To have another child or not?

Hello

I don’t know if this is too personal a topic but I just wondered how you felt or decided about having another child with the possibility of having another autistic child?

We love our son dearly and we don’t want him to be the only child but we just don’t know how to decide whether we have another or not as we read all different kinds of resources saying what the % of having another autistic child is but they all seem to vary from 4% right up to 20%. Plus we are both almost 40 years of age and I know that adds to the %.

Just looking to see how other people felt in this position

Julie x

Parents
  • I think Plastic makes some interesting points.

    I'm also curious as to why you automatically assume an autistic child will be any better or worse than having a NT child. For example, myself and my brother are ND (my sister is NT) and our autistic tendencies caused so few issues as children that neither of us received a diagnosis until later in life. Due to our delayed speech and introverted tendencies we were deamed dream toddlers by other parents as we sat quietly and behaved wherever we were, whereas a lot of our peers (especially young boys) were unruly. Although we were easy children, on the other side of the family I had a NT cousin who had such severe emotional and behaviour problems he was put in care to safeguard his siblings. Therefore this NT child was a lot more hard work than his ND cousins.

    Even if you were able to accurately predict the likelihood of having another autistic child you wouldn't be able to predict how their autism would present or what their personality would be like.

  • I am not automatically assuming it would be better or worse I don’t know how it would be. My son is non verbal he struggles every day he needs me 100% of the time my worry is my time for another child. 

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