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Should I tell my 8 year old son what's going on and that he might be autistic?

NAS75467

I have been invited to an initial assessment (via zoom) and they have asked that my son is present - but I cannot find out what they are going to ask him in the meeting. When I rang, the receptionist told me it was to go through the forms I filled in but I wouldn't want him to see what I wrote on the forms as he might be upset as it tackled some tricky subjects.  I am reluctant to involve my son as I have never mentioned to him that he might be autistic. Is it better to broach the subject or will the paediatrician just ask some basic questions and not mentioned th 'a' word? I don't really want him to know - I was just going to say it was a basic developmental assessment.

Parents

  • Hi. I might be coming late to this but in case others in the same situation are reading….

    At 8 we didn’t tell our son what the assessments were for, simply that some doctors deal with brains and how people think, and they were interested in meeting him to see how his brain worked. There was no diagnosis then but had there been we would have shared it with him.

    Over the last three years we’ve slowly shared with him the idea that he might be on the spectrum and it was easy to explain as one of his best friends is too. So when it was time for another assessment age 11 he knew fully about it. That said, I would NOT have wanted him there when we did the developmental history zoom call as I had to share all his differences and struggles and even I found it quite harrowing. He was very pleased with the outcome and I would absolutely share a diagnosis of anything with a child as the more you know the less scary something is  

Reply

  • Hi. I might be coming late to this but in case others in the same situation are reading….

    At 8 we didn’t tell our son what the assessments were for, simply that some doctors deal with brains and how people think, and they were interested in meeting him to see how his brain worked. There was no diagnosis then but had there been we would have shared it with him.

    Over the last three years we’ve slowly shared with him the idea that he might be on the spectrum and it was easy to explain as one of his best friends is too. So when it was time for another assessment age 11 he knew fully about it. That said, I would NOT have wanted him there when we did the developmental history zoom call as I had to share all his differences and struggles and even I found it quite harrowing. He was very pleased with the outcome and I would absolutely share a diagnosis of anything with a child as the more you know the less scary something is  

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