Children with AS, ADHD and autism during the war?

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How did children with AS, ADHD or autism cope in the war? Although these things weren't recognised back then like they are now, they still must have existed in some children.

My grandparents said they were children in the war so they didn't really take it seriously, but I think a child with AS would because of their anxiety and deep thinking. In fact Aspies were probably traumatized by it, plus all the loud bombs and unpredictability must have been terrifying. I understand that children with just AS weren't recognised by their condition back then because AS wasn't discovered, but I still wonder how they coped.

And ADHD surely wasn't recognised back then either, like it is now. Children with ADHD were probably seen as naughty, spoilt brats and probably got whacked with a belt or cane multiple times. Back then children were more disciplined, so it must have been a bit harder to keep a child with attention and behavioural problems under control, because ADHD is a real disorder, like AS.

And what about kids with more obvious autism? What happened with them? What did the parents do to them? Were they sent off to an institution? Was autism known back then?

Just interested.

The UK was bombed during WWII. The US mainland was essentially unscathed. So nothing like the London Blitz happened here. There was an older American gentlemen on WP who was a diagnosed aspie who was in his Seventies when he was active here a few years ago. The same generation but younger than my parents who were almost draft age teens when the war was going on-this WP guy was little more than a toddler when Pearl Harbor happened. He grew up in New Jersey and he mentioned that he remembers "the grown ups around me being upset and talking about Pearl Harbor", but he was too small to understand what the fuss was about. Basically everyone in my parents' (and this old WP guy's) generation were all emotionally scared by the Great Depression of the 1930s. WWII effected grown ups. American children (neurodiverse or not) were not much effected, or even benifited from the economy being suddenly yanked out of the Great Depression by the War

You should read the work of Anna Freud, Joe.

She wrote lots about the effects of war trauma on children.

It’s interesting that Brits call World War II “The War.”

This hasn’t happened in the US.

Well it is often hard for Brits to talk to Americans about stuff because UK and USA have much more differences than you think.

I don’t feel that way, Joe. I enjoy our differences. I learn from them.

My father just missed Korea.

My brother just missed Vietnam.

My grandfather was deferred during WW II because he had my father.

He was born in 1900. He wasn’t drafted during WW I, though he was eligible.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 20 Jan 2018, 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm told that my grandfather, who died 22 years ago, had many of the same issues as me, so there's a good chance he would have been diagnosed if Asperger's had existed in his time.

Anyway, he actually fought in World War 2 as part of the Canadian Air Force.

I heartily recommend Anna Freud.

I like Joe. I hope she likes me (even if I’m a Yank lol)

You know I’m just kidding, Joe. Not about liking you, though.

I like you too. You seem so intelligent and you stick around. I learn a lot from you.

My mom used to describe a situation where American settlers had to hide from Native Americans and says that had I been alive during those time, I would have gotten the whole family killed. Same for if we were hiding from Nazis during WW2.

That's highly inaccurate. I DID happen here, but it gradually trended away.

That's exactly how our parents' generation referred to it, and what our boomer generation called it for a whole generation even after we had had other wars. "The War".

Korea was "Korea". Vietnam was "Vietnam". But World War Two was simply "the War".


It wasn't until the 1970's ( I recall Dad even saying to mom "which war? We have had so many!" in the seventies)that Americans gradually stopped using the phrase "the War" to mean WWII . So now (now that we had two Gulf wars, and Afghanistan on top of Vietnam and Korea) it finnally sounds quaint to Americans to hear Brits refer to WWII as simply "the War", but that was the norm here in the US for at least the first thirty years after the victories of 1945.

In some parts of the American South "the War" still means the "Civil War".

I grew up in the 1960s. World War II was always World War II—never “the War.”

World War I was referred to as “The Great War” until World War II.

I guess it was, but you had to be really low functioning to qualify. There were no HFA or Aspergers (Hans Asperger only started his work during WW2).

What i have heard was that most children were moved north into the UK countryside, as well as some industries to avoid being bombed by Germany, my mom on the other hand lived as a child in Helsinki in Finland and experienced air raids from the soviet union and witnessed some really horrific things.

In Sweden not much happened since we were neutral (well, most of the time, besides cracking German HQ crypto and sharing that + intelligence with UK/USA) and had started a large rearmament program. At the end of the war our significant bomber fleet was in reach of Berlin so... There were some minor incidents happening at the borders (like unauthorised air intercepts into Finland to take out soviet fighters), but only one city (Stockholm) was hit during the war, don't know if it was deliberate or a mistake.

I grew up in the same 1960s USA that uou did. That's the era I was talking about. When we were kids in that decade the oldsters still called WWII "the war" even though Vietnam was going on right at that time. Don't know how you avoided hearing that. When they talked to you about it, or your history teachers in front of class would call it "World War Two". But when talking to each other the oldsters would still always just call it "the war".

Yes- low functioning autism was known about first, but even that was NOT known about at the time of the War.

Autism was not known about as such until it was discovered by Kanner shortly after WWII in the USA. And even then it took time to be be accepted by the scientific community, and then it didn't become widely known about by the public until the 1960's. Hans Asperger began his work just before and during the War in Austria (which merged with the nation of Nazi Germany on the eve of the war). But it was decades later that his work was recognized outside the German speaking world, and aspergers became joined to autism as part of a spectrum.

The recent book "Neuro Tribes" describes the history.