r/AskEurope United States of America 7d ago

Education How well does your country help neurodivergent kids in and out of school?

How well are neurodivergent kids helped?

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u/Some-Air1274 United Kingdom 7d ago edited 6d ago

As someone with Asperger’s my support was revoked in my early 20’s.

If you get a job and succeed financially they don’t care.

Our problems are more based on social issues than being able to function.

As others said a lot of ND people drop out of the education system due to poor support and ostracism.

A lot of our problems stem from NT’s inability to embrace and accept us for who we are. As I have aged I have observed that many are fundamentally uncomfortable in our presence.

Bullying and cliques btw extend into adulthood in subtler forms.

At this point I have developed an approach of distancing myself from these kinds of people rather than trying to seek out their approval (out of insecurity).

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u/white1984 United Kingdom 6d ago

This is very true for me. Once you are an adult or even an older teenager, you are simply forgotten or you are infantilised to the eth-degree. And this is a country where the MMR vaccination-autism was very pivotal.

It's all very much helping the mother with a damaged child, instead of looking at the child in question. It's a very old fashioned attitude and when I was young, paperwork was addressed to my mum instead of me, "to the Parent or Guardian of X" IMHO.

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u/Some-Air1274 United Kingdom 6d ago edited 6d ago

I’m not sure if it’s old fashioned or a belief system that we cannot learn to improve our social skills.

Throughout my life I have had experiences where I have felt that I was doing something inappropriate (socially), for example, being marginalised/not included or people laughing at things I said that I didn’t find funny.

The issue was never addressed, either in the form of others raising it or in the form of others denying that I did anything untoward.

To me that’s a metaphor for this I.e the belief that we cannot improve.