What’s your take? I’m not sure if I know of an historic case of it like IDK maybe 200 or 150 years ago but nowadays I have several cases near of autistic people, so what do you think is old or new?
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(Autists perspective)
It’s not new at all, the term has been around decades and itself has been around literally forever. It’s a different brain development. There are many historical persons which are thought or know to have been autists (e. G. Einstein, Lewis Carroll, Dan Akroyd to just name a few over a longer timespan.)
It’s also not having autism (as an optional trait) but rather being Autist (as a defining foundation).
Just like, say, mutations that also always happened to certain degrees.
Feel free to ask. Also, of course, that is my personal opinion where it is not scientifically proven.
We used to mark all sorts of neurodivergent people as “crazy” or “witches”. But I’d also be interested in a historical source if someone has one.
The word is fairly new. But so is a shitton of other medical diagnosis like “cardiomyopathy”, “congenital heart disease”, " carditis", “aortic aneurysm”, “peripheral artery disease”, and on and on
I feel like suddenly all kids are autistic nowadays, I’ve talked about it with my parents they are 70ish and teachers and they both say in the years they worked there weren’t as many kids with some condition. I feel like maybe the human DNA has degraded too much in 2 or 3 generations.
Roughly 95% of all new autism cases in the last 10 years can be accounted for in the broader definition of what autism is.
Plus the idea that DNA has “degraded” and that’s what causes autism is, frankly, so stupid as to be hilarious.
Seems like the consensus taking shape in these comments, the way I understand it anyway, is that the only new thing is pathologising neurodivergence and beginning to actually accept such people into society. Treating it as something new or out of control is merely a reaction to new norms.
A lot of kids are not neurodivergent, still. But there are enough that school budgets for special needs in many or most places are very badly under-provisioned. I worry that if schools are not going to get massively higher funding, they will be faced with either under-serving neurodivergent kids like they used to, or fundamentally rethinking some things.
Scientific consensus is that we now recognise and diagnose autism better than ever. Previously children that struggled in school would be labelled as troubled or slow or any number of other things. The thing about autism is that like many other things it is a spectrum, and thus previously many people with mild autism would have just cruised through and been thought of as odd or antisocial. Often when really questioned, people like your parents can think of a few people like this from their school days that might now fit the definition of autism spectrum disorder.
Also, it’s worth noting that human DNA does not and cannot degrade in any manner you suggest and that kind of reasoning has unscientific and innapropriate connotations that might associate you with very disagreeable groups.
I feel like maybe the human DNA has degraded too much in 2 or 3 generations.
Ancient Greeks notwithstanding, being non-heterosexual was considered a disease to be eliminated or cured until people finally accepted that it was a natural part of being an animal. Would you say being gay is a consequence of flawed genetics, or would you like to try phrasing that remark a bit differently?
I dont believe teachers or parents to be qualified for such diagnosis. It could be that the kids are angry, annoyed, or annoying, and people think it’s autism because they saw one once in a movie. Remember that adults are not very smart in general.
Another theory could be that those 70 years old people are boomers that have been spanked a lot and are more quiet compared to kids whose parents let them do anything (too much freedom and not enough education).
Anyway, I wouldn’t trust people to judge anything medical. My boomer parents say stupid things most of the time, yet they do it confidently and think their opinion is the only valid one.
A dumb opinion would be that not caring about others and saying stupid stuff is “autistic,” are all the boomers autists after all? See what I did?
I’ve talked about it with my parents they are 70ish and teachers and they both say in the years they worked there weren’t as many kids diagnosed with some condition
I can almost guarantee they worked with tons if autistic kids, they just didn’t know it.
Why do I say that? Because I’ve had multiple teachers tell me that my diagnosed AuDHD kid isn’t autistic. Clearly, the teachers who only see the kids while masking and yell at them when they act out would know better than a trained professional or the parents who see them when they feel safe and don’t have the energy to mask anymore.
Even as recently as 30 or 40 years ago, “problem” children would be hidden away, either in the home or sent to some sort of facility. Neuro divergence was a hidden issue.
