Perspective from an Old Timer

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I will be turning 70 in a few days and that makes me an old timer. There is a perception that in the old days, most Aspies landed up in institutions. That perception in my opinion is totally and utterly false. I feel that in my generation many integrated into society; they found jobs, got married and raised families better than the present generation. So I thought I might highlight some of the differences between past generations and the present generation.

In bygone years many people lived on farms. When I was growing up in the 1950’s in the U.S. the rural population was greater than 40%. Today it is down below 20%. Another major change was in family size. I grew up in a family of 8 children. Today that is almost unheard of.

So why would these changes be important to Aspies?

Two important areas are greater independence and greater responsibility at an early age. When I was 5 years old, I would go off into a dense forest alone and explore on my own for hours at a time. Today that might be unheard of. As children, we were often playing in the woods, building forts or castles or playing pirates. We ventured far and wide. When I was in my early teens and obtained on old used bicycle, I went all over the place, hundreds of city blocks from home and explored. I had far greater independence than most children today growing up. Large families are different than only child families because if parents have only one child and the child dies, it is an unbelievable loss to that family. That is not to say that my parents wouldn’t have been heartbroken if I died early but they would have gotten over it much easier than a single parent family. Thus I was afforded greater freedom and independence from the get-go.

Another area is responsibility. I was the oldest of my 7 brothers and sisters. I had a responsibility to take care of them. I had a responsibility to set a good example for them to follow. It was an understood given.

So I had chores to do, such as cutting the grass and clearing the snow off the driveway. This translated to my first jobs. I found that I could make money by simply knocking on my neighbor’s door and offer my services in cutting grass and make money from it. My sisters were able to translate taking care of the younger children into babysitting for the neighbor’s children.

There are two components to establishing a career. Often times we focus solely on schooling. But the other component “developing a good work ethic” is equally important. This is often accomplished by working summer/part-time jobs when young.

Around the age of 10, I began cutting lawns in the neighborhood. In the winter I shoveled snow from driveways. I also sold garden seeds door-to-door in the springtime. This gave me spending money to pursue my passion at the time, which were comic books. In high school, I worked in a five-and-dime store. It is important for students to work during the summer and after school because it can help establish a good work ethic. In high school and all during college, I worked.

I worked jobs (20 hours per week) whenever I was in school and (40 hours per week) during the summers, the entire time I was in college. During my four years of college, I worked:
* in the main branch of a bank balancing daily receipts.
* as a postman in the downtown mail sorting station.
* as a parking lot attendant.
* as a warehouseman in a large department store storage facility.
* as a night shift operator on a cyclotron.
* with a supercomputer performing heat transport modeling.

Another difference is tribe composition. When a child is small they are part of a small tribe called the family and then when they go to school they also become part of a girl’s tribe or boy’s tribe at school. So when I was growing up my family tribe was simply huge. It not only consisted of my immediate family but also my extended family with many, many cousins. And so when I socialized, most of this was done in the family tribe rather than the school tribe. And the family tribe is much more tolerant. And we often even drew in the neighbor’s kids when we played. So having difficulties socializing at school was balance by socializing within the family.

Another difference was that I was never labeled with a disability. I may have been different than others but I always viewed it as my responsibility to integrate into society. It wasn’t a burden I was going to place on my parents or the school or society. Part of life is learning to stand on my own two feet.

Another difference between then and now is in the area of drugs. There has been an explosion in recreational drug use in this country. An Aspie’s brain is wired differently than others and I believe our brains are more susceptible to harm than normal brains. Drugs such as narcotics and psychedelics drugs along with alcohol are to Aspies like kryptonite is to Superman. They rob an Aspie of their uniqueness, of their unusual senses and their razor sharp logic. They destroy the “different normal” abilities. But they do not make an Aspie normal, only a drug user or an alcoholic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Baby boomers are perfect, we get it. Not that you’re biased or anything.

How do you feel knowing baby boomers are ill prepared for retirement & many will outlive their savings?

Good for you. Frugality is underrated. Too bad more of your generation didn’t follow your lead.

