I wrote recently about my experiences of growing up going to a special school, and about how that meant I came into contact with young people with a wide range of disabilities. That includes kids with autism. While, to my knowledge, none of the young people in my class was on the autistic spectrum, many of the kids at school were quite profoundly autistic, and my experiences there have done a great deal to inform my conception of what autism is. It is a profoundly debilitating condition, as severe and serious as any other disability. The young people at school who had it were profoundly disabled and could barely do anything for their selves.
The problem is, as I started to explain here, these days the term seems to be being used more and more flippantly. This morning, for instance, I was on the tube up to Stratford when I overheard a teenager describe someone as “Obviously on the spectrum”. I must admit it immediately caught my ear: the statement was made so flippantly and casually that it could almost have been a joke, as if Autism is now nothing more than a mere social trend. People have apparently began to pin such labels upon one another at will, probably thinking they sound clever for doing so but obviously having no understanding of what being autistic really entails. Yet in so doing the terms they use so casually loose all meaning. When I think back to the young people I saw at school, barely able to do anything for them selves, I can’t help finding it sickening to hear such terms now being used in this way, as if being autistic just means you have a few personal quirks, and is no more significant than someone’s hair colour.
The Ill-Informed Ramblings of a Cripple 
I think I understand where you’re coming from but I have a slightly different perspective. I remember first meeting you in the Old Cottage Cafe when I was talking about my brother’s difficulties with the social security system. He is in his early 70s and has ‘mild’ cerebral palsy (his walking is affected, he writes with difficulty but his speech is not affected) and, only in the last 10 years, been diagnosed as autistic. There are two points I’d make. His physical disability has always been evident and, so his GP said when my brother maintained he had been diagnosed with neither, it was on his medical record from age 4. In the same consultation his GP formally diagnosed his autism at the age of 64. His GP said that only recently had GPs been able to diagnose autism, previously he would have had to refer my brother to a consultant.
My own reflection on my brother’s life is that it has been more affected by his autism than his cerebral palsy. He started at a mainstream primary school but, because of his physical limitations he was deemed unintelligent. My mother fought hard to get him into a newly opened Special School for “delicate” children. It treated him very kindly but did not provide him with any education – he had no opportunity to study or take exams. He reads widely and, on the topics he’s interested in, will engage people in spirited discussion. However he’s never worked and he barely now functions independently because of his autistic traits.
My granddaughter is also autistic, but what we call high-functioning autistic. She goes to a mainstream secondary school. She has an EHCP. After the pandemic she really struggled with school and, after a reasonably successful first term in Y7, found the masking too stressful and was too anxious to go to school for the rest of the year. She worked at home with help from my wife and I and using the on-line resources the school provided (every pupil was ‘given’ a Chromebook that they used in school and for homework). Now, in Y10, she has pretty good attendance and seems to be coping quite well with the pressure.
I’m afraid, as a family, we do tend to “recognise” people “on the spectrum” when they have traits that seem similar to those we see in my brother and granddaughter. For most of the time I think it helps us to understand them better, to not take amiss comments they might make or things they might do. For us it chimes with our understanding of why “there are so many more autistic people now” – there aren’t more, their autism is now recognised more often.
Anyway, just to say, Matthew, how much I enjoy reading your blog. I do find it in many ways inspiring and hope you don’t think that’s patronising.
A happy new year and may your 2026 trundles take you to even more interesting places.
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