Neurodiversity and the Curve of Cruelty

Neurodiversity and the Curve of Cruelty

By Dr Jeremy Mellins

There are three points on a curve. The first is invisibility. Before the concept of neurodiversity emerged in the late nineteen nineties, these conditions had no unified frame. Leo Kanner first described autism clinically in nineteen forty-three. The early clinical descriptions of what we now call ADHD emerged across the first half of the twentieth century. People who were autistic or had ADHD were not seen as neurodivergent. They were not disabled. They were stupid, lazy, wilful, possessed, or broken. Society did not accommodate them. It crushed them. The violence was not deliberate in most cases; it was simply the architecture of a scarcity-designed world that had no room for difference. It was not until journalist Harvey Blume and sociologist Judy Singer, working independently in nineteen ninety-eight, gave the concept a name that we began to think about these conditions as part of a broader pattern of neurological diversity, rather than as individual deficits requiring correction.

Then came awareness. The diagnostic categories solidified. We began to recognise autism and ADHD as distinct conditions with their own logic. Recognition and accommodation are not the same thing. We became aware of neurodivergence whilst still demanding neurotypicality. We knew what was happening, yet the world did not change. For families like mine, this is where we live now. We understand our children’s needs. We want to support them. We are exhausted. The scaffolding they require is real and necessary, yet we provide it whilst pinched for time, depleted by work, crushed by laundry and homework and the gap between what we wish to give and what we can manage. The care is there, rationed by scarcity. It is a better place than invisibility. It is still cruel.

The third point is abundance. Here is where the tension lies. In a world where time is genuinely available, where care is not rationed by necessity, we might finally build the structures that neurodivergent people actually need. Not the rigid conformity of the scarcity era, which crushed difference beneath uniformity. Intentional, chosen structure. Structure born of understanding and care. Structure that can flex around hyperfocus and honour the need for autonomy whilst providing the scaffolding that research consistently shows is essential for self-determination to flourish. Picture something as simple as a parent sitting beside a child at the start of a school morning, not rushing, not barking instructions from the hallway whilst hunting for car keys, just calmly building the day’s structure together. Here is what we are doing. Here is when. Here is why. That is not freedom from structure. It is structure delivered with presence, and it changes everything.

Abundance also carries a danger. Remove the rigid external structure, and some people drift. The research is clear on this: neurodivergent people do not spontaneously develop self-determination simply because constraints vanish. Autonomy support is active, intentional, and rooted in relationship. It is not the mere absence of rules. It is care. Care requires presence, attention, and time. The good news is that abundance gives us those things. The question is whether we will choose to spend them wisely.

There is one more dividend worth naming. Abundance, combined with AI-assisted early identification, means we are far more likely to catch neurodivergence early, when it matters most. Earlier diagnosis means earlier support, before the years of misidentification, shame, and accumulated damage to self-concept that so many neurodivergent people carry. When the people doing the supporting, parents, teachers, friends, have the time and the bandwidth to give that support without collapsing under the weight of their own exhaustion, the care becomes something qualitatively different. Not rationed love. Just love.

We will not look backwards for evidence. The diagnosis is too recent, the records too sparse. Go back far enough to find a world without industrial conformity and you find yourself theorising about medieval monks and Renaissance painters with no way to test the theory. We can only look forward.

The curve of cruelty bends, eventually, toward care. Only if we design it that way.