Aspies For Freedom

I did tell my son as soon as he was old enough to understand.

To be honest she may not ask questions and just keep wondering. I always wondered as a child, but I did not communicate well and it never occured to me to ask someone why I was different.

They would not have had an answer anyway at that moment in time. (The 1970's) :roll:

Hee hee!  When my son was in 7th grade, he was one of four boys with noticeable Aspie traits, who had great fun at recess every day pretending to be Jedi Knights.  They set up an imaginary Jedi Academy and recruited other kids to be their Padawan apprentices.   :grin:

I wasn't told anything about autism when I was a child, and as a result, I developed a rather unrealistic view of the world and thought that people were much more accepting of diversity than they actually were.

Check out this article: http://www.autismmidtenn.org/html/module...cle&sid=56

It's all about introducing a child to his/her diagnosis of autism.

Try this one, they changed the site around since I had it bookmarked

http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/general...arted.html

A bit like my son: he decided his school was Hogwarth, he was of course Harry Potter, they were learning magic and not boring maths and English  :wink:

I agree with Amy: I told my son as soon as possible too. He was diagnosed when he was 8. After 6 months he knew everything about Asperger.
Knowing his dx empowered him. He read books written by Aspie kids, asked questions, found similarities (both with me and the father  :smile: ) and was very happy to be different.

Funny because the school (his EX school  :mad: ) always criticised us for the way we gave our son the keys for his own self-understanding. Schools do not like self-advocacy, oh no, they do not like it at all. Teachers would have preferred him considering himself a "freak" or a "weirdo" without knowing why, but this way they wouldn't have had to answer his questions... or (even worse) read books about AS.

I suggest you tell your kids as soon as they are able to understand, there's a lot of support out there, lots of books, videos, Internet stuff. Be positive about it: different does not mean less, as my son wisely taught me.  :wink:

Martina

I have not told my son, for several reasons.

I was not aware of AS until he was 12 years old; because my parents never told me about autism, I grew up thinking that society accepted aspies as normal, and I never saw anything unusual in my son's behavior.  The teachers made occasional comments about "special needs," but I just thought, okay, he's a bit hyper sometimes, what's the big deal about it?

By the time I understood that the AS diagnosis was becoming routine for children who behaved like most of the people in my family, I saw it as a dangerous prejudice, and I did not want to have my son diagnosed because of the likelihood of discrimination.  At that point, he was reasonably well adjusted socially and emotionally, and I didn't see any benefit whatsoever to having him officially labeled as impaired.

But the main reason why I have not told him is because I don't want him to have to feel like this:

http://elmindreda.blogspot.com/2006/02/t...aidon.html

I know that it's better to understand the ugly face of prejudice than to go through life being dangerously ignorant, but I just want him to be able to keep his innocent childhood a little while longer...

Bonnie, does anyone else know that could tell him by mistake?
I told a child by mistake last year as I had no idea that he didn't know. (This was online). His mother hadn't told him, but he was being taken to autism events with other aspies. He spoke to me with others that had introduced him as an aspie. So I didn't in any way suspect that he wouldn't know himself.

It would always be better to be told by parents.
As a side note the child was happy about it, and said everything made more sense now.

Very true.  Maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but I've been hoping that things will change a lot in the near future, so that gloom and doom wouldn't be the first things he saw when he started reading about autism on the Internet.

edit: I should add that my kids are well aware that people have different ways of learning and thinking.  We have talked about issues such as having stronger interests than others, feeling inertia when changing focus from one activity to another, synesthesia, having music stuck in one's head, and so forth.  My son is comfortable with describing himself as a kinesthetic learner who thinks in pictures.  He just doesn't know that there are ignorant people who see that as abnormal.

Hi aspiemom, sounds like you are doing a great job with your son. :smile:

I didn't get diagnosed until very recently, as a consequence of discovering I had an autoimmune disease.  When I was growing up, (60's) "autism" was just another word for "retarded".  But I come from a very non-conformist family and there was always a lot of love and respect there, so home was my favourite place to be.  

Lauren says she feels empowered in knowing why she doesn't act like her peers are expected to act.  I feel the same way, although I find age also is very freeing: an older lady is allowed to be eccentric, whereas I felt pressured to "be like everybody else" when I was younger and living away from home for the first time.

Alison

That's interesting Flare. My lad was dxed at age 2 with 'severe' autism. the severe part doesnt apply any more, or maybe it was a load of tosh to begine with (!!) but I'm struggling to know when would be the right time to share his dx more specifically than I have done. he's coming up to 8 now.

He faced an unpleasant episode of discrimination this week which has made me think once again, but would being told it was because he was autistic actually have made the situation any better? it would still have been horrid.

so i dont really know what to do.

I dont' really remember when I was told I had AS. Maybe it was in Special Ed. I just figured I was different, it really wasn't an issue until now, because now I'm more aware of the discrimination against Auties/Aspies. I think I just considered myself to be a gaming nerd.

My son was told at the conclusion of the evaluation process that it seemed his brain worked different from other kids, and the school was now going to give him extra help because of that.  We told him it wasn't better or worse, overall, just different.  He has heard the name of the tentative diagnosis, Aspergers, and knows it is part of what is known as the Autistic spectrum, but mostly we talk about how his brain works different.

I think he's found it useful.  I've heard him tell a frustrated friend when they couldn't work something out, "sorry, my brain works different."  Cute.  And his friends "get" it.

I am sorry to hear that, about the who should know and who should not.  I've told my son's grandparents and the parents of his friends ... and I wouldn't have if it had seemed in any way to make him uncomfortable, but it  doesn't.  He accepts that it helps them all understand him.  Now, that may change as he gets older and reaches a more self-conscious age, but I can't undo what has been done.

So, I guess my question is this:  did it ALWAYS bother you, or is the discomfort with them knowing something that evolved over time?  If it's the later, I guess I should be much more careful in the future.  If it's the former, I'll continue to decide based on how my son seems to feel about it.