Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, I'm the mum of a 12 year old boy, just been recommended a diagnosis of ASD by CAMHS in our initial appointment and currently waiting for our next appointment to come through. My son's school has been excellent in its SEN provision since he started there 15 months ago. He has good support, but is struggling in a secondary school setting. We have known from nursery that our son exhibited ADS traits, as it was flagged to us several times, but his father (who himself exhibits these traits and will now admit this) was reluctant to get our son seen and, since he works in a school, I trusted his judgement on this and accepted it, as he didn't want our son labelled. It's become apparent over time that in order to help our son, we had to follow the school's recommendation and get him properly assessed. He did so well coping at primary school, it was a small, gentle village school. He is now at a mixed secondary school and really struggles with social behaviour, has some OCD which distresses him, has had a couple of serious incidents where he's become obsessed with another child and followed them around and behaved inappropriately towards them. He is a good, kind, sweet, intelligent boy and I will be relieved, for him, and for our family, to receive the diagnosis. I'm posting here as am extremely new to all this, this is the first Forum I've posted on, and wondered what the best first steps are in terms of building a community of support for my son and for the family. Thanks for any help/replies.
Hi,
Welcome to the forum! You will find lots of information and people who have similar experience to you here,
It is great that your sons school is being supportive (alot aren't) as for the obsession over different children this can be quite common in asd children, my daughter does this she allows herself one friend and will not leave her alone and gets extremely upset if she is rejected by that child which is starting to become a problem. We are also currently pursuing diagnosis and have known since a very young age that our daughter was I all likelihood asd but my partner didn't want her diagnosed at a young age as he didn't want that to be the first thing school saw when she started, unfortunately she became so adept at masking getting help now is difficult!
Look for local support groups in your area these can be really helpful in that you meet others in similar situations and can also find alot of practical advice on ways to help your son at home.
Wishing you all the best
Thanks for your reply. It's so helpful even just to know that there are other parents dealing with the same things. All my mum friends have children who seem to be flying at secondary school and sometimes I feel I have no desire to speak to them about the things we are finding hard. I will look for groups local to our area.
I hope that your daughter receives her diagnosis and the support she needs.