Do you tell people about your childs special needs?

[yodelayheehoo]

My DD1 aged 8 has recently been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. She goes to a mainstream primary school and is in year 3. We went to a birthday party today for one of her school friends and DD1 asked me to stay with her as it was a roller skating party and she is not very confident on skates.

DD1 is very quirky and has an obvious emotional development delay compared to her peers. Would you tell the parents of the party, or would you just let things happen without comment (as I did) such as DD1 having a meltdown because she couldn't sit next to a certain person, or didn't like the food?

I just don't know what to do for the best and hope that someone out there could give me some advice.

I. too, can totally agree that we want people to know/dont want people to know why they behave the way they do.

For example, our new neighbour and her toddler son were waving to us leaving for school the other morning and my DS stuck his tongue out at them!

So, I felt I had to explain that he wasnt being cheeky, in fact, I dont know why he does this. He can be very sweet the rest of the time.

( DS is awaitin appt with Autistic diagnostic team and also consultant paed for possible "syndrome")

Incidentally, neighbour was very sweet as she knows someone who also had autistic dc

Dolfrog - your point is also very interesting, about explaining to the child themselves that they have a special need, partly so they understand themselves why things can be harder/different for them to deal with and partly so they can discuss it with others as required. While I don't want to hide anything from DS, it is quite hard to articulate it when he doesn't have a diagnosis, so we cannot name the cause of the problem. So far we tend to talk in terms of some people find it harder than others to tell the time (for example), some people, like him, find it harder to cope with losing a game, but we all have to try and practise to get better at the things which are hard for us.

Going back to the parents at school thing, I don't mind really some of them knowing, but there are one or two who I feel would not really understand, even one who is a good friend of mine, it feels a bit like walking on eggshells. As Dolfrog says, we should also consider that by talking openly it raises awareness amongst the population at large, it is easy to forget when you spend a lot of time either talking to teachers, SENCOs etc and hours on MN, that most people have got very little knowledge of the various conditions and the systems which go with them.

I usually have to explain in restaurants, pubs etc as DS will only drink out of a purple fruit shoot bottle ATM, so I explain as I don't want to look like a skinflint sneaking in my own drinks for him :)

I didn't used to. If he was with people who didn't know him, I'd say nothing. Now, 6 yrs after diagnosis of autism (aged 4) he has additional OCD/Tourettes and is obviously "different". I usually say something now, because I think it benefits him as people are more understanding/forgiving.

Understandably, the Tourettes feature has very negative conotations..... my son doesn't shout out "rude words" but odd sentences, all out of context so, yes he sticks out a mile now, and I feel I need to give some explanation. Actually, he doesn't get invited to stuff anymore, so I'm talking about if we're (rarely) out and about and folk are gawping!