Advice for sharing recent diagnosis with Son (8 Years old)

Hi Naomi I see you wrote this 10 days ago so I'm not sure if this advice will be too late. However in case you or anyone else reading is interested, I have recently shared with my 9 year old girl her diagnosis (I told her soon after diagnosis).  For context, my daughter had been having some terrible friendship issues for about a year beforehand, was ostracised and was extremely down about herself. She had started saying 'I know I'm different' and saying she doesn't understand how to have friends etc etc so it was a heart breaking time before the diagnosis. I write all that because I think it will depend on whether or not your son is expressing he thinks he's different, asking questions about himself etc as to whether or not it's the right time (only you can decide of course).

The advice I received was to start off by saying something positive about them, whatever is relevant to your particular child but it could be something like 'you know how you are amazing at remembering bus timetables' or whatever it is! Then go on to say you've found out that the reason they are like that is because they have something called autism. Then you could tell them what autism is, when I did this I made sure I never used the word disability, I said it was a difference in the way the brain works and the way she sees the world. I also made sure I told her there are many people with autism in the world, at her school there were likely to be at least one autistic child in most classes (I happen to know there are several in her class already so that helped!) and then we spoke for a while about the many famous and successful people who have autism. I did also highlight to her that autism would explain why she finds certain things difficult (in her case friendship and meltdowns) and she was very relieved t know there was a reason she was different to her peers in these respects.

This is where I left it for now, as I know that over the years there will be many other things that crop up that she will ask about and didn't want to bombard her with information at this early stage. 

Hi Naomi I see you wrote this 10 days ago so I'm not sure if this advice will be too late. However in case you or anyone else reading is interested, I have recently shared with my 9 year old girl her diagnosis (I told her soon after diagnosis).  For context, my daughter had been having some terrible friendship issues for about a year beforehand, was ostracised and was extremely down about herself. She had started saying 'I know I'm different' and saying she doesn't understand how to have friends etc etc so it was a heart breaking time before the diagnosis. I write all that because I think it will depend on whether or not your son is expressing he thinks he's different, asking questions about himself etc as to whether or not it's the right time (only you can decide of course).

The advice I received was to start off by saying something positive about them, whatever is relevant to your particular child but it could be something like 'you know how you are amazing at remembering bus timetables' or whatever it is! Then go on to say you've found out that the reason they are like that is because they have something called autism. Then you could tell them what autism is, when I did this I made sure I never used the word disability, I said it was a difference in the way the brain works and the way she sees the world. I also made sure I told her there are many people with autism in the world, at her school there were likely to be at least one autistic child in most classes (I happen to know there are several in her class already so that helped!) and then we spoke for a while about the many famous and successful people who have autism. I did also highlight to her that autism would explain why she finds certain things difficult (in her case friendship and meltdowns) and she was very relieved t know there was a reason she was different to her peers in these respects.

This is where I left it for now, as I know that over the years there will be many other things that crop up that she will ask about and didn't want to bombard her with information at this early stage.