HFA diagnosis, aged 6.5. tell him or not?

[SophieofShepherdsBush]

I think this has been done before, but just want some reassurance that we are doing the right thing. New diagnosis, ds in MS school. We need to tell him he's autistic right? Using the word autistic instead of hedging about it with phrases like "special" and "different". And his peers and siblings should be told too? Just thinking of potential for bullying, exclusion, self esteem etc and I think it's better if it's all positive and in the open....but I have doubts too....once it's out there there's no going back, and I'd hate it to emphasise his differences in a way that makes him a target. He's the odd naughty kid at the moment though (to his peers and siblings), surely its better to tell them all and be positive? School say it's up to us, they are very goid about being inclusive and celebrating differences and making allowances and helping the kids understand without actually using th "label". Would it be better to just continue like this? Confused!

I'm wrestling with this atm. Dn9 has more obvious HFA and SIL was fretting how to tell him until I pointed out that ds already had - he'd overheard adults including autistic aunt discussing it so told dn that was why dn was having problems doing something.
Now ds has been diagnosed but they have very different symptoms (you could take any list of traits of ASD, tick off the ones applying to dn, and the rest will describe ds), and my concern is that as soon as I tell ds, his whole class and their parents will know too.

At present they know ds as the bright boy who is over-emotional and cries a lot and takes a while to join in, so in some ways there's not going to be much difference. He knows he is left-handed and a bit different, but trying to explain that most people just don't care if say someone has said something that isn't true, is hard.

Not least because I struggle with the same things as ds, and ASD has been suggested several times, most recently by the guy who explained for 10 minutes what a ASD diagnosis meant before clarifying that he was giving ds one, and went on to say in ds's case, it was clearly inherited from both parents - just as well we'd already figured that out!