How do you explain

[Lexie1970]

to my 4 1/2 year old son that a little boy in his reception class is autistic.

He knows that X has 1-1 with TA and has asked why and today he wanted to know why X was still wearing nappies when he is a big boy.

How would you explain this to a small child sensitively but also factually? I have tried saying that X just needs a little bit more help at the moment but this just leads to more Whys.......

TIA

cld u find something your son needs help with, some other child needs help with something else, something you or you dh need help with and explain that everybody has something they need help with, just like u need help with, i need help with, x needs help with, thats why we are different... something along those lines. it may help comparing different people/children so he can visualise what you are saying

I have a 4 year old ds with asd / sld - I also have a 6 year old dd (NT). I explain to her friends that ds has something called autism which means his brain works differently to ours and that he needs more help to learn things and that sometimes he behaves differently (flapping etc)

Start from there - children are very accepting

DS did a term at MS nursery and while changing facilities were being sorted I used to take him in for a hour every day. I was very conscious that DS was, from the other children's perspective, allowed to get away with not doing as he was told ie sitting on the carpet at story time etc. We explained to the other children that DS was learning how to act in nursery and they just accepted it. I chose to be very open with all the other parents about ds autism - I wanted them to know rather than assume he was just a naughty child.

thanks :)