Sorry for all the questions i kow this is my second thread, but im new and i've never had anyone to talk to about this stuff before.
Last march (2010) our son went though the process of being diagnosed with asperger's. At the end of the process me and his dad, actually refused the offical diagnosis and refused the statement we were told we would quailify for that could go along with it.
At the time the diagnosis was more for our benifit than anyones he is coping well at home and coping well at school as the school have been very good at adapting to his needs. We where just sick of people blaming us for his lack of this.. or his struggles with that and for our own peace of mind we wanted to know what was wrong with him.
In many ways his condition isn't severe he doens't have any complusions or habits and is on a day-to-day basis able to function very "normally" for want of a better word.
Mostly his asperger's just makes him a loner and awkward around other children. He gets very focus'ed on things than interest him to the exlusion of everything else but as his goal is to be the best in class at EVERYthing it rarely causes issues at school. However his social skills are awful he often rubs other children up the wrong way by correcting them or treating them like thier stupid.
Anyway we refused the diagnosis because in our defence i guess we paniced about what that label would mean for him in the future because academically he is very bright, he's 11 and already a better computer programmer than many people in the field earning 30-40k a year. haha. So we worried that a diagnosis would hurt his chances of getting jobs etc because their is still a great deal of "lack of understanding" out there in the real world. The minute you say autism and people automatically think forrest gump and rainman without understanding the ASD range is very large.
However this means that other than the support the school are giving him off thier own back he's not reciving extra help.
He's going to senior school next year and i'm worried without the diagnosis it might be hard/impossible to get his senior school to continue the support his primary is giving. Senior school is a big step from primary and trumatic for any child i suddenly find myself wondering if we did the right thing??
He doens't need support with lessons or learning just with the social interaction side of things. In perticualar bullying as he is noticably different and children can be cruel ... teenage kids are even worse. Mostly i think his aspergers just makes him a very vulnerable child.
Do you think i should chase a diagnosis? what support would be available with his social interaction if i got it?? And has anyone had any experience of life after school with a diagnosis??