Diagnosis has its disadvantages too though. She might not want to be interrogated by a psychologist or have personal things about her discussed for the purpose ( I didn't) and at 8 she is a bit young to fully understand what is going on.
For me it wasn't worth it. I think waiting till she's a little older and can fully understand what is happening and be part of the decision is a good idea.
well pm me if you have any further questions. That stuff can make things a whole lot worse, and you need to analyse what your daughter has and doesnt have problems with to have a more accurate picture of whether it will be worth the hurt or not.
Yes, I think part the problem with me was my school talked to my parents and it was behind my back. I didn't know what they were testing for (and I was 11, so could have read up on it and made a philosophical decision on whether to get tested ( I would have not). I was then questioned, had my IQ tested etc. Having done this and found out why and answered all those questions felt like I had not only been raped but it had happened because I had not seen the signals and was my fault. I am an intensely private person, and the idea of someone else knowing my IQ and trying to find out what went on in my head was singularly the most horrific experience of my life.
I did not ask for any help, I did not want any help. I would have been much happier if they had left me alone. I have some strong political views and any people who know about this assume it is because I cannot see in black and white (this is an active choice, that I have thought about intellectually not part of a learning disability), or that I have no empathy (again, something i actively choose not to use when thinking about politics).
It has created many problems and thus far solved absolutely nothing for me. The things I do consider a negative aspect/learning difficulty- being unable to guage time and distance, unable to sense rhythm, problems with learning instruments, struggle to plan time or learn to drive, don't have the co-ordination for dancing or sport. These things have not changed at all.
Making sure he wants help is good. But you have to make sure he knows exactly what is involved, and how painful it might be, not just the outcome.
But is she intellectually capable of understanding what a psychiatrist is/does?
I mean if you look in the forum there are a lot of anti-cure people and a lot of people who would be against having support for certain things, as they feel it is a misconception that they should have to change or for various reasons. Is your daughter capable of thinking about the philosophical level at 8? That seems really young.
Berit, from one parent to another, I believe that you should do what feels right for you, if you think getting a diagnosis would help then try everything you can to get one.
I was told my son just has a speech delay with a few isolated characteristics like arm flapping and lining toys up, and was told that he is too young (3) and that I should wait for a year, see where he's at, and ask the questions then. But I just felt like helping him NOW with his speech delay, and if getting an early assessment meant that I could be added to Early Intervention programs and recieve specialized speech therapy for him, then why not? Good luck and I hope you get what you are looking for. :smile:
I have been hurt 1000 times more by my mother's 'parental instincts' trying to do me good than by the collective attempts of many people to hurt me. 'Parental Insincts' don't actually exist, you are just guessing around. The more able your child is to understand, and process situations and articulate what they want, the more informed your guess is.
That is the whole point though DW. If you knew what she did you probably would have no idea what all the fuss was about. Something that you don't even think twice about could result in years of pain and mental anguish that will never go away.
Leaving things alone in any situation where you aren't a 100% sure that the result is not going to make the situation a thousand times worse, is therefore usually the best course of action.
You appear to be ignoring me. So I will try to explain the situation further using the following analogy
Your son is £1000
The diagnosis etc is a small cap share
me and DW a Mom are investment advisors.
The thing about small cap shares is you can make a lot of money on them, but you can also lose a lot of money on them (a diagnosis could make your son a lot better, or a lot worse, or make no difference).
DW a mom is advising you to buy shares because you could make big money. I am advising you to wait a while, you may make less money but it will be lower risk.
Both advisors are trying to help you make money (make things better for your son) but there are two options of how to do that. The advice is complicated by the fact that we are advising without much knowledge of the company you are investing in (ie we don't know how your son will react to the process).
I believe we are both offering equally necessary and useful advice that needs to be considered.
However, you seem to be paying me lip service, being polite in the way you would to the advisor/salesperson when you have already decided you won't take that investment option. This is not anything to do with the actual advice we are giving you. It is to do with the fact that DW a Mom is easier to relate to, because she is a parent, and she is better at selling you an investment (idea) she is passionate about than I am. My advice is getting pushed aside and subordinated because you relate to me less and because I am a worse salesperson, rather than because of the advice. That is extremely frustrating, and it is one of the reasons aspies have so many problems with the real world.
In this situation, having a 10% influence will not help DW. There are two possible outcomes to the debate. She gets her daughter a diagnosis, or she waits a while. It is a win/lose situation. Sure, my comments might benefit others who read this, but in this situation I have lost.
I'm sorry you don't like my communication style, but a lot of people on this site are here precisely because they cannot communicate in a socially acceptable manner. So if you are just going to stay in the parents forum and listen to the parents/ leave altogether you are going to miss half the benefits of this site. And if people keep complaining about the as people who come in this site to the extent that the two sides are portioned off to exclusively aspies/parents the site is going to lose a lot of potential value.
