Last night I told DS he has AS. Wobbling.

[LovelyLovelyWine]

Phew.

He is 7 yrs old and has had the diagnosis for 2 years. DH and I had always thought we would sit down in a pre-planned, measured way at some stage in the future (when it 'felt right') and discuss his daiagnosis with him.

Last night I was alone with DS and he was in a foul mood all evening. Ended with him crying and saying he hates his life, he hates being him, he is stupid and bad and in a school with babies (he attends specialist ASC provision, but he is the only AS kid).

So, I told him. Didnt know I was going to do it until I did it. I just couldnt bear another minute of him blaming himself. Asked him if he had heard of AS (no) or autism (yes, but didn't know what the word meant). Told him AS describes people, like him and his best friend, who are very clever but find rules hard and working out feelings (their own and others) hard. Fuck knows if this is what I should've said. But I said it. He seemed relieved-ish, but said he didn't want to talk about it anymore and went upstairs to bed pretty sharpish afterwards.

His teacher just called to say he is having an unsettled morning, understandably (I emailed her straight after yesterday to let her know what had happened) and that they are going to give him a bit of time out today with a 1:1 and let him do his own thing. The ASC Advisory teacher has sent me a lovely email with recommended books and said we should be led by him on how to take this further.

I feel a bit sick, though. I don't feel I handled it brilliantly well, and don't know how I will handle things if he asks questions...or if he doesnt.

Any tips? it was such a short conversation and I have no idea of he really understood what I said or if I have just made things even worse....

Don't worry yourself. I'm sure you've done fine. You have to go with what happens and it sounds as though you had to seize that moment if your DS was unhappy. It's a little by little thing and you may find he goes back and forth in whether he wants to talk about it and how much he understands. He'll get there when he's ready - just watch for the opportunities to drop it in to your daily chat. I'd also suggest trying to focus on issues rather than the name of ASD - eg. for years we talked about 'finding it hard to concentrate' as that was what affected my DS most in his day to day life (because of sensory overload). Good luck for when he comes home later!

I've done loads of reading on this and conclude that it is better to evolve the dx rather than bomb shell it iyswim, and take your child's lead.

For this reason, we talk about ds' difficulty talking sometimes and his stimming. His school were surprised to find that bs refers to his stimming as stimming but it's not discrete, shameful or a secret. Why pretend it doesn't exist.

Books - can totally recommend Aspergers, What does it means to me? My DD was diagnosed and like you we took our time in telling her. I think that unfortunately this book is aimed at 10y olds, but you maybe it would work as well if you went through it with him?

I think it's a bit like sex ed - best if you just respond to questions or situations as they come up rather than necessarily a let's sit down and have a one off serious conversation about this.

Our DS hated it at first, but came round to accepting the idea and finding it quite interesting fairly rapidly. I think he was around 7 or 8 like your son.

By about 11, he was describing it as 'like having a different operating system that isn't worse than other people's but not as usual'.

By 13 he was flooring anyone still listening with descriptions of the relative merits of Ubuntu over Windows, and pitying anyone with a 'normal but boring' way of thinking.

FWIW, I think you have done the right thing.

I am planning to tell Dd3 at the weekend, she has been attending lots of groups lately and keeps asking me questions about them but I have found it difficlut to answer her properly because her timing is always dodgy. eg driving to Brownies or about to go to bed.

We had agreed to tell her in the summer hols but there is such a fab SEN team at her school who support us all brilliantly that we thought it would be stupid to tell her at a time when we would have no support for 6 weeks and be dealing with transitions at the same time.

It is good to know there are others going through the same thing