Our son was diagnosed about the time he started school and over the time he has been in school he has become much better at dealing with his day-to-day (mainly sensory issues and control of emotions). He still has bad days and often spends all day at school and the childminder masking and then all the emotion floods out when he gets home in the evening.
We did start to approach the subject of autism a couple of times. We once had a conversation with him where he did show an appreciation of the fact that noises affected him lots more than they did his peers but that was about as much as we discussed. Another time he overheard his Mum and I talking about his favourite strongman who is autistic and he asked what that meant.
We don't want to bring autism up in a way that is going to end up defining him, but equally if he is noticing ways that he seems different from his peers (I am going through assessment at the moment and remember how I felt very different to other kids when I was young) I don't know if having that knowledge will make him understand why a little better. We also don't want to leave it too late that he might react badly that we never told him before.
Most of me thinks (hopes) that it will be obvious when the time is right, but there is a small part of me (the massive overthinker/worrier) that says I should be thinking about it is appropriate to do so. Does anyone have any advice or experience they can share about how and when we should be talking to him about his diagnosis?
