What is disability?

A friend of mine told me she only realised her cousin had ADHD when she started working with young people with that now neatly-labelled learning disability in the 1990s. She and her cousin were children of the 1950s. She didn't recognise - and neither did anyone else in the family - the tantrums, the anxiety, the lack of concentration and the difficulties at school that all pointed towards a quite severe learning disability.

In my family, we had a cousin who was a bit odd. He was the late and only child of elderly parents: mother about 40, father nearer 60. He went to school, did okay, got a job with Scotrail and kind of vanished off the radar - or at least, our radar. We only found out that he was still around - and there was a problem - when we were contacted by the police who told us his mother (our mother's sister) was in hospital and asked us to go and visit. This was in the late 80s. My sister and brother went to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow (I was away, as usual). They sat in a corridor waiting to be told what was going on. When our cousin appeared, my brother said: 'Clock the sannies.' Yes, the cousin was wearing a blazer, collar and tie, neatly pressed trousers - and school sandshoes. It was, frankly, the only indication of anything unusual. And it took my brother, not a teacher but used to working with many types of people, to spot what the problem was. 

Asperger's Syndrome. 

The cousin had difficulty in communicating. He didn't like it when strange situations arose (like finding yourself in a hospital because your mother is ill, talking to people you don't really know). He didn't make eye contact with my brother or sister. He was happy at home, where he had an amazing railway set-up with a room to itself. The rest of the house was taken up with black bags full of rubbish that hadn't been discarded. He couldn't really be trusted to look after his mother - or himself - so carers were organised. (His father had died a long time ago). Last we heard, he was living in the same house 20 years later. 

I suppose it's an example of how the traditional family has collapsed, although I see it differently: people are entitled to do their own thing and shouldn't have to resort to the 19th century family model in which we all - apparently - looked after each other. That never worked for my family anyway: we were industrial workers and went where the work was. My 4 times back great-grandmother died in the St Leonard's Workhouse in Leith in her 80s. She'd been married and widowed twice, had 9 children and not one of them was able to look after her in her old age. 

Isn't capitalism great?