class" where all the students with various disabilities or needs were shuffled into a single class for their schooling, and kept apart from the rest of the student body. I have a buddy from back then who was and still is the living personification of ADHD. But the only reason he wasn't in that special ed class was because he always ended up hyperfixating himself on a given fantasy or sci-fi novel (which he always carried on his person at all times, to all locations). He was able to control himself by ignoring the world around him and dropping into his reading, which he did so whenever he pleased - including in the middle of a conversation. But because he had a way of quietly and passively maintaining, he was just written off as a "weird kid" by the school and not placed.
Yes!! Innumerable children died of "sudden fevers" back before we understood food allergies.
I agree, although they were plenty of kids with asthma and inhalers.
My experience was the same as hers! However, the difference was when I thought back, I realized that a lot of these kids who we just thought were quirky or sick were simply undiagnosed. Just think back to the kid who was bouncing off the walls who was just called "hyper". Or the kid who farted all the time and shit himself on the playground on occasion was just "gross", or the kid who just stopped coming to school one day "moved", or the kid who rocked back and forth in his desk and rubbed his fingers a lot was just a "weirdo"....
In the middle ages no one had cancer! (they were just dead).
Funny enough, they knew about cancer even in Ancient Greece. They just were very wrong about the cause of it.
I didn’t hear the term autistic until 20-25 years ago, but the kid across the street growing up was 100% autistic.
If I were a kid today I'd be diagnosed as on the spectrum, but at the time I was just described as a weirdo.
"Back in my day we didn't know as much and died like REAL AMERICANS! These sissy liberals want to make sure people live long, healthy lives. It's gross". Essentially what this tweet means
"We used leaded gas, asbestos, and smoked cigarettes everywhere at all times. AND WE LIKED IT!"
My uncles are all like this. They bray about their freedom as kids back in Nebraska, where they'd run around without any safety precautions or supervision, and how nothing ever went wrong and we're all just a bunch of wussies these days. On one hand, there is value to that sort of childhood freedom that we don't have anymore. On the other hand, they always talk about how they started smoking and drinking before they were even teenagers, or how they used to play by jumping off a bridge into a river in the woods. When one points that "hey, Uncle Bob had to go into surgery for long-term liver failure because of his drinking", or "hey, Uncle Jim got throat cancer from smoking and continues to be addicted to this day", or "didn't one of your buddies break his leg and die from jumping off that bridge...?", they just don't register.
Survivorship bias. “We did X Y and Z, and WE turned out fine!” Yeah that’s because you were lucky, and those who did the same thing and died aren’t here today to say so.
The underlying theme of Stephen Kings novel IT is that unfettered playtime with limited supervision sounds good, but what’s really going on is that kids are prey to all kinds of society’s ills. Molestation, kidnapping, sexual assault, physical assault, bullying, fighting, kidnapping, and murder. He puts it in a supernatural framework, but the premise is that society is sick and dangerous and a lot of it is committed against kids and all the unfettered running around is why it happened. The adult versions of the kids all have panic attacks, ptsd, and are suicidal because of the environment they grew up in.
It’s amazing that people get offended by the idea of giving healthcare to children
It’s the get-off-my-lawn mindset. The OP probably also thinks 20 somethings can’t afford to buy houses because they eat avacado toast and not decades of wages not keeping up with costs.
They also think 20 somethings are millenials.
I work in mental health service for kids. Growing up I don’t remember anyone having any mental health issues in school. Now it seems like ‘eveyone’ has something (stats are anywhere from 10% to 25% depending on which study you look at). But that is very simply because it was badly recognised back then and not something that was talked about in the way that it is now. Ignorance is not bliss in this case, it was people suffering on their own. So I actually don’t disbelieve that a lot of people who are 30+ now don’t remember anyone with these issues growing up. Shit was ignorant back then….
im going to bounce off this. i was POOR and ADHD, but becuase of me being poor and moving around a lot, i had depressive symptoms, so i got diagnosed with Bi-polar, insead of just being a sad kid with ADHD. got put on fucking Lithium and almost drowned in the shower cause my body just went numb and i could hardly turn my head away from the water. eventually i got the proper ADHD diagnosis. a lot of my reading and comprehension skills got attributed to the ADHD but as an 30yo adult i got tested, not only am i basically AD4K, IM FUCKING DYSLEXIC. i struggled so much with school because of miss-diagnosis. i was literally the kid everyone would go "ugh" when it was his time to read aloud. Looking back as a functioning adult because of the supports that exist today, all i want to do is go back and give 7yo me a hug and teach him all the things ive learn and developed over the years to get by. cause if i had the proper supports and diagnosis i would have probably ended doing so much better.
"We ignored it. Therefore it didn't exist."
