How many families with SN kids do you know?

[Anonymous]

I’m an immigrant and when I lived in my country in my entire life I encountered only one family with a SN kid.

I’ve lived in America for over twenty years and it occurred to me recently I know so many families with SN kids:

- one family where DS is very autistic and DD with ADHD and depression and anxiety,
- 2 families with kids with cerebral palsy, - one family where DS has ADHD and DD with depression,
- one family with DD with ADHD
- one family with one DD with anxiety disorder and another with speech issues

I practically don’t know any friends without kids with diagnosis.

Is it American society that is so sickly?

Or is it just the modern society that is so sickly? I don’t hear about such issues in my home country. Do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m an immigrant and when I lived in my country in my entire life I encountered only one family with a SN kid.

I’ve lived in America for over twenty years and it occurred to me recently I know so many families with SN kids:

- one family where DS is very autistic and DD with ADHD and depression and anxiety,
- 2 families with kids with cerebral palsy, - one family where DS has ADHD and DD with depression,
- one family with DD with ADHD
- one family with one DD with anxiety disorder and another with speech issues

I practically don’t know any friends without kids with diagnosis.

Is it American society that is so sickly?

Or is it just the modern society that is so sickly? I don’t hear about such issues in my home country. Do you?

Both.

[Anonymous]

My child is autistic and just about everyone we know also has an autistic child -- but I assumed that was our self selection/who we come into contact with.

[Anonymous]

Depending on where you’re from, there could be more stigma associated with SN there, so people don’t share that their kids have ADHD, anxiety, etc. Or maybe they don’t even get their kids tested and they just struggle, get labeled “lazy,” “dumb,” “bad,” etc.

[Anonymous]

Many, although I’ve had a career as a public school nurse.

[Anonymous]

I know of kids with SN when I was growing up in the US in the 70s/80s. They were held back or were in separate classrooms/facilities. They weren't really discussed much.

I do think there are more people with SNs these days because of the excessive screens, plastics/chemicals, etc. but there is also greater awareness, inclusion, and openness.

[Anonymous]

What's your home country, op?

I've wondered what the real link to autism is.

Age of parents--particularly the father?

IVF or other fertility interventions?

Infant vaccination schedules?

Plastics in the environment?

Exposure to something during pregnancy?

Or access to better diagnosis?

[Anonymous]

A lot but I will not talk about them online and describe each.. Gross.

[Anonymous]

I think this is an interesting topic. Looking back on all of my friends from growing up in the U.S. in the 80s and 90s none had SN back then and I don’t think any were just not diagnosed but do have issues now/later in life.

When I think about my DD’s 5th grade class more than half of her friends have ADHD, dyslexia or other learning differences. I only know this because I was at a moms’ dinner where they were comparing IEP and 504 plans and I was pretty surprised.

[Anonymous]

ADHD and developmental delays are very inconsistently diagnosed. If you're comparing across different countries, that's likely responsible for much of the difference.

It seems like severe ASD is much more common than it used to be, but I suspect some of that is just that we, as a society, don't hide those kids as much as we used to.

[Anonymous]

As the mom of a kid with ADHD and dyslexia, this conversation is ick.

OP, you likely just didn’t know those kids because they weren’t being diagnosed or they were pulled out of mainstream school. They still existed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is an interesting topic. Looking back on all of my friends from growing up in the U.S. in the 80s and 90s none had SN back then and I don’t think any were just not diagnosed but do have issues now/later in life.

When I think about my DD’s 5th grade class more than half of her friends have ADHD, dyslexia or other learning differences. I only know this because I was at a moms’ dinner where they were comparing IEP and 504 plans and I was pretty surprised.

Do their kids seem so different than the kids you grew up with?

My DD has ADHD and ASD and as we've gotten her diagnosed and started treating these issues I've realized it's highly likely I had some version of the same issues as a child. But I was forced to become very good at masking from a very young age because I had a big family (five kids) and a younger sibling who was very sick as a baby and then had more pronounced SNs. But I had a lot of the same symptoms -- insomnia, lots of textural issues with food and clothes, struggling with social interactions involving more than one other person, developing strong obsessions, being very sensitive to rejection -- but people just viewed these as quirks of my personality (and labeled me as "weird" or "a spaz") and no one understood that this is just how ASD presents in girls often.

I doubt anyone I grew up with sits around thinking that I must have had undiagnosed SNs -- I did well in school and had friends. But I privately struggled, started having behavioral issues in late high school (not a normal time for these things to surface -- my masking stopped working so well as more stress came into my life), wound up with crushingly low self esteem in college and after, have struggled with depression throughout adulthood, and have difficulty with social relationships. My DH has ADHD.

You don't know what people are going through privately and a lot of people struggled a lot with undiagnosed SNs when we were kids.

[Anonymous]

I was considered a “gifted” kid who was a “worrier” growing up. Everything academic was easy for me but I struggled socially and was uncoordinated. But I was quiet and a girl, and it was the 1980s.

My son is brilliant and outgoing—he doesn’t have my social struggles—but he has ADHD. I want him to thrive and feel like his full self at school, and his IEP helps make sure he can do that.

Parents of SN kids don’t need your judgment or conspiracy theories.

[Anonymous]

SN other than dislexia or ADHD? Not many. One kid who is far enough on the autism spectrum that he attends a special school and one family with a child with Down’s syndrome.

[Anonymous]

OP, the people aren’t different, just the words used. In the US, we are quick to identify and label. In other countries, kids need to “study harder” or have “too much energy” or aren’t good students (and go into trade school for high school) or they simply stay in the house with the family.

My DS has dyslexia. He’s the first one in the family to be diagnosed but is certainly not the first one with dyslexia. We look back through the generations and are, like, oh…we see it now.