Published on 12, July, 2020
Good afternoon everyone,
I'm completely new here so please bear with me. My partner and I were told three days ago that our little boy is highly likely to have ASD. He is younger than school age so we have a portage worker monitoring our child and he will start school in September. We are due to have a gp appointment in the next week to be referred to a paediatrician.
I am feeling such a bag of different emotions; relief predominantly as it's something we have suspected for a long time. Guilt, could I have helped him more all this time? Burnout, I just want to organise everything now so his transition into school is super smooth. Fear, I want him to have lasting friendships and discover passions and have a world around him that let's him be his authentic self.
Could someone please tell me if this is all normal. No one is guaranteed an easy ride in life, I suppose its just a parents way that we want to click our fingers and make everything perfect.
I would so appreciate anyone with an autistic child or even more so, if a person with ASD could give me any advice how to be the best mummy I can be to my son. My husband and I are reading every day and following our sons lead with play. Any and all advice would be eternally appreciated.
Thank you so much in advance,
Mummy to a rockstar/super hero/astronaut/pirate <3
Hi NAS73291,
I'm sorry to hear that you've been feeling some of these emotions. It's really understandable and you're not alone in this.
You may find the following page our website useful:
https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/diagnosis/post-diagnosis-support
You may also like to contact our Parent to Parent service who offers emotional support to parents and carers of children or adults with autism. This service is confidential and run by trained parent volunteers who are all parents themselves of a child or adult with autism .
You contact the team on 0808 800 4106. Please leave a message and the team will call you back as soon as possible at a time that suits you, including evenings and weekends. Alternatively you can use contact the team via web form: https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/help-and-support/parent-to-parent
All the best,
Chloe Mod
Hi there,
I'm not a parent but I am autistic I was diagnosed at the end of march this year, I just want to say that it's a really great thing you're getting him diagnosed this young because you'll be able to get him access to all the help he needs should he need it.
There are parents of autistic children on here that have experience so why don't you fill out your profile on here a bit more and become part of the community on here there's always lots of good information floating around on here.
I know this isn't anything in terms of advice but I'm not a parent and giving advice on this would be out of my league so to speak, I think the most I would say is just be there when he needs to you to be take REAL interest in the things he does as he grows up I never had that and that was one of the things that upset me the most is that no one was interested in what I was interested and I didn't know how to go about finding people that were. It will be good for him to have someone there that he can talk about his interests with even if you are "just" his mum :)