Hi, I'm Becky and I have a 16yr old son Nathan, who has Aspergers & epilepsy.
From the age of 2-3 I always thought he was different as he never joined in to play with other children & if I invited any round to the house to play, he'd just carry on what he was doing & totally ignore them as if they were invisible. As he's an only child I thought it was something I was doing wrong.
When he started primary school the teachers told me they thought he was on the autistic spectrum, but when I got in touch with the Consultant Paediatrician to tell him what the teachers had said he just said he didn't believe my son was autistic - and they don't like to 'label' children.
Fast forward 11 years, that specialist has now retired and the new one acknowledges my son has Aspergers. I'm annoyed as my son only got 2 pass grades out of 9 in his mock GCSEs - he'd have been entitled to a reader & a scribe if he'd been diagnosed earlier. I'm so stressed now he's trying to do his actual GCSE's - he's no idea of how to manage his time so I've had to teach him using a countdown cooking timer how long to spend on each question - he'd only done HALF of most of the mock exams papers even with the 25% extra time I managed to get for him! I've virtually been teaching him from home, going through past GCSE papers and hired a private Maths tutor - who can 'get' the way he thinks because she's autistic.
I'm trying to be positive & not bitter about the previous specialist being 'old school', but now I'm faced with a 16yr old who won't go anywhere without his mummy, has panic attacks in social situations & has temper tantrums as he can't express his emotions - it's like having a 14stone 5ft8 four year old sometimes. I could have got a social skills co-ordinator for him if I'd known his actual issues. He now sees a Speech Therapist but apart from that, all the new specialist said was that it was "time I cut the umbilical cord" - easier said than done!
