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When to tell your kids you're autistic

chuckalicious

I'm 38 and high functioning autistic. I'm married, have a job and have 2 children aged 7 and 5.

It has become clear that I'm struggling to play with my kids and relax around them. They are responding to this by being more demanding around me and competing for my attention, which creates a very fractious atmosphere at home which is wearing us as a family down. We are at the stage where everyone at home is more relaxed when I'm not there, which is obviously upsetting, especially as I'd give anything to feel normal in terms of being a part of my family.

This has given my eldest daughter very bad anxiety and she fears being separated from me, whether that be me going to the shops or leaving her bedroom at night. It is so bad at the moment that my wife and I are discussing whether or not we need to separate so I'm not around the kids, to save them from this. This is absolutely heartbreaking.

My children don't know there's anything "different" about me, but I do wonder when would be the right time to at least start explaining that "dad sometimes finds things like this hard but loves you very much" sort of thing.

We are going to seek professional, private advice and help to see if we can work this out but in the meantime I wanted to know any of your thoughts if you have experience in this kind of thing.

Thanks.

  • Hi

    This is the reason I got diagnosed - I was losingh the ability to interact with my growing daughter because my mask that meant I could work with adults wasn't capable of adapting fast enough to keep up with a fast changing child.

    There's no need to tell them anything - they already know and telling them just reinforces that there's a problem.

    What we did was talk about the things I was good at and terrible at - so my wife and I could share the responsibilities to give the best experience for our daughter.

    I'm good at the technical stuff like reading with her, warm hugs before bedtime, taking her to the park, getting her on the climbing frames, playing chase, playing board games with her to engineer it so she won by a narrow margin, doing bathtime and making a mess with the foam, rough & tumble on the floor, helping with models for school etc.

    My wife did all the 'soft skills' stuff like dealing with boo-boos, listening to her problems, doing the school interfacing, talking to the other parents, organising birthday parties, knowing who her friends are etc.

    We've turned out a very well balanced young lady who's almost 20 now.