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telling your child their diagnosis

simon

Hi -my son is 8 years old and diagnonsed with high functioning autism 18 months ago. He struggles with social situations, making friends and staying calm as well as managing his immense anxiety. He has a part time LSA at school.  

We have so far not told him his diagnosis as we felt it would not really help him and might be detrimental. We talk in terms of him having difficulties others don't and needing support for this reason.  However, we feel that it may be time to tell him he has ASD and then linked to this maybe to be more open about his diagnosiswith others as well. (we wouldn't do this if he doesn't know himself).

However, we don't want him to feel labelled and for this to have a negative effect. Opinion seems to be divided on whether it is a good idea to tell a child this age when they are high functioning asit is perhaps not so obvious to others with these children.  Not sure if this post makes sense...hope it does! Appreciate thoughts.  Thank you.

Parents

  • Hi, my son age 15, was officially diagnosed last week with Aspergers. He was first referred via his infant school at age six, this is a really long story but mainly because his main difficulties were apparent at school and we accepted him as he was at home, we were told he is just a bit stubborn. The diagnosis process was different then and we were told later that the interview was with a nurse at Camhs not a psychologist.

    I would love that to be the end of the story and that my son's difficulties went away with age, but it only got worse until eighteen months ago he shut down and was eventually diagnosed with depression and referred again for diagnosis.

    We will talk to him and he is in a much better frame of mind than he was a year ago, but I'm anxious that how we handle this will affect how he views himself in the future. We have talked to him last year about the possibility and given him a book about it, but he didn't want to know.

    I would appreciate any advice on how to approach this?

Reply

  • Hi, my son age 15, was officially diagnosed last week with Aspergers. He was first referred via his infant school at age six, this is a really long story but mainly because his main difficulties were apparent at school and we accepted him as he was at home, we were told he is just a bit stubborn. The diagnosis process was different then and we were told later that the interview was with a nurse at Camhs not a psychologist.

    I would love that to be the end of the story and that my son's difficulties went away with age, but it only got worse until eighteen months ago he shut down and was eventually diagnosed with depression and referred again for diagnosis.

    We will talk to him and he is in a much better frame of mind than he was a year ago, but I'm anxious that how we handle this will affect how he views himself in the future. We have talked to him last year about the possibility and given him a book about it, but he didn't want to know.

    I would appreciate any advice on how to approach this?

Children
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