Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi There,
I am autistic and have an interest in the history of autism. I often wonder if autism has been around for hundreds of years but people never thought much of it back then. I think people back in the day would just look at us and think “oh he’s just quiet” or “oh she’s a bit shy but has a heart of gold” that kind of thing. I mean I never would have guessed I was autistic I really don’t feel disabled I just feel like a normal person who’s got a different mind.
is there anyone here from say the 40’s 50’s or 60’s that would like to share what being an autistic child was like back then when nobody knew what autism was? It must have been difficult feeling different but not knowing why.
It's completely changed. The support SEN children get at school now is beyond comprehension compared to back in the 1980s. My child is one of them it's amazing that they have such an understanding and support structures in place.
I was born in 1969, an only child and really didn't look at ASD until I was 50. I used the word 'nervous' as a child as I had never heard of anxiety. I felt nervous the entire time, was very clingy with my mum. I think my dad had ASD but my mum was deffinetley 'normal'. Mum made me play with other kids when I was little . We lived in flats and there were plenty of kids that I grew up with. I did fall out with many of them due to not understanding things and resorting to violence. There were 3 blocks of flats but I didn't go to the others as I tended to get bullied. I became a 'people pleaser' and was easily taken advantage of. I played lots on my own, had a massive bedroom, loved lego and building model kits.
At school I was seen as intelligent, was put up a year in primary school. I really struggled with the social side, particually with girls. I had no idea about them, they just didn't want to play what I did. Because I was not disruptive I never got flagged up as anything but normal. I did have health issues and there was talk of me attending a 'special ' school, I wonder if they would have found things had I gone there? We did not even have teaching assiants back then, just a teacher and 25-30 kids.
Got into my obsession around age 8. My dad was into planes and I used to get taken to airports alot. There were people he knew that were the same and they were all good adults who indulged me and didn't bully me. From then on I perfered adults to children and knew I never wanted kids myself.
Secondary school was hell! Gone from a year of 50 kids to a school of 1200! I was massivley overwhelmed, was split in many classes from my friends. Was good at science, history and geography but awful at maths and english. So ended up with the kids who wanted to learn for my good subjects my with the disruptive kids for maths and english. Hated that because I was a target of bullying in those classes . We had weak teachers and I was just told to suck it up or fight back by my parents. I blocked out most of secondary school. I thrived after I left school due to the lack of bullying in the workplace.
I have no kids but work in schools on the IT side and I see the support that SEN kids get and it makes me angry that I am fighting to even get diagnosed.
Rob
Yeh I’ve read that article before. It’s a good article, it makes you wonder. I also struggle with anxiety but don’t know why. Do you struggle with this also?
Yellow tree 118 said: I wonder why alcohol has such a profound affect on autistic people
It lowers the inhibitions which are caused by anxiety and allows us to say "oh fluff you" to the inner demons in order to relax.
It can also bring its own demons (easy to anger, paranoia etc) so should be used with caution. Addiction is one of these and I believe studies show around 65% of people admitted to alcohol rehab were sufferes of social anxiety (not just autists though).
There is quite an interesting article about it here:
www.autism.org.uk/.../autism-alcohol
I can completely relate to you with regards to the alcohol helping to relax. In my personal experience I have not found yet something as powerful as alcohol for making me feel relaxed and calm. I would talk a lot more when I was drinking and felt more free in a way. That was why I had to quit drinking though and it has been 3 years since I last drank and I still miss it a lot but I can definetly resist the temptation. I may drink again in the future depending on my circumstances but if I have to live without it for the rest of my life then so be it. Anxiety levels are very high for me on a daily basis and my emotions can be quite all over the place at times. I wonder why alcohol has such a profound affect on autistic people as every autistic person I have met said they needed alcohol to live and function. There must be something about alcohol that makes it have that affect on autistic people. Very interesting.
In the 60's the only kind of autism recognised as autism was Kanner's autism, mute, lino g up cars, and so on.