In short, jimmy m, we were free-range children who were expected to get our chores done, do our homework, and act responsibly even when our parents weren't around (the basis of ethical behavior). I am 9 years younger than you.

I went through three bicycles before I learned to drive, and I forget how many bicycle tires. I explored abandoned factories and coal mines, climbed the water tower and the grain elevator, swung out over the river on a rope tied to the bottom of the railroad trestle and dropped 30 feet into the cold and muddy water, and camped out in the woods down by the railroad yard

I also earned pocket money mowing lawns, painting garages, weeding gardens, and fixing tube-type electronic equipment. A good work ethic was not developed out of and classes at school, but by the 'necessity' of having spending money that didn't come from Mom or Dad, and by the real necessity of building a good reputation as a neighborhood kid who could be relied on when errands needed running or younger kids needed "baby-sitting".

Jimmy, you are right about those things. Jobs were plentiful and the cost of living was way way less when you started out. Driver's Ed was offered at high schools back when my parents were growing up and you actually got to go out on the road instead of being restricted to the school parking lot. Now a lot of high schools don't offer Driver's Ed at all. Jobs back in your day didn't require college degrees. These days jobs expect applicants to have bachelor's degrees and college is ridiculously expensive.

^No sour grapes. Simply over “us” against “them” threads.

[quote="jimmy m"]I will be turning 70 in a few days and that makes me an old timer. There is a perception that in the old days, most Aspies landed up in institutions. That perception in my opinion is totally and utterly false. I feel that in my generation many integrated into society; they found jobs, got married and raised families better than the present generation. So I thought I might highlight some of the differences between past generations and the present generation.a responsibility to take care of them. I had a responsibility to set a good example for them to follow. It was an understood given. quote]

I think that relatively few Aspies were institutionalised then, and suspect that those that were came from a subset of families in which parental factors and values - eg conformity, political and social ambitions, the goal of presenting a perfect though false front to the world and neighbours - were more responsible for the disappearance of atypical children than the psychiatric community of the time, though each group to some extent colluded with the other for their own gain (I suspect).
[i]
Having grown up in the same era, I know how the upper stratification of society thought and acted then, they were the least tolerant of "eccentricity" and (again I suspect) were most likely to flick off atypical offspring either to boarding schools as far away as possible or some more permanent solution via banishment to an institution permanently, on a one way ticket. [/i]



Another difference was that I was never labeled with a disability. (Quote OP)

Nor was I. I feel terribly concerned for the way children are labelled in infancy now, after which people see the label and the actual child and its potential and worth tends to become invisible to most people after that.

I'm 47. I always wandered around the woods too, we all did it. And I was never labeled, although in hindsight, that hindered more than it helped, since I blamed myself for my inadequacies. Drugs were a godsend for me, weed and psychedelics helped a lot, but a self-diagnosis helped even more- when I was 30.

I'm 57. I grew up in the city. I wish we had woods to wander around in LOL

I was a "free-range" kid, too. I went out at about 9 AM, and returned for dinner. Then went out again in the summer until sunset. We had the railroad tracks, the candy store, and the schoolyard/local playgrounds. Sometimes, we went into each other's "houses" (actually, apartments).

I was labeled various things. I got no allowances for the labels. I had to act like a regular kid; or I'd be disciplined the same as regular kids if I did something wrong. I was banned from a few kid's houses because I was seen as being "ret*d," somehow. Sometimes, it was my fault; most of the time, my reputation preceded me.

Many blatantly autistic, nonverbal kids were institutionalized in the 1960s. If you were the "Aspergian" type, you had to adjust, somehow. You were bullied, pretty automatically, and the school authorities didn't have too much sympathy for you; you had to fight it out yourself. Many kids were bullied----not just the "nerds."

I got a very small allowance; in order to earn more money, I had to work as a delivery boy or something. There were no lawns to mow, because most kids lived in apartment houses (apartment blocks for those in British-influenced places). No snow to shovel. The "super" used to do all those jobs; and he didn't want some kid to help him. He used to spend a lot of his time chasing away us kids, as a matter of fact.