to mention what I believe to be SN in a friend's child?

[worrywortisworrying]

OK... I'm putting this in AIBU not because I want a bun fight, but that I need advice quickly from ALL MNers. If it turns nasty, I will ask for the thread to be pulled.

I need advice TONIGHT on what I should say to a friend.

Situation:
My friend has a child a little older than my DS. She is struggling terribly with him. SHe wants to 'chat' tonight as she's had a very tough day (I am more than happy to do this). The trouble is, I believe her son is ASD (my son is, has a diagnosis now and we are getting more appropriate help (even though it's still tough sometimes) because we know how to respond / react to DS and how to manage certain situations.). Her DS is just like mine.

I do not think my friend has EVER considered ASD (even though I've talked about my DS AT LENGTH!). In fact, I would go to say, she's been a little 'sorry' for me (what with my ASD child but that's another matter!)

He is struggling at school A LOT and she has resorted to smacking him as she's frustrated he won't (I believe CAN'T) do what she wants him to do.
(I should add: I don't SEE this friend too much, we mostly telephone as while we are old friends, we don't live very close to each other now)

When she phones tonight, I want to say: Look, You need to ask for an assessment. You need to contact the Child Development Centre. If it comes back that it's not ASD, then great, but you need to DO SOMETHING NOW.

But, I'm not sure if I'm overstepping the mark BIG TIME.

We don't really have mutual friends anymore, so no idea what the school are / aren't saying to her.

AIBU to say - completely outright - that she should seek an assessment now?
(Her DS is 5. Mine is 4. One school year difference, but less than that in real terms).

Please just - yes, I should say something or No, I should listen, but nothing else.

I am also slightly wanting to slap this lady, I'm afraid. As the parent of a child with ASD myself I always struggle to understand why people interpret any suggestion of SN as an insult to them/their child. If someone said to them I think your child may have cancer, the reaction would be to run to the nearest hospital; any suggestion of ASD and umbrage gets taken, how dare you etc. It's illogical and shows that they stigmatise the condition. Which is unhelpful, especially to their children. I also don;t understand the impulse to blame the child, swear at him etc when it is obvious he needs help.
Having said all that I think you have done a very difficult thing and I hope it bears fruit. You have been a better friend than she deserves.

Sorry, but if I was your friend I would be quite annoyed as well. Yes her son sounds like hard work and i'm not saying he isn't on the asd spectrum, but it isn't your place to point that out. It's more than likely he's just a 5 year old who may lack discipline, structure etc at home / school, be a bit hyper etc. maybe the mums lacks support from husband / family, has other stresses in her live, work, other kids, etc etc and needs support not criticism on how she treats her son / disciplines him and what may or may not be 'wrong' with him. Basically it's not your place to say and I too would be offended, however I apperciate your intentions were good.

Thankyou all.

Am feeling terrible now. In a way, I'm glad I said it, but I won't call her and I don't think she will call me and I don't know of any other way (other than FB) we would stay in touch. And I do think I was a bit of a 'let off steam' person for her.

I'm not really regretting the 'normal' comment, but I am regretting saying 'yes' when she asked me if her DS was special. I should have said No. Just a bit differnet. I shouldn't have engaged in special.

In a way, I make myself deal with people who don't deal with SEN well... It's like I'm arming myself for what my DS might encounter. I need to arm him as well as I can with what he's likely to encounter .

I feel I've handled this very badly. I shouldn't ever have said her son was special, or atleast agreed with her saying it.... She will find that very hard. I didn't mean to do that.

For once, I'm hoping to be outed on MN.

BIGWHEEL, really, it's not a friends place to suggest to someone, who is very clearly struggling and in denial, that it's time to get help (whatever the reasonn for her sons behaviour and her behaviour, something needs to be done)?

Surely that's one of the things we needourfriends for - to tell us things we don't want to hear, but need to hear.

I am sorry it didn't go well but as I am sure you can see by the wide range of advice given by the MN'ers that there isn't a right way to handle situations like this. You just have to do what you think is right and go for it. There is no need to beat yourself up over this, you did what you thought was best. The 'not normal' comment wasn't great but considering the 'special' comment was very restrained indeed.
Don't worry about it any more. Have a or a or both

I think you are being a bit hard on yourself
No matter how you put it, essentially you would still be saying the same thing, something that she really doesn't want to hear
I'd let the dust settle a bit
If you feel you want to extend the olive branch, then maybe call or email and say you felt you didn't deal with it very well, but that you are concerned how she is coping and you wanted to ensure she has the best support and had considered all the options

Bigwheel - with the best will in the world, every single pointer says there is a problem.