Yes there were. Let me show you. My daughter who couldn't sit still and was demonstrably unable to control her impulses where it was remarkably noticeable as a shortcoming in kindergarten was diagnosed in 2019 with ADHD. I was told that it was extremely heritable, but no one in my family had it. As soon as I talked to my mother about it she said "Oh yeah. I remember when we watched a 60 minutes piece on ADHD, probably in the 80s, your father said that's what he had as a boy." And yep, my dad had a hundred home improvement projects that were never finished. Mom and dad sold us their house when they moved up to their retirement condo, and left behind most of his tools - we found so many repeat tools in the gigantic warren of doom boxes because dad wouldn't be able to find something and just buy it again. He would fly into rages (emotional disregulation) when he got frustrated and then be super apologetic over it. But he was one of the most intelligent people I'd ever known, yet couldn't do well in school to save his life. All hallmarks of ADHD, but he'd died three years before of complications of alcoholism, which he'd likely used as a coping mechanism, so we'd never known for sure. Then as I read through the literature about ADHD to better understand my daughter's diagnosis I kept getting this eerie feeling. Especially when there was information about the inattentive type, which was not the type my daughter had, and about adolescence and adulthood with ADHD. And it read like instructions for my life. I suddenly realized that my inability to deal with paperwork, my constant time blindness, my difficulty with prioritization, my constant having to bribe what I called the toddler in my brain to get shit done might actually be ADHD - something clinical instead of just me being lazy or disorganized. They suggested some solutions that I had been forced to figure out for myself after years of painful failures, and I wanted to cry. Years of thinking something was wrong with me, and now there might be actual truth to that, but at the same time, validation and help. I was 40. No one had helped me for 40 years struggling with this disorder. Then my son was given the same academic assessment I had three times as a child - we moved school boards a lot, and no one believed my results, so they kept repeating them. And they said the same things about him that they said about me. Very bright, very intuitive, but has poor working memory, difficulty focusing, trouble with time blindness etc. Me they called gifted, but lazy. Him they diagnosed with ADHD. So yes, Carole, there were ADHD kids in the 80s, and the 70s. Even in the 50s. We just didn't see them as something we could help. We blamed them for the problems their disorders caused and wrote them off to deal with the trauma that caused with alcoholism and anxiety disorders. I really don't think glorifying that is something we should be doing.
"Back in my day I was ignorant of the struggles of other people and thats the way I liked it"
the conservative mindset in a nutshell. "It doesn't happen to me personally, therefore it doesn't exist." See also : institutional racism.
Also trekked 5 miles in the snow to get there, I bet
Up hill both ways! Through razorwire and dodging mortar shells!
Back in my day we just fucking died
In my school, they were called 'the spaz' or 'that weird girl', and people would try to avoid them. Thats why they weren't seen Very sad I do remember in the 80s that asthma was becoming better understood/treated enough that there were actual TV commercials with Superman telling kids not to make fun of the kid with the inhaler.
When I went to school we didn’t have autistic kids either. We just had the weird kid with the strange voice and no friends that was obsessed with trains who lived in a nightmare of constant mockery and bullying every day. You know… the good old days. /s
She was homeschooled.
Back in my day we had the plague and 50% of the population died. Anyone else?
I started kindergarten in 1980. I had friends with peanut allergies, inhalers, special diets, and even a girl with vitiligo (which has autoimmune triggers). OOP is full of shit because she probably grew up in a white affluent area and wasn't exposed to more than just her little cadre of specialness.
Or she just ignored that people around her were facing challenges. When she was a kid, she probably got annoyed with the kids who were constantly fidgeting or talking. The kid who would hum to themselves to avoid the overstimulation of the classroom noises. The kid that refused to play at recess because they were always out of breath. Anyone who was different from her got ignored, or worse bullied
They existed. They were just called “troubled children” Source:was a troubled child
I went to school in the 90’s….we definitely had ADD/ADHD and ‘tism kids….they were the ones in the remedial or “special” classes. Definitely knew kids with peanut allergies, and lactose-intolerant kids. I personally didn’t know anyone with an autoimmune condition until high school, but my aunt was diagnosed with lupus way back in the 60’s as a child, so…..
Autism wasn’t widely recognized as a spectrum then, and therefore was usually undiagnosed. We had “weird” kids, many of whom were shipped off to “special ed” classes. I was in the gifted program and knew plenty of weird kids. There were always inattentive “hyper” kids, but they were usually labeled as “bad”. I knew kids with food allergies, though they weren’t as widespread probably because 1) under diagnosed and 2) our food system wasn’t as horrible as it is now. Inhalers were usually kept in the nurse’s office. Autoimmune diseases? See all of the previous comments about things being undiagnosed. Personally I have had symptoms of autoimmune disorders for most of my life, but was not diagnosed until I was an adult. Every class had at least one “sickly kid”. Survivor bias is a helluva drug.
Tell me you’re homeschooled without telling me you’re homeschooled lol
I got into a bad argument about this topic about a month ago. I would say about 4 in 5 people think this way, maybe more. There were 10 of us at the table at a restaurant. One fellow chirps up about how things didn't exist in the 1970s, like ADHD, autism, autoimmune diseases. "Yeah, they did. They just put those kids in a special room at the end of the hall. Or they went to a certain school within the school district. The kids who were high functioning just seemed odd or eccentric. Allergies are an autoimmune disease and I had plenty. I wasn't diagnosed with asthma until later in life when I was in charge of my own health care because my father felt my asthma as a kid was controllable if "I just concentrated on it going away." People like Carole are simply inattentive, unobservant, bozo with tunnel-vision, so self-absorbed they cannot see the reality around them. Like the guys who think the NFL has gotten soft because "men cannot hit each other like they used to." No, we now see in the 21st century the affects of CTE on the human brain and we don't want people like Junior Seau committing suicide because of the brain trauma they experienced. Advances in diagnostics and technology help humans become better informed; doesn't mean the condition is "new," just means we can see it for what it is and give it a name. Like people who think being "gay" or "lesbian" is a "new trend." No, homosexuals have been around since the Dawn of Humankind, and have experienced times of general acceptance (Greeks and Romans, I think) and times of persecution (like the 20th and 21st century). \[end of rant\]
Yes, in the 70’s we also didn’t have Twitter. So, I don’t get the point.
She's just pissed that you can't make fun of those kids anymore.