I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
How many people grew up quietly feeling like they just didn’t quite fit? Not dramatically, not in a way anyone could point to — just this constant, low-level sense that life was somehow harder for them than it seemed to be for everyone else?
How many children were told to “stop being so sensitive,” or “just behave,” or — my personal favourite — “there’s nothing wrong with you”?
When actually, there was something different about them. They just didn’t have the words for it yet. And neither did the people around them.
For a long time, autism was understood through an incredibly narrow lens. The early research gave it a name, which was important — but it also gave people a very fixed idea of what autism was supposed to look like. And if you didn’t fit that picture? You were overlooked. Mislabelled. Or just quietly left to figure it out on your own.
Some of those children were written off as naughty. Some were “just shy.” Some were “too sensitive” or “too dramatic” or “too much.” And some of them — the ones who were desperately trying to cope — just got very, very good at hiding it.
They blended in. They stayed quiet. They pushed through situations that felt completely overwhelming, not because they were okay, but because they had no other option.
And here’s the thing that breaks my heart about that — they probably didn’t even know why those situations felt so hard. They just knew they did.
Now, years later, we’re seeing so many adults being diagnosed and finally — finally — starting to understand themselves. Looking back at a childhood full of moments that confused them and thinking, oh. That’s why. The routines they couldn’t function without. The sounds that felt like physical pain. The clothes that drove them absolutely mad. The social situations that left them completely wrung out for days after. All the things that were dismissed or laughed off or used against them — finally being recognised for what they actually were.
So why are we seeing so many more diagnoses now? Because autism hasn’t suddenly appeared. It was always there.
What’s changed is our understanding of it.
We now know that autism is a spectrum — and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. It doesn’t look the same in any two people. It can be loud or quiet, obvious or hidden, diagnosed in childhood or not discovered until someone is well into adulthood. It shows up differently depending on someone’s gender, their personality, their environment, the coping strategies they’ve developed over the years.
We also understand so much more about the sensory side of things now — about how genuinely overwhelming the world can be when your nervous system is processing everything differently. About how a crowded supermarket, or a scratchy jumper, or the hum of fluorescent lighting can be utterly exhausting in a way that’s very hard to explain to someone who doesn’t experience it.
And we’re starting to understand masking. The way so many autistic people — particularly women and girls — spend years performing a version of themselves that fits in, even when it costs them everything. Smiling when they’re uncomfortable. Laughing along when they haven’t understood the joke. Holding it all together in public, then completely falling apart the moment they get home.
As a mum, this one hits differently.
Because when you understand what your child is actually going through — when you can see the effort it takes for them just to get through an ordinary day — it completely changes how you show up for them. The meltdown isn’t “bad behaviour.” The refusal isn’t “being difficult.” It’s a person who has simply reached the limit of what they can cope with. And they need you to see that — not to fix it, not to push through it, just to see it.
There aren’t more autistic people than there used to be. There are just more people finally being seen.
And honestly, the fact that it took this long? That’s the part that should make us uncomfortable.
Because behind every adult who’s only just receiving a diagnosis is a child who spent years wondering why everything felt so hard. A teenager who was told they were too sensitive. A person who learned to mask so well that nobody — sometimes not even themselves — knew what was really going on underneath.
They were always there.
We just weren’t looking properly.