The lack of eye contact, the poor speech, the agression, the lack of emotion, the lack of any sort of play (and remember, my DS has HFA: But he will still engage in hide and seek and role play etc). This child (academically a year above) will not do any of that. The school are patently tearing their hair out. I truly wouldn't be putting myself in this position if I though it was a high spirited 5YO.

I do believe this is a 5YO who needs help and, more importantly, a mum who needs support too.

Give it time. She's just had a huge shock in this phone call.

Perhaps although it wasn't what she wanted to hear, it is what she needed to hear and she will think about it and consider an assessment.

If it turns out there is nothing, then she's wasted a bit of time with an assessment and no big deal.

could you not mention it but talk about your son and tell her about how you got diagnosed, who you went to and what things made you think he had ASD. What a relief it was to have a diagnosis. Also mention the great National Autistic website that has a great check list on it.

If the friend was really close and I felt I could be honest, I would be but in the most gentle way.

sorry she took it so badly. In your situation, I don't think I could have kept silent either if I felt a child with undiagnosed SN was being punished for it. Hopefully you will have planted a seed with this conversation, even if she wasn't ready to hear it.

Worrywort. You were very brave. It's so difficult to suggest to someone that their child's difficulties may be due to a brain condition rather than just their being naughty. You knew it would be hard, you struggled to think how best to phrase it to cause the least amount of distress to your friend. (Even though she refers to autistic children in a rather offensive way, whilst knowing your child is affected.)

You still tried your best, for the sake of the child. Don't castigate yourself because it didn't come off as you would have liked.

And FWIW, I would have preferred it if someone had spoken out to me about my DS. It would have saved me months of worry that something wasn't right and nobody else could see it. And I wouldn't have missed on the help from Portage that DS didn't get because he was too old. It would have nice if a friend had cared enough to say something.

Sorry just read thread.

Well done. I know it was hard but it will work in her sons interest if friend can get the ball moving earlier rather then later.

Can you message her on FB and apologise for being so clumsy in how you discussed it but that you do worry about her son and feel it is in his best interest to be assessed/supported.

I would leave it a day or two then message her and say you care and are worried.

What's portage?

Portage is a service available to children under 3 years. I would have welcomed any help myself.

What bothers me is that there is no guarantee that the OP's friend will actually accept now that her child may have issues that need to be addressed. She could continue as she is doing, which is bound to have a negative impact on her child, and on their relationship. I hope she does start investigations, but nobody can make her (AFAIK). Ultimately it's the child who will suffer the most.

It's so difficult isn't it? My friend's little boy is being assessed atm, first one professional tells her she thinks he has ASD then another says he hasn't , he just has a speech delay. I don't want to burst her bubble as she is relieved to think that it might not be ASD after all, but really, like you I see similarities with my ds at the same age so I'm not so sure... I do hope I'm wrong but if I'm not she knows she can talk to me because I've been through it already. All I've said so far is that it's good to be in the system because whatever the problem it's obvious the little boy needs some help and it's best to get it all sorted out before he starts school. She seems happy with that.
The difference is she's never taken the possiblility that her son may be 'like' mine as an insult, if she had I'm not so sure we'd still be such good friends tbh. I agree with others that you are being very patient!

I do think people walk a fine line when they do things like this - telling someone they think their child may have SNs. The problem IMO is that a lot of "symptoms" of SNs are normal stages of development in children that are either much more severe or go on for much longer than they would in an NT child. Which means that behaviour you may see as a snapshot here and there when you see the child may appear to be SNs, but may simply be a normal part of their particular development... or something else entirely.

I think it all comes down to this.... those of you (myself included) that have children with SNs.... doesn't it make you very upset and/or angry when others say they DON'T think your child has SNs, even though you have a DX, and they are basing that opinion on what they see?? This is simply the same type of thing in reverse.... you're telling someone you think they might based on what you see....!

Consider what you say when you are upset about the reverse...

