Cookie hello and welcome. Have just tried highlighting system and it works if you're finding our esteemed leader's posts vanishing under chatter.
Who knows thank you so much for highlighting info for Cookie, it was just what I needed! 
(am still a computer numptie and need to understand how the the FL info, beyond the baby steps is found, so I can try and lead 
thread one of these days!)
Getting bogged down, and being emotionally drained by the SEN process is horribly normal. There is life the other side of it, and one day you get this giant dc who wraps their arms round you, and say’s “Er you know all that stuff you did? Thanks for that.” (and then says “did you know your hairs thinning as well as going grey?”)
Toffee this book was very helpful for ds to identify more positively with ASD: www.amazon.co.uk/Freaks-Geeks-Asperger-Syndrome-Adolescence/dp/1843100983 though he’d already decided ‘autistic’ was a rather better label than the names applied to him by his peer group. Congratulations on finding solution to ds2 situation.
Ds is likely to feel sad. For children often described as having black and white thinking, they’re usually remarkably adept at seeing implied ‘criticism’ in what are actually just facts. A lot of this is learnt in school, regardless of what PSHE tells them, that it would be somehow bad or lesser to have autistic traits or be different.
for everyone doing statements or SEN evidence gathering
Dc’s saying there’s nothing wrong should always be turned round and treated as evidence in itself tbh. DD will say she wants to marry Edward C (104 yr old fictional vampire) to most questions about her future! Late teen ds will tell you he doesn’t have a problem with age appropriate self-care skills. He doesn’t in his mind, his mother is still here, so it’s her that has any problem with this!
Consequently I’ll let him answer he has no problem with them, then dive in with the same question rephrased with assistance taken out of his equation, and he’ll state he does. DD just goes into fits of giggles if you try and suggest she needs a better answer.
With both I’ll then add “is vulnerable to being made to misrepresent situations by questions that aren’t adapted to meet needs” and insist it’s written down. You get brazen on their behalf eventually.
Just to hopefully reassure re questioning dc’s views in statementing application process, questions from ds’s views form read:
What do you most like about school?
What things in school do you most like doing?
What do you do best?
What makes you happiest?
Who do you like most?
What improvements did you make?
What helped you to learn or get on better?
What things don’t you like doing?
What do you find difficult?
Each LA’s questions are different, but it seems a fairly representative level and slant of questions AFAICS from dc’s views questionnaires from different areas that I’ve read in a working capacity. and nothing like the sort people are worrying about possibly.
Ds raged about them, initially refused to engage, and had to be helped to see how he could adapt what he wanted to say about how deeply unhappy he was at being pushed out of lessons, being denied an education, being told to accept not understanding lessons by teachers, and being bullied, to fit their format.
But having learnt the hard way, I suspect if you try what we did for the review; conversationally ‘interview’ dc’, without mentioning the form, add a “why?” etc, to the questions, add a couple of your own if needing to elicit something specific, and write down everything, then helpfully produce those notes when officially introducing the form, you can then help them select the most useful answers that are their own, but are a good selection that show up their strengths, weaknesses and needs.
Another way to get a balance, is they pick three of their answers (or new one’s to each question, and you pick another three to go with.
There’s also the STAR technique (situation, task, action, result) for breaking down big ‘stories and events’ into answers for these sorts of questions if anyone wants it.
BTW I let housekeeping go to rack and ruin in order to achieve all this stuff because I couldn’t do everything alone, and am still finding SEN paperwork from 1997 in the daily decluttering! 
You guys are (wisely) trying to keep order as well as do all this, it will take more time.
Swan diaries are indeed a great way of record keeping, (and returning to in later years when you need to remember things) but mines inevitably not available at crisis point, so I use a small voice recorder for all sorts of things, and transcribe later, (you do end up with pica issues and interventions next to needing more bleach!) also a pencil and post it notes in the car, for us.
Feetheart and Toffee thanks for round ups.
SC I’m ever so sorry but i.m.e. it’s closer to 20 and then only if they want to do the thing they need to do. Eyes up heading for middle aged dgc’s mum wearily, yes you!
everyone to quote; big wing flaps! 
Still to do
stupid amounts of everything.