The ADHD diagnosis at that age is pretty questionable because ADHD itself is pretty loose thing to begin with:
Prior to the establishment and promotion of ADHD as a psychiatric disorder, the labels “minimal brain dysfunction” (MBD), “hyperactivity” (HA), and “learning disability” (LD) were diagnostic terms for children with hard-to-manage behaviors. At the ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
With autism there are less open critiques of it but still, plenty of issues. For one, they do claim that early screening increases the likelihood of correct diagnosis. But what they dont mention is that a significant amount of people diagnosed as children no longer display autism symptoms in adulthood. They effectively grew out of it. This should be impossible if autism is a developmental disorder with lifetime prevalence. In addition to that, autism can be very hard to distinguish from other conditions, especially in older people.
Although autism is generally assumed to be lifelong, there is evidence that 3 - 25% of children who meet clear diagnostic criteria for ASD will enter the typical range of cognitive, adaptive and social skills by adolescence, displaying no symptoms of autism.
Just like with ADHD, autism research is a confounding mish mash of competing ideas and claims, many of which make little sense. There are research camps, each with their own pet-explanation for how autism works and what it is, just like with ADHD. For instance there is one camp that believes one of the primary features of autism is a lack of "theory of mind," which is to say, an inability to simulate other peoples minds in your own mind and then acting based on the assumption that other people exist apart from you. However, evidence for this is questionable, here is a PDF that tackles that issue:
"LaCroix - Autism and the Pseudoscience of Mind - Preprint - 04 Dec 2023"
There are also people questioning the existence of autism altogether, just like with ADHD. So to get back to your question: Was it the right call to diagnose you at age 5 with autism? It depends. Pragmatically speaking, diagnoses, even if they are bullshit, are very helpful in getting access to government resources to assist your child if it has any difficulties. I would say, if your parents and the people diagnosing you thought like that, then it might have been justified.
Other than that, as a serious label of lifelong disability? No, not really. The risk of damage is too high. The stigma of the diagnosis, being put through shit like special ED, subsequent bullying and many other stressors that affect the person their entire life, all based on a guess done by some fat dyke after watching a boy play with toys for an hour - yeah nah, not proper. Not a chance.
I am not denying that people have issues, but ultimately each patient should be treated on a case by case basis. Unfortunately this would put a huge burden on parents and medical staff. It is simply impossible to invest that much energy into each case. And really, that would have been your parents job primarily. But it's easier to just give your child meds that shut it up instead of reading books and being hyper-involved into trying to figure out how to best support it. Most parents do only what they must and take a very hands of approach to their kids. As long as the brats are fed, clothed and quiet they are doing a spankin job as far as they are concerned.
Finally at the end of this, I want to tack on a BP related thing about autism.
1. its mostly diagnosed in boys. Due to anti-male bias, boys are over policed by society, we know that already
2. in the last 20 years, women suddenly wanted their slice of the mental illness cake and began claiming that there are only more diagnosed boys because girls are being discriminated against
a) allegedly the diagnostic criteria are based on male presentation only
b) allegedly girls present differently and "hide" their autism better because instead of trains they hyperfixate on other people
c) allegedly diagnostic centers, doctors etc discriminate against women
If you go into online autism spaces, they are teeming with the opposite of what you'd expect when you look at the numbers. Numerically you would expect a lot of men, in particular ethnic men, chinese men etc since these are the numerically biggest groups diagnosed with autism. Further you would expect to find that most users would be unemployed or at least underemployed.
Instead you find a disproportionate amount of quirky too kool for skool upper class white women, many of which have their own families with kids, careers, even businesses. These women dominate autism subreddits and tone police and report any content that they dont like, such as autistic men talking about dating struggles with women or about how "NT" people bully them. On YT you find the same thing. Everyone that champions autism in the ever more delulu attention whoring competition that is social media turns out to be a white middle to upper class person with decent looks and most of them are women too. Further, virtually all of them are left to far left presenting politically speaking.
This discrepancy between the data and the public facing side of autism, has not gone unnoticed. Recently Uta Frith, a dinosaur of autism research in her own right, came out and openly critiqued everything I mentioned prior: The idea that women are underdiagnosed due to gender discrimination, that girls somehow presented differently from boys and and and. Naturally she got pushback. Nevertheless, at least she did something, rare W for a woman I guess, big clap.
You can read what she said here:
The autism spectrum has widened to the point of collapse, affecting how teachers should support autistic pupils in the classroom, researcher Uta Frith tells Helen Amass
www.tes.com
and here is one video reply by some person about it:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAM-WJXcuD8
At your leisure, I am Geckobus and I'm about to eat fried chicken.
Good Night.