• they don't live with your child
• they're not privy to your chilld's medical history or records
• they're not a medical professional

Snap, my dears. Food for thought. As a parent of a child with SNs, I tend to see behaviours in children that seem similar to DS2's behaviour. They are not all children with SNs. I honestly think sometimes it's like when you're pregnant and you see pregnant women everywhere.... we have to be wary of assuming every behaviour issue we see involving a child is SNs. Some could be, but some just aren't. Only a medical professional is qualified to determine the difference. Other than that, I think we need to tread carefully. Encourage a parent to speak to their GP or think about assessments, fine. But implying that a child has SNs is crossing the line IMO.

I think you speak a lot of truth Triggles.

But how can you encourage someone to think about assessments without implying that the child might have SN? Surely the mere suggestion is implying that you are thinking of either illness or SN, because that is what a doctor deals with?

As I read it, all the OP did was to suggest assessments- and the friend then got defensive and asked if she thought her ds had SN.

In that situation what could she have said? -No I am sure he doesn't, you should see the doctor because of- what exactly?

And what is the friend supposed to tell the doctor- Hello, I've come to see you but I'm not prepared to think about SN.

No point in seeing the doctor if you are not prepared to tackle the question that SN may be on the cards. And therefore no point in suggesting it unless you are prepared to tackle that question.

The only other alternative I can see would be to say nothing. But then she would be implicitly agreeing that the little boy was naughty- which is also hard. Or that her friend's parenting leaves something to be desired.

I think you should say something :( I was in same boat a couple of years back, I really suspected something but decided against saying anything as I felt at time the mum would merely think I was comparing and criticizing ( I would never do that I know autism is not down to anything parents have done etc). Eventually her ds was diagnosed and I felt awful as I couldn't help but think maybe she coulda got help sooner if I had said. :( but I also was aware that I'm not a dr or a parent of an asd child so I couldn't back it up :( I think that as ur friends dc is at d hook it's vital that she knows or he will never get the help and support needed to make it thru and she will be entitled to dla for him so will be able to afford all the extra resources he might need at home. I wish you luck it's a hard decision.

It IS difficult cory. But I just think there is a fine line between "perhaps seeing a GP to see if there are any medical problems that may be influencing their behaviour" (or whatever similar thing might be said) and "your child behaves just like my child with ASD, so I think your child might have ASD." IYSWIM.

A friend of mine (still a very good friend) was listening to me when I was stressing over problems with DS2 before we knew of his SNs (although we had repeatedly asked the GP about whether or not certain behaviours were "normal" to which they said "oh of course, just slow developer, typical boy" ). She calmly asked at one point "are you worried that there might be something more complicated causing this behaviour?" No jumping to conclusions about him having SNs, but merely bringing out into the open what she knew I might be thinking. And to be fair, I really hadn't pegged ASD (or the other difficulties he has) as a probable cause. So I felt comfortable talking about it with her honestly without feeling ambushed. (she doesn't have a child with SNs, although one of her relatives does)

I think perhaps I just get uncomfortable sometimes as we do seem to see a frequent number of posts on MN by people saying "I'm sure my friend's child has ASD, how do I tell her?" and it just seems to be handled in such an intrusive and insensitive manner.

And I DO think that better training in recognising possible SNs is absolutely necessary for GPs. Ours was woefully inadequate. By the way, when I flat out demanded a referral for our DS2, our GP said to me "Well, he's obviously not normal..." So I can say from personal experience that is NOT a great line to use. Still stings and it's been 2 years.

Eeek was just about to post that I most definitely WOULDN'T say anything, but see that you already have

I think, given the fact that she refers to your son, who has SN, as 'special' in that derogatory way, meant she was never going to take it well. Anyone who thinks of SN in that way is likely to think you are being insulting by suggesting her son has some sort of SN and that it means there is something 'wrong' with him.

I don't think you did anything wrong, you were trying to help a child. However, I wouldn't want to be friends with someone like that. My son has Downs Syndrome and a friend of a friend, who I was also becoming friends with, was asking abotu schooling and told me how there was a school where she was from for 'backward' children. She really didn't mean it in a nasty way, but the fact that she held such outdated attitudes meant I no longer wanted to pursue any friendship tbh. I really don't think someone using the term 'backward' is any more derogatory than 'special'.

hopefully by doing this, you have given her food for thought.

Kudos to you by the way for still maintaining a friendship with someone who uses the word"special" in a derogatory fashion despite knowing your child has a diagnosis of autism.

Poor kid :( Well done for saying something worrywort even if it didn't go to plan