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When I was a girl

When I was a girl nobody was on the autistic spectrum, nobody had hyper-activity, nobody had Aspergers or OCD.  We just had normal little boys who were sometimes full of energy and liveliness who didn't like being cooped up in a classroom.  Who didn't want to read and write and do math, but wanted to grow up quickly and work on the farm with their Dad. Now there is this utter nonsense of labelling children for life with something which is actually quite normal and it doesn't do them any good.  Give a child a label and they will conform to it and this just intensifies any underlying problem which may or may not be there. In my day they didn't do that, but they did label people as failures and sent them to Secondary schools.  I went to one for two years but then passed the 13+ exam and escaped to the Grammar School.  When we were 50 the adults who had been to the Secondary School met up for a reunion and I was struck by how many of them were very bitter about the way they had been treated, even though many of them had become successful business men.  We should stop labelling children and adults alike.  Get to know them and accept them for who they really are.

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