I was “easily distracted” and “underperformed” and “could do better” at school. Always the “weird” kid. Only diagnosed when I was an adult because “autism” just wasn’t really a thing. This was 40+ years ago. The general treatment approach was getting The Belt haha or sent to my room, or sent to my gran’s, or sent “out to play”.
That sounds exactly like my story though, by the looks of it, I am a bit younger than you.
And before that, we were doppelgangers that had stolen people’s children away: https://youtube.com/shorts/WH5zYErWmAQ
I get the vibe that Gregor Mendal probably was autistic. Likewise, Da Vinci probably was ADHD.
we’re a kind of people that’s been around probably since forever. categorizing us the way modern psychology does is of course a more recent phenomenon. every culture since the dawn of time has had their own ways of handling and understanding variation in the species, but the variations have probably existed for as long as humans have, if not longer.
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“been developed”? *facepalm
Sorry about my shitty English, no es mi idioma principal pero podemos hablar perfectamente en español si gustas 😉😉
No hablo español. Perdona que me molestara el problema gramatical. No era mi intención ser ofensivo de ninguna manera.
The thing is that “been developed” strongly implies that there was an active and intentional developing (inventing) of it. Sadly there are many people that do pose such questions, purposely framed in that manner. So I suppose i reacted based on a misunderstanding of that meaning. Cheers and be well :)
Oh, now I understand — it was my fault, sorry. I’ve never been in any English-speaking country directly, so I don’t really know how words are used when you’re a native English speaker. In Spanish, we say “desarrollar” (“to develop”) not only when there’s an intentional action, but also, for example, when people get sick or have a condition — we say they “developed” the illness. In the case of autism, I understand that generally people are, let’s say, “normal” until a certain age, and it’s then that autism “develops,” so to speak.You don’t have to apologize at all.
I’m not bothered or anything. It’s just that my English is really bad sometimes, for that reason.
Just because it’s diagnosed easier now doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.
I choose to believe that autism appeared only after the invention of railway, and you can’t convince me otherwise.
I can’t find it right now but if I could I’d post the one about the ancient greek or roman dude with a interest in ships that would watch them enter and leave port and knew each one by name
I just also searched for that meme and gave up, but lo!
Come on. We all know it’s because the vaccines
I think it was more specifically the creation of Thomas the Train engine.
He was a tank engine!
You know how there’s the old schoolhouse stereotype that there’s always a “weird kid” in every class? There’s a good chance that kid was an undiagnosed autist.
The current estimates for autism rates is around 1 in 30. Which means every classroom is expected to have 1 autistic kid. Matches perfectly with the “weird kid in class” stereotype. People recognized autism since forever. That’s why the stereotype exists. It’s just that they didn’t have an actual word for it yet.
Yeah even when I was in my school days there was always “that kid” anyway I feel like in recent days there is a lot more of that cases like it was something external what is causing it but anyway it’s just a feeling I guess.
I get what you mean. I’ve suspected it’s a combination of factors:
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People have a name for it now. You can’t announce or be prideful about something that you don’t have a name for
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People are more accepting of autism now. You’d be more incentivized to hide autism if people thought it was a bad thing
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Autistic people tend to attract other autistic people. If you know one autistic person, you probably know a whole bunch of other autistic people too
But also, I just think that a lot of people underestimated how many people were autistic back then. A lot of high-functioning autistic people can pass for normal until you really get to know them. For instance, I’m like 99% sure that both of my parents are high-functioning autistic, and nobody ever suspected they might be. I brought up the possibility to them and their response was just, “yeah, I figured.”
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Here’s a metaphor. With technological advancement we’re discovering new stars every day. Does that mean they just appeared?
The old joke “what was the tallest mountain before Mt. Everest was discovered?”
“Mt. Everest”
Mouna Kea, it’s got a larger base to tip hight, it’s just mostly under water.
Olympus Mons
Well, if no one could observe them, you could say that they both existed and not existed.
Is gravity something new or did it exist before Newton described it?
Is being left handed something old?
At least fifty years, and according to my mum at least 75 years.
No, being left handed only means you’re a satanic spawn or something evil
