Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, first post but need some advice/help.
Going through the assessment and need to get my parents to complete the informant pre-assessment form but I am having a lot of stress trying to figure out how to tell them I'm going through this process and need them involved. I have a good relationship with them but I can only imagine them taking it badly if I don't get it right.
Do any notes or templates exist online that I could use? Or do you guys have any tips that made it easier if you involved your parents?
I don't know if this is helpful but I actually didn't have my parent fill in the form themselves, because they are not computer literate and I felt that it would cause them a lot of stress to have to download and edit a document, so I filled in the bulk of the form and then just asked them questions (via text) that I didn't know eg. when I started to speak, walk, ride a bike, etc.
Questions that asked things like how teachers treated me at school or what my play style was as a child - my parents wouldn't necessarily know anyway, so I was best placed to answer those parts.
This is what I did too- I texted my mum to ask if we could fill in the gaps when she next called me (at our agreed weekly time, where she always calls me, which feels like an autism diagnosis all on its own ). She gave me the relevant info on my development and what I was like at home as a child and I completed the rest based on my memories of school.
Interestingly, the family informant questions were the only part of my assessment that weren't solidly indicative of autism. My more obvious autistic traits are ones that run in the family (the meltdowns being 'the family bad temper' for example) and so I do wonder just how useful it is to have family input when those family members have always thought "this is normal for us!"