Son’s mother telling him he is ill when he’s not

[Dylan222]

My 12 year old sons mother has told him that he has ADHD and is that he is Autistic, her parents have also told him.

However he does not have ADHD and is not Autistic. It looks to be a type of child abuse called Fabricated Illness by Proxy. I have been working with his GP to get Social Services involved, his mother has been falsely stating to people for the last few years that my son has these conditions, however this week was the first time she has told him.

Any advice please on how I should approach it with my son? I have explained the situation as clearly as I can to him and confirmed that he does not have ADHD or Autism, but I don’t know whether to talk about it with him more or just let him come to me if he is worried about it.

Thank you

If he has had an ADOS assessment which has assessed him as being severely autistic (which you posted upthread to be the case), he has a diagnosis of autism.

You need to stop lying and start helping your child.

I agree.

OP appears to have very fixed views.

I doubt very much that SS, The family court, The NHS and LEA would be involved if it were a simple case of the dad not agreeing with a diagnosis.

It obviously is more complicated than that, for a start there was a non-molestation order against the OP.

If he has had an ADOS assessment which has assessed him as being severely autistic (which you posted upthread to be the case), he has a diagnosis of autism.

OP has also said that the child wasn’t there when the diagnosis was given - surely you can’t diagnose someone without even meeting them.

Whether your ds has ASD and/or ADHD is not the point I'm going to talk about. You sound very naieve. Many many posters on mn, in the sn section, say that school insisted their dc was "fine", "shows no signs in school". Often this is simply not true. Some children masque well. Or schools just refuse to see the signs. Or don't have the medical training.

Teachers are only teachers, not Doctors, and categorically should NOT be stating that any child does or doesn't have any medical condition.

Oooh no wonder the OP needs the ex to be abusing the child somehow

If an ados has been done, and your son scored highly, he has been diagnosed.

There is something I dint understand @Dylan222 .

Tiu can take your ds to the GP. Take him to A&E or any other consultant if needed. You would have gone to CAMHS if they had said yes.

Your ex got an assessment done privately on autism and adhd.

All of that is or has been done Wo the consent if the other parent. So WHY do you think you can’t have your ds privately assessed Wo your ex approval??? What’s the difference?

If you had any experience of FII allegations you would know different!

Who said this? If it was a professional I find it very hard to believe. I'm a SEN parent for context.

That was to the pp who said all the external agencies wouldn’t be involved without reason.

I see there is all sort of issues here that were not clear. No further comments from me.

The OPs story is changing like the wind.

An ADOS assessment doesn't need to be carried out by a DR it can be done by a MHN or an OT as part of a disciplinary panel. It is normally overseen by a doctor who may or may not have seen the child.

When my daughter was diagnosed we were given the diagnosis by a pedeatrician who 'oversaw' the process but was not part of the ADOS assessment team.

You don’t need to be a doctor to complete an ADOS. However you do need to be a qualified assessors and there are generally two parts to the assessment and one can include observation in the school setting. You wouldn’t get a confirmed diagnosis after an 1 hr assessment. It is a lengthy process - there are people out there who badge themselves as specialists and will state someone is autistic based on there opinion without a complete gold standard assessment.

I know of a case where someone was given the diagnosis despite the assessor acknowledging to a colleague that they were not an autistic person but felt due to past trauma they would receive better support. Therefore Harley street ‘experts’ would not be accepted by professionals and it is interesting that the school don’t agree. The mum should go through the formal NhS assessment process so there child can receive the correct support in the event diagnosis is confirmed

www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/getting-diagnosed/assessments/

🫣🫣🫣

Why am i not surprised??

Apart from the fact it ties up nicely with the fact that the OP is refusing to have him assessed himself.

Poor child.
He us the one person suffering from all of that. I really feel fur him, regardless of whether he has a diagnosis or not.

He said the doctor didn’t meet him. He had an hour long face to face assessment with someone else from the team.
In an ideal world Autism assessments should cover a range of environments but they rarely do these days. 1 hour assessment and then information gathering is typical.

I have no idea about some private doctors and their set up for diagnosis, assessment. But, none of us know the qualifications of the original person who did see the child. if mum had filled out all the paperwork, the child had been monitored in the clinic, assessments done, forms filled out, child watched, say for example asked to do the Sally-anne test, videoed. The team may have discussed, the final doctor may have diagnosed.

Cocobutt you are correct you wouldn’t receive a diagnosis of ‘severe autism’ anyway as there is no such thing. You are either autistic or not. It sounds like the mum has started the process by providing background history but the next step would be the formal assessment They cannot diagnose based on a chat with mum. As stated above it is a lengthy process

She has had difficulties with him, he lives half the week with me but his attendance has recently been down to 87% as he is staying up very late at his mothers and not going to school the next day.

I think she was wanted an explanation for the difficulties she experiences with him, I also think it is financially motivated. She has been claiming Child Disability Living Allowance for him as his ‘sole caregiver’ despite him not being diagnosed with an illness or disability, and while he has either been living with me full time or part of the week - despite his school stating that they do not think he has ADHD or Autism and despite them providing him with not additional care at school.

I missed the non molestation order- is that on another thread?

That is very interesting, does an ADOS always mean a diagnosis? The private doctor has stated on multiple occasions that she ‘did not diagnose him’. That an application was made for an ‘opinion’ and not a diagnosis.

Doctor was asked for an 'opinion'. An ADOS assessment was actually done. But a diagnosis not given?

That’s interesting, but no I haven’t

I think the op has received a lot of unhelpful comments.
We live in a world at the moment where everything has to have a label. It's ironic to label the mother as FI disorder for labelling the son as having adhd and asd.
I think it would be foolish to deny that for every few genuinely neurodiverse children, there are one or two with parents who see diagnosis as gaining membership to a club, usually the same ones who will hinder their child's separation from them into the world.
As with most things, I expect the ops situation is neither one thing nor the other. Their child is probably slightly different from their mother's perceived idea of nt and the mother is probably one of the latter situations rather than a rare F I case.

Now this can't be true:

She has been claiming Child Disability Living Allowance for him as his ‘sole caregiver’ despite him not being diagnosed with an illness or disability, and while he has either been living with me full time or part of the week

They benefits people don't just take your word for it. If they did there would be obvious fraud on a massive scale. You are an abusive man continuing his abuse.