When/how/should you tell a 5 year old he has ASD?

[adelinehillman]

My 5 year old son has just been diagnosed with ASD. He knows he is different and has special treatment at school (he's mainstream), but i don't know when/how or even if I should try and explain to him yet what ASD is and that he has it. I know there are plenty of resources out there to assist, but I wondered if anyone has advice on how to approach it. I don't want him to feel that he has been labelled, but of course he needs to know so that he can first understand ASD. Any advice please?

watching with interest as our DS is also aged 5, HFA but was dx aged 3.6. He has 1-2-1 support at school but we have not told him he has ASD yet, and he has not started to ask questions yet, but he soon will I'm sure. Dont know where to start with it all really

I think with a new Dx, you think of these things.

Ds has been Dx since he was 2 and it's a term so bandied about it's common and no big deal.

He talks about stimming like it's a normal thin to do and if something is confusing he might ask if it is confusing for everyone or just him.

He never actually uses the word autism, though his 4 yr old sister does. However as an NT she doesn't actually have a clue what it means and might as well be something all boys have iyswim.

My DS is 6 and has just started to question why he has people with him when he goes to school, why he doesn't go every day etc in the last 6 months or so. He says he wnats to go to school without his tutors (although he loves them and I think would hate it if they didn;t come). I would not be inclined to go into explanations unless he is already showing curiosity. If he is, that's a sign he might be able to grasp some of the explanation.
Children in his class sometimes ask me why he has tutors with him and I just say it's because he finds some things harder than other kids and neeeds a bit of help. They all seem to accept this pretty well.

My ds is coming up to 6yo, and so far we've tried to keep it from him. I think he will hate thinking he is 'different' so I'm sort of dreading having to have the inevitable 'talk' with him. Like Karlos, we have ABA tutors (part time) and he has started to wonder why he seems to get special treatment. I think I'm going to go down the 'find some things harder' route too. Maybe when he's a bit older I'll put the actual name to it, but probably just start with saying some people need help with specific things (eg granny needs glasses cos her eyes need help).

I also think there are some books aimed at HF kids (Tony Attwood, I think?)

I read my 5yr old son 'All cats have Asperger Syndrome.' It's a great book, and I related ASD back to lots of positives that were relevant to my son; good hearing, good memory etc.

DS was out a few days ago and had his noise reducing headphones with him. A man asked him about them and he explained all about how he had them because he had autism and it caused him to be sensitive to some noises :o I was proud of how much he understood as he's only just about to turn 6 next week.

That's very good.
DS and I have conversations about how he likes things to be the same because that's the way he is and I am a bit like that too. Then we chat about how actually it's OK for things to be different sometimes and we can learn to be OK with that. But I haven;t said "this is because you have autism" because that all gets a bit complicated!

Thanks for all the advice. I am keen to put a label on my son, but he is becoming aware that he is different to the other kids. I don't want to hide from the subject, but then again I don't want to force it on him. I like the idea of explaining that he's different, and that different isn't a bad thing, it's just different. In some ways I think he enjoys being different - having a special chair, cushion, pen and espeically the 1;1 tutoring, but there will come a time when he'll want to be like the other kids. I guess the answer is to slowly feed it in, that there's no right or wrong way to do it, and that a few illustrated books might help.

Round the time our DS was diagnosed when he was between 5 and 6 years old, DS?s clinical psychologist (a dear man but a bit of a loon) said that DS had Asperger?s Syndrome in front of him. So I felt we had to explain what it meant.

I don?t think I made an especially brilliant job of talking about it. I hadn?t looked at any books on how to go about it. I just told DS some upsides and downsides, things it made easier for him like being very logical and good at maths and other grown-up things, and some things it made harder, like playing with his friends. He was into Star Wars at the time and I remember also telling him it was like being a Jedi knight, he had to use his powers for good and not the Dark Side! And I did not feel helped by ?The Incredibles? which had just come out, with a villain called Syndrome

But in the long run I feel the psychologist was right, it was easier to have it out in the open so early. A few years later DS talked about Asperger's with another boy with a similar diagnosis at primary school, they compared notes. He doesn?t tell everyone (he?s 14 and I tell him it?s his decision) although of course the school know as he gets some extra support. He has met quite a few other kids with ASC diagnoses and they?re all very different, so we sometimes talk about that. And he?s looked up the label on Wikipedia to see if he agrees with what they say about it!

We told DS he had Aspergers shortly after diagnosis when he was 5. A lady from Autism support visited him at school and told him that Aspergers meant that his brain worked in a different way to most peoples, so that he was able to do some things better than other children, but this also meant that he had difficulties, with other things most children wouldn't be bothered about. He is now 11 and has often referred to her initial explanation, when he knows he is having troubles. He is quite open about his Aspergers as we and school have always made a point of saying he is different not disabled. I must say though that we have found that the playdates and party invites dwindled once he began discussing his Aspergers.

We told our ds a few months after his dx when he was about 7 - I spoke with him and his older ds (only about 17/5 months between them); I remember building myself for this big chat and they both completely took it in their stride and it has been part and parcel of all our lives obviously ever since! Words such as 'tricky' are helpful.

I suppose I agree with those that think the earlier the better, they will be big teenagers and then adults eventually and it makes things a lot easier for them, the family and linking in with services/professionals if you need to later on.

Kleinzeit, I always took the incredibles as a positive story about how being neurodiverse is fab, except for the difficulty of having to 'pass for normal' much of the time. And superpowers often run in families .

Surely 'Syndrome' was a gone-wrong NT boy who jealousy got the better of. But since he could only copy and cheat his way to superhero status, it didn't last.

We told DS about his various diagnoses in dribs and drabs, "what is difficult /easy for you". Mainly in context, or as opportunities arose, and adding on bits of information as he needed them.

Sort of like the birds and the bees. No-oe wants their child to get their knowledge primarily from the playground, or in one big, traumatic discussion during their teens.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently as my 6 year old is going through a diagnosis at the moment (although obviously we can't be sure what the outcome is going to be). My initial instinct was to tell him but after an awful reaction after his first paed appointment I am not sure, I don't think he is mature enough to hear beyond the bit about being 'different' and to understand that different doesn't mean 'worse'. So I will lurk with interest.