Question about autism assessment

[mammyf]

Hi, I have two boys youngest has diagnosis of autism and SLD, non verbal. We've always had our suspicions that our older son (teenager) may have aspergers however we have never suggested that to him due to the fact that we thought he may see it as a negative thing as he sees how much his brothers struggles daily and also it didn't seem to have much impact of his daily life. However today out of the blue he has asked us if we think he may be on the spectrum as he has been reading up on things and also doing online questionnaires. He's a very quiet shy boy who struggles socially and never opens up to anyone so for him to say this to us if a massive thing. If we want to proceed to ask for an assessment can anyone advise how we go about this? His younger brother was diagnosed 8 years ago so I think the process may have changed lots since then. Can anyone advise please? Thanks

You would need a referral from school or your GP. If there are no presenting ‘problems’ in school, school may be reluctant to get involved. Unfortunately, the older your son is, the more difficult it is to get a diagnosis (you don’t mention whether he’s a young teen, or older). Depending on where you are in the UK, the wait can be long, even for children. Where we live we waited 6 months two years ago, any now waiting times are 12-18 months.
Good luck to your son. Diagnosis is important, however old you are.

I think GP is the right route. If your son could print out some of the questionnaires and if you could make lists together of traits to take with you I think that would be useful.

While you are waiting for assessment he might find YouTube a useful resource. There are quite a lot of young adults and even a few autistic teenagers posting videos and he might find things he identifies with and some useful tips. I tend to follow more girls as I have a DD, but you might want to look up e.g. Connor Ward or SavanFilms who are both very nice boys.

I also like "Aspergers from the Inside": he is older but has some good videos on emotional/social intelligence from an autistic perspective. Similarly Chris Bonnello ("Autistic Not Weird") has some good videos from his perspective as an autistic person (and former primary school teacher).

If you start with those you should find loads more links to explore, and hopefully find some videos your DS would like and find useful.