This whole “the Amish prove it’s Tylenol” thing is so fucking wild to me as someone who’s grandmother’s family is entirely ex-anabaptists. (Anabaptist and Plain Folk are umbrella terms for Amish adjacent groups whose practices vary. Anabaptist is a wider net than Plain Folk but I’m trying to use them correctly so bear with me please. )
When I was a kid growing up, whenever me, my brother, my dad, his brother or his uncle said or did clearly autistic things, he’d just shrug and say, “I guess we’re still just genetically Amish.”
Though being excommunicated means strictly speaking I’m unlikely to meet my more distant cousins still in those communities, my dad did learn the specific German dialectic that Plain Folks tend to speak from his ex-communicated grandmother and worked with Amish businesses who wanted to branch out into the “English” world when I was a kid. This meant I actually got to meat a fair number of Amish folks growing up. Despite hurdles in languages kids my age proudly shared their beloved animals with me which I appreciate as an animal autistic myself. They were weirdly easier to understand in some fundamental ways, in retrospect because they don’t communicate like most allistics do even if I can’t say confidently whether or not they were autistic themselves.
My dad has since come to terms with being autistic. We agree that the “Amish side” of our family is also genetic link to us being autistic. Dad expressed that it makes sense to him that during the Industrial Revolution a bunch of neurodivergent people said “no thank you” and formed their own group specifically to avoid the literal noise and profound changes in their way of life.
I would bet if you actually sat everyone down and forced them through an assessment, plain folk and ex-plain folk are probably way way more neurodivergent on average than the general population. I genuinely feel like “the Amish” are proof that being autistic HAS TO be genetic because like, come on they don’t even use rubber. Like WHAT ELSE COULD IT BE AT THAT POINT.
(Feel free to use this when arguing with shitty relatives btw, I’m happy to be some kinda autistic Amish token or whatever. Hell DM me if you want more info. I won’t dox myself but like I can answer a few questions if it means I can still buy Tylenol everywhere lol. )
