A parent’s take on diagnosis

Autism diagnoses only really became an option for children in the last few decades and for adults even more recently than that. In recent years there’s been an massive increase in diagnoses for all ages and genders – which is a big improvement from the perception that it was only something that applied to young boys. It’s not that autism has become more prevalent – it’s that society has got better at acknowledging that it exists. More and more people are coming to understand why it is that they may have struggled at work and with socialising. Having spent a significant portion of their brain all their lives trying to manage and conceal undiagnosed autism, they had less left than other people for doing work and life stuff.

Worth the wait?

Autism diagnoses only really became an option for children in the last few decades and for adults even more recently than that. In recent years there’s been an massive increase in diagnoses for all ages and genders – which is a big improvement from the perception that it was only something that applied to young boys. It’s not that autism has become more prevalent – it’s that society has got better at acknowledging that it exists. More and more people are coming to understand why it is that they may have struggled at work and with socialising. Having spent a significant portion of their brain all their lives trying to manage and conceal undiagnosed autism, they had less left than other people for doing work and life stuff.