I can think of at least 50 people who know me and what is good for me better than my mother does. For any progress to be made in society NT parents are going to have to start accepting that, particularly in the case of aspies, parents do not always know best. THAT IS NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK ON YOU, THAT IS JUST A GENERAL FACT.
You have no idea what I would give to have the chance to say 'I don't want to do that' and not go through with it.
I know some parent-child relationships are strong, and that sometimes they do have a good grounding. The reason I am so passionately and emphatically railing against this is that I don't believe you can ever assume the parent knows best. The child knows best for his or her self, and the ideal situation is for the child themself to make an informed decision. That is why I am advocating waiting until the child is able to do that. There is a lot of recognition for the strength of a lot of parent-child relationships. The fact that this does not happen even as much as 80% of the time seems to go unrecognised. And when the governemnt or someone acknowledges this fact, they usually go on to say all their measures of how they want to improve parents ability to establish this relationship, because thats how it should be. They need to understand that it is not always possible for parents and children to have a strong relationship. Sometimes the way they think is just too different, and there needs to be a safety net for people like myself who don't flourish in this relationship.
This is especially likely to happen when NT adults have AS parents, because they are neurogically different. So rather than simply a generation gap the whole way of thinking is alien.
As my view is the voice of the minority, I need to make it heard further and louder than an opinion which is already well accepted (as yours is in this case). That is why I am being so forceful about it.
Another thing that concerns me is that when a mother who has already made the decision about what she wants her child to do explains what is going to happen to the child, she does so from a very biased perspective. She may (not for definate, but I think there is a high chance) go into extreme detail about possible benefits which may never materialise and which she has no idea about the probablity on. She may also pay down the extent to which the questions can be too intrusive. She may also not fully explain the future ramifications that could happen of someone holding such personal data. Even if she tries to make all these parts, unless her child has a mensa member IQ, she is not going to be able to fully understand everything. Also she may be at an age where she wants to please her mother to be accepted, so if her mother reacts badly to her saying 'I don't want to' she may easily change her mind.
I am glad your son went through the process OK. But I wouldn't rule out the fact that he might feel hurt later. Remember people from 10/11 + get much more touchy about their privacy than children are because of puberty etc, they are less likely to want to talk about feelings and such. He might be hurt about someone knowing the things he said back then. I doubt he will go through what I went through but if you can imagine the embarrassment of if your mum got out your kid videos in front of your boyfriend timesed by a thousand, that is still a possibility.
I will try to be less aggressive in my approach, but I will not stop trying to persuade you towards my view. I will accept it when it is too late to change. Until then I will do my best.
In answer to your question I think its a gender thing. Personally I am closer to my father even though he hasn't lived with me for 7 years. I think aspies can tend to be more gender-neutral.
If they are not a genius they have to be at least 12 to fully understand everything. And then only if you are explaining it in a non-biased way.
I could understand if this was a life and death situation, or concerning physical health or a different disability like dyslexia. But, while the system needs a diagnosis to give her full support, YOU don't and you can improve her situation a lot without one.
Since I have a year to convince you, maybe we should cool of a little on this topic and discuss strategies which you could implement in the meantime. It will get us away from you feeling harrassed, and maybe give me more information and give you more confidence in my opinions as we can find some common ground.
Is there any major problem we might be able to try and come up with solutions to?
The best advice I can give you is to try and always have someone else tell the child the same thing who is biased the other way and both try and be neutral. Then he hopefully won't be torn but the bias will balance out.
Or, write out what you are going to say, and show it to someone who disagrees with you, and then work together to get the balance right.
This isn't relevant but I was once talking to a canadian crimminal lawyer who told me about one of his cases of sexual abuse on a child. He was prosecuting, and the guy was guilty. He was going to lose the case because the defense showed that the social worker was 'leading' the child. The child said she had been sexually molested. It was obvious to the whole crowd that this was not her words- a child of six or 7 wouldnt understand sexually molested it had to be the social worker's words.
In the end the guy got convicted because of this at the last minute:
Defense Lawyer (sarcastically): And I bet your uncle was smiling too wasn't he?
Child: *looks down, frowns, thinks* I don't know I was looking at his hand.
If a trained social worker on a top priority case can't avoid leading the child God help everyone else.
I think if he has improved so much up to now you probably made the right choice. Even if he has some pain later, it won't be as intense as it is already in the past, and he has clearly had some benefit from it which I haven't had much really.
The invitation to look for a solution was an open one. So if anything particular springs to mind..
LOL Only if you subscribe to the french philosophy on law (which I don't).
French priorities 1) Truth 2) Justice
English priorities 1) Justice 2) The truth
ie if justice requires that privacy obstcructs the path of truth-finding so be it.
What if you are precisely the person she wouldn't want to know?