Either way, it was seen as psychosis, or related to psychosis. Other presentations were also seen as essentially mental illness, regression a form of depression and so on. There were labels such as childhood schizophrenia. I now understand that by the 90's this term was luckily obselete.
It was suspected I was prepsychotic, see that by accident in my medical notes. My mother once let out I was diagnosed with an obsessive disorder, later on that she would have to explain the ways of the world to me due to my lack of innate understanding of social cues and how to behave, or that I was depressed or hysterical or maladjusted.
Confusion reigned then and didn't really help the sense that the psychologists and doctors I was seeing were not bring honest with me about something. In my teens the hope was that I would just muddle on and muddle through, and that good breezy common sense was all that was needed. I was made to feel like a hypochondriac by my GP after he'd spent some time with me in I foal therapy in early teens.
I don't live in the UK so it would be difficult to access medical notes if I decided to get any diagnosis. I would like to be able to lay the ghosts of it all though but I wouldn't want to find I would be blacklisted from entering other countries later on.
I don’t think was different being autistic back then, because even if it was today, I would have the same experience. No one saw it then, and no one sees it now. I was classed as shy, and didn’t speak much. I was very clever. Very musical and artistic. Finished work before everyone else all day, everyday. Until I started high school! Then the communication issues came though. I still had friends, just felt awkward and my peers were boring. In my leisure time as a teen I was reading the encyclopaedia and thesaurus like you do lol. I was collecting stamps, drawing endlessly and learning all the flags and capital cities of the world. Stims were stopped in childhood by my father.
But, my uncle, who was about 8 years older than me did go into care, because his parents could no longer cope. I think he was 15 or 16 at the time. He was non verbal. Obvious stims and rocking. Violent outbursts. I didn’t actually find out until several years ago that was only diagnosed autistic as an adult!. All his life he’d been shut away in an institution for being ‘mentally retarded’…..
My childhood was the 80's and 90's, so not as far back as you were thinking about, and it was a very difficult and traumatising period for me. Although autism was known about it was the stereotypical 'non-speaking male child rocking in a corner' version and as I became extremely good at masking from a very young age I was just seen as shy, aloof, standoffish, a bit weird and not willing to contribute in class. As a result I got bullied a lot and I had a lot of time off school as I just couldn't cope with it. At one point my secondary school thought I might be dyslexic (which I am) but wouldn't refer me for testing as it was 'too expensive and would be a lot of hassle', so I got 6 weeks of handwriting remedial class instead, so I expect there would have been a similar response if autism was more recognised back then. Looking back there are several other children I was at school with who I suspect were autistic too, all of which had a tough time being bullied and put in the lower sets where they basically didn't bother to teach them anything.
I also believe my mum is autistic too, she also thinks she might be but isn't interested in getting diagnosed, and her childhood was in the 50's and 60's but I think she developed better coping mechanisms than I did.
that's awesome that your granny has got diagnosed and is so positive about it, I get the impression that a lot of older people won't take those steps because they think they are 'too old'
Yeah, well with my Mum, thinking back, my Dad had tried teaching her to drive, she ended up getting some lessons in the end and passed a test eventually. We got a second hand automatic car and she must have driven independently for about five or six times then refused to do so again. She's never driven since, doesn't have a car. My Dad died 20 odd years ago, quite young. She never went out socialising in all the time I can remember. She used to get dragged down to the pub with my Dad on xmas eve. That was about it. I think she hated the whole experience. She has no real friends, has never gone out of her way to make any.
I remember I was talking to her (or at her as I was probably doing one of my "info dumps" at the time) on the phone about 9 months ago saying I thought I have autism and she just changed the subject immediately which is completely out of character for her. I was maybe talking about childhood stuff - perhaps she thought there was something they should have picked up on, I don't know.
