If your child has Aspergers, how and when did you explain it to them?

[fairylights]

our ds was dx was AS last week which mostly is a huge relief to us because (where we are at least) there is so much support and help now available to us etc..
but we realized at his big assessment last week that he has reached an age when he wants to understand why he is having to go to all these appointments and do things for people. He will be 5 in November and has just started school, and although his social skills are a bit hit and miss sometimes, I think he does have that sense of not wanting to be different to his peers, but he can't quite understand it.
Obviously, he is too young for a full explanation (!) but we are attempting to raise out children to be open with us and us with them, so feel that if he asks us about it, we want to be able to explain briefly and in the most positive terms.
So.. your wisdom would be appreciated MNers, and also any recommendations for good books/resources to help us find the way forward from here. Thanks

There are some excellent books called 'Talk and work it out' and 'Join in and play' Cheri J. Meiners.

There are others too in the series and I have found them excellent in explaining some of the social rules etc.

www.amazon.co.uk/Can-Tell-About-Asperger-Syndrome/dp/1843102064/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317463343&sr=1-3
We used this, it's fairly simple. We also bought a copy for the school, the teachers read it and encouraged the dcs classmates to read it.

Someone on here directed me to All Cats have Aspergers Syndrome, a book that is fantastic, beautiful pictures of cats with captions underneath, my son loves it. I didnt tell him directly he had Aspergers as I know he would have gone round telling everyone "ive got aspergers!!!" but when we read the book together he says "im like that cat"......then proceeds to pretend hes a cat for 2 hours . Im finding it harder how to explain to him now as hes coming up 7 and tells people he has anger problems and that hes special and thats why he goes to a special school. Im holding out for the written diagnosis before i sit him down and tell him fully, cant come soon enough because he needs to know as hes quite bright and im fed up with the questions!

We told dd when she was 5 (we knew when she was 2 that she had AS and she was dx'd at 3). She had begun to notice she's different, also her sister was going through dx for Autism (so she was asking a lot of questions), we explained to her what Aspergers ment and said 'thats why you get frustrated a lot' ect.., she took it very well and we often talk about it when she's upset and feeling as if she's different.

DS recognised he had a lot of AS characteristics (before he was actually dx-ed) after the book mentioned by DawnDonna was read out in school as another lad in his class had AS, he would have been 7 at the time.

He came home from school and said to me "Mum, what is AS?" After determining he really was talking about Aspergers, he told me all about AS. Including that the lad in his class if he dropped a cup and it broke and then someone said "Oh great" that the lad would think it was great. And that is really silly isn't it. He then paused about 5 seconds and said "But if someone says it is great, it is great, why would they say it's great if it isn't?" It was the first time I really realised that he had incredibly literal speech.

When he got his own dx (aged 8) we went back through the book together. His only 'problem' with the book is the boy described in it has an obsession with dinosaurs whereas DS is obsessed with Starwars and Dr Who and he thought he had to become obsessed with dinosaurs.

littleMissGreen
It's a great book, isn't it. Strangely, my son has the same name as the boy in the book, and his obsession was dinosaurs. He's sixteen now, but he did think it had been written about him for a very long time!

this is a bit belated but thanks for all the recommendations! Amazon are just about to do very well out of me