How many families with SN kids do you know?

[Anonymous]

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

Not really. I don’t recall ever knowing any kids who displayed anxiety, depression, attention deficit or autistic behavior in my childhood or teen years. I became familiar with them only after moving to US.

[Anonymous]

I'm a foreigner who hails from two different countries (one in western Europe, one in East Asia) and apparently I understand the dynamics a whole lot better than you, OP.

It's because other countries hide their people with severe disabilities and do not have the societal knowledge and financial resources to cater to the mildly-affected. There is a lot of bullying and ostracizing.

The public schools elsewhere aren't set up to welcome severely disabled kids, so you don't meet them at school. Families hide them away in their homes, or place them in institutions.

Mild diagnoses don't tend to be recognized, so you see kids with high-functioning autism, or mild ADHD, or mild anxiety/depression and society does not categorize them as such. The hyperactive kids are labeled as bad kids who do bad things, the HFA are the bullied odd ducks, and the daydreaming/slow inattentive kids are lazy and stupid.

I lived this. I did not want my ADHD/HFA son to live this too, so I did my utmost to stay in the US, where he had mind-boggling accommodations, compared to what he'd have received in my native country's public schools, a developed country in western Europe. Now he's in college, thanks to years of accommodations.

I have researched special needs and school accommodations in Europe and East Asia (I have close relatives in both regions). The proportion of neurodivergence is the same across the world. The number of diagnoses in other countries is much lower. The way non-US societies treat differently-brained people is not at all as accepting as American society.

[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.

I have two siblings who very clearly had special needs growing up but it was not something that was ever recognized, diagnosed or addressed. They both made it through school but barely. As adults things went off the rails because they had significant deficits that were never addressed. Both are highly gifted but underemployed, need some level of public assistance and have not been able to maintain a relationship with a significant other.

So those families were there. Sadly, nobody saw those kids. I can only hope that the interventions I have done with my SN DC will result in a more successful path.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think so. If there was something off about a kid, people would know. People didn’t hide their SN kids in the basements. We would have seen them on the street, in the park, etc. We would have noticed odd behavior, but we didn’t. Of course, there were some kids with delinquent behavior here and there, but there wasn’t many of them.

But what are the odds that so many kids around us have diagnosis? In our circles I know more families with SN kids than without. This can’t be normal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Is this really ASD and ADHD or just going through life? Believe it or not, no one is 100% happy and adjusted, everyone has issues. This sounds like a stretch to claim you may have had ASD . . .

[Anonymous]

How are drug companies supposed to make money unless everybody has a problem

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

What? Are you 11 years old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

Not really. I don’t recall ever knowing any kids who displayed anxiety, depression, attention deficit or autistic behavior in my childhood or teen years. I became familiar with them only after moving to US.

Because they weren’t raised by screens.

[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.

My kid says half the kids get up and leave when there’s a test - they all have IEPs and get tested in a separate room.

[Anonymous]

I'm not OP, come from a well-developed European industrialized country and have the same impression. Of course in my home country many children have a diagnosis of ADHD or ASD. Depression and anxiety disorders are on the rise, especially since Covid. But it's not the masses like here, maybe one or two children per class have a diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

I have ADHD, which I inherited from my immigrant ADHD mother. My mother, however, was never diagnosed. In her home country, she was seen as “panicky” for lack of a better translation or “rushed.” They didn’t consider it a disorder. They considered it a personality trait.

I actually think it’s a healthier approach than calling it a “disorder,” and I think of it the same way. However, I also see that it’s rooted in biology.

[Anonymous]

More people make the effort to seek a diagnosis and they get it. Do you know of any child specifically tested that was not handed some type of diagnosis?

[Anonymous]

0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Not really. I don’t recall ever knowing any kids who displayed anxiety, depression, attention deficit or autistic behavior in my childhood or teen years. I became familiar with them only after moving to US.

Because they weren’t raised by screens.

Ah, so my kid has ADHD because of screens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think so. If there was something off about a kid, people would know. People didn’t hide their SN kids in the basements. We would have seen them on the street, in the park, etc. We would have noticed odd behavior, but we didn’t. Of course, there were some kids with delinquent behavior here and there, but there wasn’t many of them.

But what are the odds that so many kids around us have diagnosis? In our circles I know more families with SN kids than without. This can’t be normal.

Except people did. And also did so elsewhere, too.