The alcohol is an interesting point. I was always a heavy drinker from my early twenties, not just from the perspective of using it in order to try to socialise better* but also just drinking in the house on an evening to wind down. I don't mean this in the sense of alcoholism, I completely stopped drinking when my partner and I were trying to conceive children due to difficulties, probably for 18 months, and I've been tee-total for the last 4 years as I'm older now, stopping hasn't been a problem but coincidentally I've been at my worst from a mental health perspective in those last four years. I think I was using it to dampen everything down, be able to switch off and try to relax. Makes me wonder how much of the alcohol use is due to addiction or due to, like you say, using it to mask or cope in general. I was never a drunk either, always had my wits about me still with it but could relax a lot more.
*) not sure better is the right word here.
Yeh it’s crazy looking back on it but also interesting, I was walking past what used to be an old asylum a year or 2 ago and you can still see the remenants of the old tall pointed metal fencing surrounding the outer perimeter of the old asylum building. It’s all rusted now and some bits of it are missing but still it sort of takes you back to that time just being there.
Yellow tree 118 said:there would have been no point institutionalising her as they wouldn’t have been able to cure it anyway especially since they didn’t even know what it was they were dealing with
The purpose of institutionalisation back then was as much to get the troublesome person out of society where they were a drain on often meagre resources (ie they couldn't hold down a job) or were a menace to themselves and others.
Cures were pretty limited due to lack of knowledge so many interesting techniques were thought up by ill informed professionals, leaving to attempts to drain the blood to get the evil spirits out of you, or electro shock to try to get the electricity in your brain working normally etc.
If you have seen the TV series Queen Charlotte recently on Netflix, this shows the lengths they went to try to "cure" the king at that time - really shocking by todays standards, but experimental with few ethics back then.
*was born in the 21st century
Living as an autistic person through the 2nd world war must have been a traumatic experience . I’m glad she finally got the answer she needed. Wow it’s crazy looking back with hindsight as there would have been no point institutionalising her as they wouldn’t have been able to cure it anyway especially since they didn’t even know what it was they were dealing with.
It must have been a hard time for you and your mum. I think autism probably has been around for along time but we never thought much of it until recently. I am convinced my mum is autistic and her dad (my grandad). My granda was born in the 40’s I think and he like my mother used alcohol to mask his issues his entire life.
That’s good that your art helped you communicate. Other kids in school also appreciated my art when I was a child.
Wow that’s interesting. It was a different time altogether. Sometimes people say it’s worse now a days but as an autistic person I am quite thankful I wasn’t born in the 21st century.
Iain said:As for the older generations to me, they had often come through events like the wars and had experienced a much harsher environment growing up
I realised I hadn't finished that part.
What I meant was that many people, including NTs wer carrying a lifetime of traima from the experiences they had to endure.
I had an uncle who was in PTSD following suffering horrible abuse in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burmah (Myanmar now), and many people had other issues with abuse which was rarely caught in those days.
When the old timers say stuff like "the youth of today have it easy", they are right. We have way more laws, groups advocating us and knowledge / therapy at our disposal than ever before.
I used to have aversion to greasy, oily or the other way, sticky or even dried out fingers. used to either be washing my hands or licking my fingers frequently. nobody ever commented on this or anything else (fascination with spinning wheels, being stressed out by loud noises (fireworks esp) or unable to come out of some kind of hyper vigilant state at birthday parties etc with balloons present). Had to do work experience later on in school and the boss of the company had to do a report on me for the school stating I was "pathologically shy" (I would disappear off into the storage room now and again) and made him a cup of tea in a small soup bowl etc. He wrote that I needed some kind of counselling. I don't think the school even read it. Like you say, there was nothing there to pick up on anything when I was at school (80s - 90s) for "low needs" despite even myself once, after being invited to talk about things specifically, detailing an ongoing dread and anxiety about doing things like using a bus etc. to one of the teachers at secondary school.
Looking back, I think there were a few children who I think were in a similar situation.
Going back further then the 80s? I'm convinced my mum is on the spectrum. There was nothing from her time in place to pick up on anything like that.